24- Portugal: A New Moon

There are many different phases of the Moons cycle including new moon, crescent moon, full moon. For us we had been through the honeymoon phase via a mini moon and travelled the world on our mega moon. Now we’d reached a new phase in our lives and it was time for the babymoon!

Portugal was the chosen destination as we set out on a two-stop break- five nights in Lisbon and six nights in Lagos, Algarve.  It seems that nobody has a bad word to say about Lisbon. Anyone we’ve told we’re going there has raved about it. Obviously, a very popular city destination. Thank you, Ryanair. We would certainly concur with those views as we had a great time. A super city to visit and walk around. Lovely food, great weather, lots of places to see.

It is a very easy city to walk around although quite hilly. If you fee like a rest, then there are trams, trains and a metro system to get you around also.  Of all the cities we’ve been in, it’s arguably the worst for getting tickets on the trains and metros. Every station we went seemed to have minimal machines to buy tickets and were all very slow to use as more times then not they rejected your preferred method of payment (no notes over €10, credit cards rejected as minimum transaction needed) and no staff anywhere. I’d recommend loading up a card the first day you get there and avoid the frustrating queues.

Due to its hilly nature, most streets in Lisbon provided you with great views of different sides of the city. Lots of old and quirky buildings. The whole city is overlooked by the Castelo de São Jorge so that was one of the first places we visited. Quite a trek up to it but you get fantastic views out over Lisbon. As a reward (and if you’re allowed) then there’s a little truck called “Wine with a View” selling lovely glasses of wine for you to indulge in while taking in the said view. Marvellous.

We ate some lovely food in Lisbon. One of our favorites was a visit to the TimeOut Market. A whole selection of the cities best food and drink under one roof. It’s sponsored by TimeOut magazine and the tagline they have for the market is “If it’s good, it goes in the magazine, if it’s great, it goes into the market”. A great night out. The hard part is choosing where to get your food as there are over 30 different restaurant stalls. Food envy comes at you from all directions as you check out all the lovely looking plates of food going past you. Choose wisely!

I don’t think I’ve ever seen food envy quite like that of a pregnant woman as my green eyed wife jealously eyed up my plates of prosciutto, soft cheeses and smoked salmon. I don’t think she was visibly drooling but she couldn’t have been far off! It was like she was my own personal cheerleader commending me on a job well done in my unrestricted food choices! She’s really looking forward to August!

In one of the tapas restaurants we visited, I ordered a “Roasted Chorizo in Rosemary”. The important bit that their description left out was that it was served doused in rum and set alight. Whoever made up my serving obviously had a heavy hand as five minutes later there were still generous flames in the bowl. They eventually came over to blow out the flames so I could actually eat the meal and in a moment of foolishness worthy of baby brain I used the fork from the bowl to eat my first piece of chorizo. Ouch. Even my basic science knowledge should have taught me that a metal fork left in a flaming bowl of rum would not be the instrument of choice to eat with. Thankfully I didn’t do more damage then burning the lips on one of side of mouth (apparently my natural instinct is to eat with my left side!). I actually thought they were going to balloon up completely but I was saved that embarrassment. Despite all that drama, the chorizo and rum was lovely!

As well as the lovely sites of Lisbon we took two trips out of city also- one to Cascais, a beachside town 30km from Lisbon. Leaves you close to Lisbon with the advantages of the beach and without being in the city. Our second day trip was to Sintra, a really fantastic place to visit. The village is accessible by train, and once you arrive, there is a local bus that does a hop-on hop-off service around the local sites. The two main sites both involve significant walks up the hills of the town so the bus is much appreciated. 

We started with the more modern site which is the Pena Palace- a bright and colourful palace overlooking the town. Finished in the 19^th century, it’s colourful exterior certainly contrasts to lots of other palaces and castles we’ve seen. On a sunny day such as we had, the bright red and yellow walls look fantastic against the blue sky.  From the top of the palace you can see across to the second main site which is a complete contrast to the first. It is the Castle of the Moors. Built in the 9^th century, it again overlooks Sintra but is far more domineering. Walking around the exterior walls of it brought back memories of the Great Wall of China as the walls snake across the horizon and offers great photo opportunities around each corner. Clearly the needs of the locals changed dramatically in the 1,000 years between the two buildings as one built clearly for protection and defense while the second built as a romantic Disney-type castle. The Portuguese most have grown soft during that time!

After many kilometers of walking through Lisbon and the surrounding areas, we finished our break in the south in the Algarve and a town called Lagos. For more rest and relaxation then Lisbon but still with plenty of walks. Our favourite being down around the cliffs as there are some magnificent views of rock formations. The clay coloured rocks again offering a great contrast to the sky and when you’ve big waves crashing against them it offers a wonderful site.

So the babymoon has ended, job done as we come back rested, relaxed and ready for our lives to change. At least soon, I’ll have someone to delegate all my blogging responsibilities to!

And so our time away is over, to finish off our holidays our roadshow moves onto Wexford for a Kelleher wedding. Big weekend ahead!

Click here to see a selection of photos from our Portuguese trip

Route

Fly Dublin to Lisbon, train Lisbon to Faro, Fly Lisbon to Dublin

23- Croatia & Bosnia Herzegovina: Split in the Nation

By our calculations, we haven’t had a holiday from work since 2012. It is a tough life- it should be noted that in our calculations we exclude travelling because that wasn’t really a holiday from work, it was more like a sabbatical and trips home to Ireland from Australia were naturally excluded, as these were really more like fulfilling familial duties. Hey, it’s our calculation, we can do it however we please!

So for our first holiday in an age, we said we’d expand our European horizons and head east to Croatia. The route we chose was a one way route, flying into Zadar and making our way leisurely down to Dubrovnik and flying home from there.

Zadar, and to be fair lots of others places in Croatia, were unknown to us before the trip. Ryanair fly in and out of there so it seems to have assisted in putting it on the maps. We spent a couple of days there, a very pleasant place. The highlight being the lovely waterfront area that’s been built there, a great location for sunset. Alfred Hitchcock is quoted in 1964 as saying that the Zadar sunset is the best in the world. A big claim and one that Zadar has gladly put in all of its brochures ever since. It’s certainly gorgeous and right up there with the best we’ve seen but I think what we’ll remember most are a few additions in the last number of years that Hitchcock wouldn’t have been privy to. The first is the working Sea Organ along the waterfront. What looks like steps leading into the sea along waterfront is actually a working organ, operated entirely by the water. It’s 70 meters and has 35 pipes of varying length and height that play 7 chords of 5 tones depending on the tides. Ingenious. The second addition is the Greetings of the Sun which lights up after dark to give some fantastic reflected sunset photos. Definitely a few reasons to make Zadar worth a visit.

In order to get to our next stop, Split, we had to get the bus. We were travelling the rest of our route by boat and one bus trip was enough! The highlight of this one was when the driver missed the turnoff for Split then proceeded to break suddenly and reverse his way back down the motorway so he could take the turn! The fact that he was on the phone for the whole journey didn’t exactly put us at ease either. He did get us there on time though so give credit where it’s due! Alive and on time- just about!

The main highlight of Split is a visit to the Palace. When we arrived at our accommodation, the first question we asked was about the opening hours of it as we were struggling to find them. We were greeted with a big smile and told that Split is the Palace! A simple walk to the old town and it becomes clear that the palace walls still stand as do large parts of it but there are no gates, no security guards thus no opening hours! The palace has been absorbed into the city with houses built in and around it. It’s appropriate to say that Split is a palace and the palace is Split. Feel free to use that on your tourism posters lads! It really is a lovely city, very different for the reasons above. It’s got huge character. A lovely place to visit.

Next stop was to Hvar, to give us an insight into the lives of the rich and the famous. This is where super yachts dock as they traverse the waters of the Adriatic Sea. The biggest one we saw had a rental price of €900,000 per week-that apparently doesn’t even include food, drink or staff! I suppose if you can afford to pay €900,000 a week what’s another couple of grand to you! Different world- maybe for next years holiday Aoife!

For those of us living on a tighter budget, we were amused to see that if you give birth on the ferry to or from Hvar your child will get free travel on the ferry for life! How very nice of them- it does seem a bit harsh that the mother wouldn’t get free travel also given she did all the hard work but thems the rules I suppose!

Hvar is beautiful, an old town overlooked by a castle with a phenomenal location is it acts as the main point from which you are a short boat road to a whole host of idyllic islands. For the price of a bus ticket you can grab a taxi boat to an island and find your own piece of paradise. Every day was a new adventure.

As far as advice goes, the one we received a number of times was to buy or borrow sea urchin shoes. As with all advice received, we smiled politely and told those supplying the advice that’d we’d definitely look into that. The lesson to pay more than lip service to such advice was learned when my wife managed to stand on one of the famous urchins- lesson learned, we too advise you to buy shoes or else run the risk of having to pick spikes from sea urchins out of your foot for the remainder of the holiday! Sometimes advice is worth listening to.

On our island hopping tour, Korcula was our next stop. Another little piece of paradise as the old city walls surround the island and give fantastic views into the sea and vice versa when swimming.  Great food, and great sunsets here too but it was wine tour we went on that will never be forgotten- by one of us anyway! We set out by bike on a wine tour of the island, a nice way to see both the island and taste what it has to offer. The wine was good, the explanations were……. Less so. My favourite being as the local sommelier poured us our taster glasses, we waited expectantly for the detailed explanation as to what we should expect. Tanins? An oaky taste perhaps? Hints of citrus fruit? Instead he smiled at us and said “WHITE…… WINE”. It was all we needed! Direct and to the point, my kind of man.

The really memorable part happened on the way back as one of us dropped her hat and the other of us being an absolute gentleman cycled back to get it. In the act of handing it over, one of us knocked the other off her bike thus resulting in a bit of red leg on one of the participants. Although this is a clear and accurate account of what happened, it’s only fair to get the views of the only other witness to the event- “after a few too many tastes of wine, you careered right into me and flung me off the bike resulting in significant bruising on the legs, arms as well as untold psychological damage”. Hmmm, the weather was pretty hot that day but clearly the steam coming out of someone’s ears put up the temperature another few degrees- Best to move on methinks! No long term damage done, eh. We’ll know next time that a bus escort is always the safest way to do these excursions!

Our final stop in Croatia was to Dubrovnik- the main tourist spot in the country and with good reason. A spectacular city with all of the city walls still standing and offering wonderful viewing points of the city from all angles. A lot of filming for Game of Thrones is done in the city so to those who’ve seen the show it’s like walking into a scene from it. To those who haven’t, just enjoy the Medieval feel of the city and be amazed at how well preserved it is. And the same could be said for a lot of the parts of the country we saw. For a country that was in a gruesome war of independence as recently as the mid nineties, there is very little sign of it in where we saw.

While we were in the Balkans, we took the opportunity to take a day trip to Bosnia Herzegovina- tick another country off the list and hopefully see something different. We weren’t disappointed as we drove in and out of the EU to visit Mostar. The border control was the first thing that amazed us and not for a good reason. As we drove out of the EU on a bus (return trip was the same), nobody had to get off the bus to show papers and nobody came on to inspect the bus. A guide left on both occasions with a pile of passports and came back in and off we went. Bizarre how lax the whole thing was. Especially considering there was a line of cars a mile long waiting to get through, I’m sure these companies have a long standing working relationship with the border control but if we had wanted to smuggle anything on board it would have been extremely easy. Considering what we’ve seen on many other occasions crossing borders, it seemed mad.

Bosnia was much more war-torn then Croatia and significantly poorer (42% unemployment there versus 10% in Europe and 17% in Croatia). Mostar was very much a city divided with numerous ethnicities and religions on show. Easy to see how the war could have been particularly divisive there. The main site to see in Mostar is the Stari Most bridge. A really unique looking bridge that was over 400 years old when destroyed during the war. It was rebuilt in the early 2000’s. In order to maintain its UNESCO world heritage site, it had to be rebuilt as close to the original structure as possible- this included any flaws or mistakes the first time- they all stayed. One side of the bridge is quite western and once you get cross over, you find yourself in the east. An amazingly quick change and clearly a dividing point between the two cultures. There are a bunch of locals who make their living by collecting tips form tourists to dive off it. Whatever pays the bills but at 24m high and how shallow the water looked at times, I wouldn’t fancy it personally!

After our day trip, we had another few days to enjoy the wonders of Dubrovnik. Definitely a city to put on your to do list, so many nooks and crannies to discover. Great places to eat and drink, some wonderful sunsets. All very romantic! A wonderful place to end our holidays in a fabulous country. Two thumbs up from us.

Click here to see a selection of photos from our Croatian trip

Route

Fly Dublin to Zadar, bus Zadar to Split, boat from Split to Hvar, boat from Hvar to Korcula, boat from Korcula to Dubrovnik, day trip to Mostar, Bosnia- Herzegovina, fly Dubrovnik to Dublin 

22- Ireland: Wild Things

We had heard so much about the Wild Atlantic Way over the last few years that we had it earmarked as a must do once we got settled back home. Sad state of affairs when we’ve seen so much of other countries but so little of Ireland. The Wild Atlantic Way is a wonderful feat of marketing- nobody built anything, nobody invent anything, someone just put a name on something that’s predominantly been there for hundreds and thousands of years. If you name it right, they will come! Everyone, including us, loves a catchy name. We were sold!

Taking advantage of the June bank holiday weekend, we set off on Saturday morning with Bundoran in County Donegal being our first destination. To get there, we went via Meath, Cavan and Fermanagh so managed to tick off Northern Ireland as a destination too! Thankfully no border crossings involved with the only way you’d know you’ve changed countries being the change in phone network and the change of road signs from kilometers to miles. We could handle those easily enough and made it to Bundoran for a picnic lunch.

We had lots of ground to cover so after walking around the beaches of Bundoran, we headed for Mullaghmore for more beautiful scenery. Gorgeous place and it certainly helped that the sun was blazing down on top of us. Made a huge difference and having a bright blue sky in our photos was a nice little bonus too. We got lucky so best to enjoy and take full advantage. Our next stop was to follow the signs South on the Wild Atlantic Way and head into WB Yeats County- Sligo.

I hadn’t been aware that this was what Sligo was known for. It didn’t take long to figure out though as his grave is on the way into the town and then once you get into the town there are murals, statues and quotes from him everywhere.

“There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met.”

A friend (who we had met!) recommended to us to get the early bird in Eala bhan restaurant in Sligo. A super recommendation and really well priced. Sligo itself is a very lively town. Lots of bars and restaurants and its fair share of hen and stag parties on the streets, some more glamorous than others. The next morning, we headed to Strandill for breakfast before strapping on the walking shoes to trek up Knocknarea. A fine stroll to work off a fine breakfast. Super views from the top. One of us even broke out our finest yoga moves to celebrate her arrival at the peak- very impressive!

From there, we hopped back into the car and set off for Enniscrone- a place I hadn’t heard of until a few months ago. The town came to national attention via the Anton Savage radio show on Today FM as the story of the local undertaker who was planning on building a glamping site in the town caught national attention. The reason? As part of this site, he had a Boeing 767 plane from the Shannon Airport Authority- only issue was how he would get a Boeing 767 to Enniscrone from Shannon!? A 200km trip but many obstacles in between.

He walked the country through his various options one by one: he couldn’t fly it as there was nowhere to land in Enniscrone and the plane itself was out of service. He couldn’t put it on a trailer and go by road as in order to use the roads he would need to take down and put back up 20,000 electricity poles on route, otherwise he would knock them all down! He consdired using a blimp at one stage but the timing didn’t work out. So he settled on using a barge and going by the sea. So a 200 ton airplane, a very “big yoke” in the owners words, was landed on Enniscrone beach and now sits on a glamping site. This was something we had to see!

Once again, we were not disappointed, it’s absolutely outrageous! This guy must have the most tolerant neighbours in history. The plane is huge, definitely a big yoke and most definitely blocking the neighbours previously pristine view of the water! Amazing how much publicity he’s gotten. Big crowds there to see it and virtual gridlock in the town. We got there and they were having a birthday party for the plane- a cake and all. It was like a visit to the twilight zone. It’s likely the first and last time we’ll hear a crowd of people singing Happy Birthday to a plane!

After that, our next move could only be towards a bit of normality. Thankfully it also upped the standard of the musical contributions to the weekend as that night in Westport we visited Matt Molloys pub for a good old trad session. Super fun and an electric atmosphere.

The next morning we set off to do the Greenway cycle. There’s a company that will drive you to Achill Island and then you can rent bikes to cycle back. Some spectacular scenery along the way and well worth doing. We had timed it correctly for the time of year so we got a see piles of turf along the way. Backbreaking work I’d say but made for lovely photos for me!

The whole trail is such a simple idea but really effective and a lovely day out. They even have parts of the cycle track all decked out in the Mayo colours. How very parochial! Half way along the route we stopped for lunch. We hadn’t brought any cash with us and when we asked do they take credit card we weren’t surprised to be told no. However rather than leave us go hungry, they asked us which way we were cycling? When we told them they said not a bother and they’d give us a little envelope to put our money in and we could drop it off in Foleys garage in the next town. Easy as! The Irish Cead Mile Failte is alive and well. Scones and black puddings never tasted so sweet!

We had a lovely few days and it was great to see parts of the country that we’d never been to before. Galway, Dublin, Kerry and Cork are all regular stopping points for us so great to expand our horizons. Defintily worth doing and got us excited to investigate other parts of the country. When the shines like it did for us, there’s nowhere we’d rather be.

Click here to see a selection of photos from our Wild Atlantic Way trip

Route

Dublin to Bundoran, Bundoran to Sligo, Sligo to Westport, Westport to Dublin