Tag: Ireland

Budget Ireland Trip 2016 – Day 4: Dublin – The End

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Monday 12th September – all day!
It was our final day in Ireland. After a very early check out (thanks to the B&B place we stayed in who accepted us leaving the money in the room and leaving the key on the door) it was time for a long walk back to the bus station. What’s with all these long walks… Backpacking is just hard work… LOL! 
Bye bye Galway. Miss Money liked this area… she’ll probably visit again…

Bus ticket from Galway to Dublin is €15 on a 3 to 4 hour journey… Huh… How comes this trip is much cheaper than the trip to the Cliffs?! Didn’t make sense to the two of us.
Halfway into the journey, we had loads of people getting on the bus as it was stopping at Dublin Airport. At that point I fell asleep for 15 minutes… Uh. I never fall asleep on the bus! That’s the first time! But geez, my power nap energised me for the rest of the day. ^_^

We finally arrived in Dublin around 11.30ish. It was nice to see Dublin again… But so many road works!

So I told Miss Money we should go and visit Trinity College, which is the most famous part of Dublin. I swear Miss Money only likes places that are rated the best. I asked her why one time… why does it have to be the best? ¬_¬” Anyway, she didn’t look up any parts in Dublin, so I was basically her tour guide for the parts I remembered.

Is this one of Invader’s works? Yeah, I think it is! LOL! Ireland is AWESOME for free WiFi!! I cannot doubt that one bit… I wish lots of countries were like Ireland. ^_^

Miss Money were practically starving… She wanted breakfast, so we had to look around… We found this place called Urban Picnic which was in the middle of an arcade. Asked if they were still doing breakfast, and the kind man said he could do some breakfast for us…

The service was actually quite slow… The guys who ordered soup after us ate and went… Very, very slow…

This was our breakfast, but they added the mushrooms onto Miss Money’s plate which should have been on mine… The bread was hard… everything else was ok… Not the greatest breakfast we’ve had…

My geeky rating: 3.5/5

Address: George’s Street Arcade, S Great George’s St, Dublin, Ireland
Phone: +353 87 977 5822

We went for a walk now… we had hours until our flight back to London. We kept seeing places who were doing all day breakfasts for cheap… Miss Money wasn’t happy. Hahahahaha. Oh well. That’s life.

Pointed out the famous Temple Bar to her… she wasn’t that interested in this place. ¬_¬”

Then we decided to head to the Guinness Factory…

Saw this and thought of Miss Pinky… LOL

I had forgotten how long the walk to the Guinness factory was… Long! When we got there, all we did was take pictures on the outside… I think Miss Money will come again to Dublin to have a go at serving herself a pint. 😀

After going around the factory we kind of ended up walking around the river area… even explained to Miss Money where I had stayed last time I was there.

After walking around, drinking an expensive small iced coffee, posted some more postcards and reminiscing about what Miss Pinky and I did 4 years ago we headed towards the tourist shops. Bought a few things, then took a local bus (again the number 16, which Miss Pinky and I took) to the airport. I actually couldn’t understand the bus driver for the price of fare, so I just added coins into the coin thingy… ¬_¬””
Finally at the airport with my muddy trainers and ugly look (we were tired!!)… I was kind of not in a happy mood with this heavy backpack… Let me rest Miss Money!!! She wanted to buy more souvenirs. :p
Before we headed to our gate, we ate some Burger King food. I actually wasn’t very hungry for some reason, so I had some chicken strips. Was fed up of eating chips too.

Ok, so this wasn’t our flight home, but I thought I would take a picture as there were no people surrounding the windows, and it looked scenic.

It was time to board, yaaay! We had these rude Americans who pushed in the queue, and I had this feeling they wanted to push in front of us when they went into the wrong queue… Pee off! I kind of blocked their path after going through the passport check. Such rude people.
So this is our actual flight… there’s something about cheap flights when we actually have to go outside and climb up stairs to board the plane. Not fun really.

Finally arrived in London around 9.30pm. The flight was on time! And yes Ryanair still have those silly on time messages they broadcast on the flight… Ugh. We were the last people to get off the plane. Hahahah. There was a disabled lady sitting next to us, but it was ok as we didn’t mind taking our time.
There was no passport control at the other end… so we were very early for our coach back into Waterloo. We asked at the National Express desk if we could board an early coach, they said yes, the driver said yes, and we were back home very early! Wooo!!
Felt this trip was all about luck. Trial and error luck. ^_^
Total spent on Day 4: €70.90
Total spent on the trip (excluding flights and B&B’s/Hostels/housing): €255.90 – average of €62 (~£55-60)
Well, our spending was much better than what Miss Pinky and I had done four years ago. I think we could have spent even less if we had tried harder. ^_^

End of Day 4.


My next trip will be soon… Guess where I’m going!

Ocean Crest B&B – Galway (from Day 3)

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Miss Money booked this B&B on Booking.com. It was the only cheap place and somewhere near the ocean when she booked it. (We couldn’t see the ocean from where we stayed by the way).
Unfortunately the weather was not on our side that weekend. 😦 I was quite miserable when I got there.
The one member of staff who showed us to our room was nice and told us where to go to find food. It’s quite a big B&B… there are other B&B’s along the same road by the way.
The guy said we could pay at that point or the next morning… We should have paid that evening as we had to leave early the next morning!!!

There is a big living room area which we didn’t explore.
The bathroom attached is a bit small, the ceiling light didn’t actually work so we had to use the mirror light to see – we weren’t told that. The shower was powerful though. Felt like I was almost back to normal after going up the Cliffs earlier. Heheheh.
Got a really good night’s sleep for the first time during that weekend. Didn’t want to wake up.
During the morning, I had to call one of the persons on reception that evening as we hadn’t paid and wanted an early check out… The woman was not happy with us as check out is at 8am or 8.30… It was kind of our fault for not paying earlier and forgetting to let them know. ¬_¬”” Anyway, we left our money (mostly change) for them in a torn up envelope which I had put into the bin earlier, and then we left the key in the door for them to collect afterwards…
We were quite grateful for this action… I called them later to see if they had collected the money etc. They did. ^_^
Thanks Ocean Crest for being flexible with us… we had to get the very early bus to Dublin that morning. 
Cost of room: €59

Address: 6 Ocean Wave, Dr. Colohan Road, Salthill, Ireland

Phone: +353 91 589 028

Budget Ireland Trip 2016 – Day 3: Galway – Night Life >_<" (Part 2)

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Sunday 11th September – afternoon to evening
In the bus we go, we had to actually run for it as people were pushing in to try and get a seat. These older people weren’t even waiting for the other people to come off… Come on people just wait before getting on… We both paid another €19.70 for another 2 hour drive towards Galway.
We passed this pub at one of the stops and pointed it out to Miss Money to go and find herself a man as there was a “match making festival” going on. Heheheh. She would have said the same to me I gues. HAHAHA!!

Two hours later we got to Galway train/bus station. Took a loo break and looked around the station to remind ourselves on how to get back there the next day to get to our next destination.

Then it was another long walk to our B&B… Ugh… Walking in the wind and rain is just not fun anymore… :p

We got to our B&B after a few wrong turns. Introduced to our room. And we asked where to find food etc…
So we rested for a few minutes, then went out to find any food… I was hungry, we both were! Miss Money wanted fish so we had a look around to find anything with some fresh fish… In the end we went to this fish and chip shop. There were hardly any customers at first, then there were loads in the end. It was a long wait… Longer than the 10 minutes that was suggested. Why were people hungry at the same time as us… :p

We took our food back to the B&B which stunk the room a bit, but I sprayed the room afterwards. The girl who added salt and vinegar to my food added too much salt and not enough vinegar… It just didn’t taste nice in the end. Ugh. I will not be going back to this place again. 😦 Miss Money just had fish but one of the girls added a few chips because they took longer than 10 minutes. Not sure if she ate the chips in the end.

To digest and to have a look around Galway, as we wouldn’t have time in the morning, we went out for a short walk. Think it was about an hour long. 
The moon was out. It was windy. And we were looking out at the Pacific Ocean from the Irish end. Heheh. Gosh so windy that I had to take a video for my friends to see… Galway is a nice place, but I don’t think I could take on the fierce weather from the East Coast. People were running in this weather. :-O… REALLY!!

After our short walk, we went back to the B&B, showered and watched a horrifying movie which looked like a Breaking Bad adaptation. Could’ve been a movie before the drama though… not sure!


Total spent on Day 3: €62.69

End of Day 3.

Budget Ireland Trip 2016 – Day 3: Galway – Cliffs of Moher (Part 1)

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Sunday 11th September – morning to afternoon
And we’re up early again! Ugh… It was cold in the house and quite hard to sleep… 😦
We made breakfast with the meats and bread that was available to us. That’s when we realised that we were actually alone… we left around 8 something in the morning to get another bus heading towards the Cliffs of Moher. Why on Earth were we heading there? Well, it’s where one of the scenes in Harry Potter was filmed. I didn’t actually know that until Miss Money told me. ^_^ 
Took some pictures of our morning in Limerick. Looks like the rain passed us during the evening… 

Just to let you know if you shop in this Supervalu you might not get any change back… Miss Money and I didn’t get our few cents back… why?! Didn’t ask, but thought it’s only a few cents… but I could have been saving!! 

So goodbye Limerick. That was a pretty long walk from the Airbnb home – about a 45 minute walk. 
We bought our bus tickets, no trains go there so you need to get the bus R51 then change at Ennis bus station for next bus 350. It costs €19.75 for a single fare… so expensive, but it is around a 2 hour trip.

And the journey begins…

We got there around 11am and it was soooo windy! There is a small fare that you need to pay at the desk (but I don’t think this is told to many visitors and they get away with it). It costs €4 or more depending on how you got there… So weird!

It was time to walk up the cliffs…
It was mega windy that day, so windy that I had to wrap my head with a beige scarf that made me look bald from a distance. ^_^ LOL!

Was actually quite scared of going towards the edge because it was so windy… but Miss Money told me it’s ok… ¬_¬”””

Scaaaaared!!!!!

By midday it was sunny and we had some lunch… sandwiches made at the house. Budget holiday it is!

More walking but we didn’t go and see the puffins. Oh well, maybe another time in the future.

So short break. And we went the other way of the cliff.

See how strong the wind was… Very strong…

We headed back to the centre as it was too windy and we wanted to get the next bus heading towards Galway.

So the next bus was around 3 something and had to pay another €19.70 for a single fare… Another 2 hour trip. Yawn.

We enjoyed our time there… but next time if we ever went there is to not bring our bags…
Backpacking is hard work. :p

Day 3 to be continued.

Airbnb Experience in Limerick, Ireland (from Day 2)

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This is the first time that I have experienced using Airbnb. Miss Money has not used it either. 
Using the website was easy trying to find the right type of accommodation we wanted, but don’t forget some of these places are actually some people’s homes which you would be staying in.
Setting up an account was easy. But the actual part of having to verify yourself using one of your social networks plus an official photographic document was kind of tedious. Is it neccessary? Well, probably yes, since it gives a sense of security for the homeowner.

Finding a place within your price range is really hard, and the location has to be right as well… Unfortunately we couldn’t find anything near our price range and near the city centre. So we went for a place outside of the area… a place where we had to walk to. It was far!

The best part of the Airbnb experience is the instant booking. The bad part are the rules.
Miss Money and I stuck to the rules in the place we stayed in. Checked in at 5pm. (Miss Money didn’t even say “yes” I should message the landlady to find out if we could check in early… ¬_¬” Nevermind, that question will be used next time I use this service…) Showered before 9.30pm… Made our breakfast with the food that we were allowed to have. Fortunately we were quite lucky as the landlady wasn’t there, nor were there any other guests (we only found out in the morning because it was so quiet)… but she didn’t tell me that, she just told me where the key was. LOL!
The landlady had left lots of sticky notes around the house which was good because I think Miss Money and I would have been confused. She gave us towels too! The only problems were the heating and the bed light – we weren’t told how to switch these on.
Using Airbnb means you should stick to the person’s rules because they actually rate you on how you left the house. ¬_¬” I didn’t know that till the end of our experience. 
Anyway, I had a good but nerve racking experience. Caught a lot Pokémon too ^_^… 

Budget Ireland Trip 2016 – Day 2: Limerick – We need rest!!! (Part 3)

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Saturday 10th September – afternoon to evening

Straight after the castle tour we went out looking for the house that we rented via airbnb. Why airbnb? It was just convenient and all the places from booking.com were either too expensive or there were absolutely no places to stay. Next post will be on the airbnb experience.

Miss Money and I walked using our Google Maps to find the place we were staying… Blimey it was long walk.

We found ourselves a long distance away from the city centre and from the castle… We found the residence we were staying in and then we tried looking for food or a local pub near the area. There were none! People around the neighbourhood were helpful but said the walking distance between the neighbourhood back to the castle was 10 minutes! Irish time seems to be much faster than the English time or they just walk really fast… ¬_¬” They just walk fast. 10 minutes to them is like 20-30 minutes for us wearing heavy backpacks. :p One of the neighbours suggested a pub… so we walked back into town without dropping our stuff as check in time was 5pm. 😦

The pub that people around the area suggested was this place called The Locke Bar where they serve good food and have live music. Miss Money and I ordered the Irish stew… was starving!! Wish it had a bit of bread on the side.

I had ordered a dessert at the same time as the stew but it took so long to come out… I was still hungry at the time… Wish the slice could have been a bit bigger. Didn’t like the plastic servings of the cream and custard. 😦 Anyway I ate it all.

It was time to head back to our place of stay… another half an hour walk… >_<" Took a pic of the dancers and musicians of the night. ^_^

Total spent at the pub for the two of us was €40. Expensive!

My geeky rating: 4/5

Address: 3 George’s Quay, Limerick, Ireland

Total money spent on Day 2: €62.50

End of Day 2.

Budget Ireland Trip 2016 – Day 2: Limerick – King John’s Castle (Part 2)

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Saturday 10th September – afternoon

… In the middle of watching The Walking Dead… and crocheting for myself… I will get these blogposts out ASAP!

Already tired Miss Money! She’s been making us walk for a very long time that morning, and we had already decided that we would go into King John’s Castle.

It’s €13 to get in which is around £11. That isn’t bad for an 800 year old castle! From the outside it looks kind of big, but it isn’t really that big… Just very spacious inside.

There’s a whole museum section where it talks about why this castle was made and named after King John of England at the time… He never even went to visit it. Blimey! Probably too busy plotting his next fight with some other kingdom.

After the museum part, we went out to explore the grounds.

One of the workers who was enacting himself as a 13th Century person. Hehehe. He made me laugh.

So what we go and do?

Walk up the towers of course. They looked like very small towers compared to the one we went to in Blarney, but Blarney Castle was made 200 years after. ¬_¬”

From the top we took a lot of pictures…

We would say the whole tour would have taken around an hour… Unfortunately it still meant we had loads of time left before we checked into our place of stay that night… Still prefer Blarney Castle. :p

It was time to go and check out how far away we were from it…

Address: Nicholas St, Limerick, Ireland

to be continued…

Budget Ireland Trip 2016 – Day 2: Limerick – Walk, Walk, Walk! ε=ε=┌(；　・＿・)┘ (Part 1)

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Saturday 10th September – morning
The weekend off early. Like 8 o’clock early. Humph. Did we have to wake so early?!
Well, 1. we needed breakfast and 2. we needed to get bus tickets to Limerick. We walked to the city centre of Cork and had our double sausage and egg McMuffins in the streets. We stumbled across the post office, but they didn’t sell postcards. I went into the local card shop and bought three. Sent one to Mrs Travels and family, Mrs Hen and also my friend in Canada. I accidentally wrote on the wrong cards to Mrs Hen and the friend in Canada… but I decided I would send another one to the Canadian(s). Postage stamp cost €1.10 per postcard. It’s worth doing this whilst on holiday in case you can’t buy presents. >_<""

Our bus to Limerick was around 10.30 am, so it felt like we had lots of time to get our tickets and sit around before boarding our bus. The bus station has free WiFi you know. Practically the whole of Ireland offers free WiFi….!! Wow. This country is probably the best to offer such amenities to everyone. ^_^
We arrived in Limerick around midday. My, my… Limerick feels like a pretty town. A lot less dirty than Cork.
Miss Money and I walked, walked and walked trying to find the town centre. It’s not actually that far, but the city centre feels massive.

We stopped for some coffee… I spilt some of mine as I was trying to bend down to the table. Had so much stuff on me. Bags. 
Miss Money was complaining to Mr Games and Mr Sensible that I was playing Pokémon Go wherever we stopped. :p I didn’t play on the whole trip. Was checking if Pikachu was in the area. Heheheh.

And off again we as we headed towards King John’s Castle. We spotted some Chinese people, street art and a singer, who could be famous one day…

King John’s Castle was in the distance. Miss Money made us cross the bridge and walk the other side… Loooong walk…. And it was so warm I wanted to take a lot of clothes off.

Here’s an end to part 1 of day 2. Next post will be on the castle – basically more walking before we checked into to our place of stay.

Budget Ireland Trip 2016 – Day 1: Cork – Food, Street Art and Dirty Words (Part 3)

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Friday 9th September – the rest of the afternoon
…Continuation from the last post…
It felt like a long journey coming back. Miss Money and I stood at the bus stop for around half an hour. The bus, according to the timetable, was late by 10-15 minutes. ¬_¬” We were practically soaked from head to toe, rucksacks soaked, bags soaked… socks soaked. 😦 So sad.
We finally arrived back in town so we looked around the town centre, had to go into Penny’s (the Irish name for Primark) to buy a pair trousers and warm looking socks. Miss Money had to buy a few other things too… already spending money on things that we would need to carry for the rest of the journey. What a bother!

It was still raining as we walked towards the hostel that Miss Money booked on booking.com… it felt like a very long walk from the centre…

We finally found it along this street. Miss Money asked me earlier during the trip why all the houses are in different colours? To be honest I don’t know, but it really makes the city vibrant even when it rains.

After checking in the hostel (will post more about it in the next post), we went out and searched for food. We were so hungry and cold from our long, long morning.

Cork has a lot of street art, I was just taking pictures as we were walking. ^_^

We asked as the reception of the hostel where there was a good place to eat, so we went along MacCurtain Street where there were lots of pubs and eateries. Miss Money wanted to try out an Irish stew, but it seemed nowhere else made it. 
In the end we went into Gallaghers Gastro Pub which was the place where the receptionist had suggested to go to. ^_^

We were waiting for the specials of the day menu and ordered our drinks in between… It’s been a long time since I’ve had a creamy, creamy Guinness. I miss you fresh looking stout drink. ^_^

Miss Money went for an Irish coffee… all the whiskey was at the bottom. Hahahah. She had a chesty cough, so she needed it.

We both ordered the beef stew pie. It looks small, but very filling. The only problem I had with was the edges of the pie crust. I really wanted to eat it (see picture below), thought it was a waste not being able to scrape it off!

Both our meals cost €38.50 in total. Mine cost €18.65… An ok place to relax for a little while. Nothing too special about the food…

My geeky rating: 4.5/5

Address: 32 MacCurtain Street, Cork, Co. Cork, Ireland
Website: http://gallagherspubcork.com/

It was time for one more walk around Cork’s city centre… And we were heading towards the train station to see how much a train ticket would cost to get to our next destination.

Found the train station!!

And more street art…

Can you see the little birdie who wanted to cross the road with us? So cute!!

And finally the sun shone like it never rained all day… ¬_¬”

We headed back towards the hostel… tired, still felt wet and just wanted to shower and sleep…
Did “Dirty Words” in the title catch your attention? Well, forgot to mention in part 2 that Miss Money was trying to figure out how to pronounce Cork, Coke and Cock. ¬_¬” Cock being the dirty word. LOL!! Because Miss Money has a Chinese-English accent, her pronunciation of Cork and Coke sounds like Cock. Hahahahah. I tried for at least 10 minutes that evening to sound out the words the English way. :p
Anyway… we were both tired, and fell asleep fairly quickly, but was awakened by Miss Money going to the loo… Bother!
Total amount of money spent on Day 1: €59.81 (included a cup of tea and some fruits) ~£52. Not bad compared to what I would if I was with Miss Pinky. >_<


End of Day 1.

Budget Ireland Trip 2016 – Day 1: Cork – Blarney Castle (Part 2)

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Friday 9th September – Mid morning to Mid afternoon

…Continuation from the last post…

After asking at the information desks, we got one of the airport buses (number 226) which took us into the town centre. It cost us €5.60, which is really expensive and it was a real short journey – but there was free wifi on the bus, which is probably why it was expensive!!

From the town centre’s bus station we took another bus (number 215 at stand 14) that headed to Blarney Castle. For a return ticket it was €7.50. This wasn’t a bad journey and it was worth the €3.75 each way. We got to see a lot of greenery whilst we were out there.

We reached our destination around 11am… and of course we went in the wrong direction. We had to go into the tourist office to find our way up to the castle… From the bus stop, go straight up then turn left and pass the chocolate shop, and then there’s a side road on the right… keep walking till you see the visitor’s centre.

Tickets into the gardens and the castle cost €13 – a strange price for a ticket Miss Money said. Well €13 is around £11… (Shrug). Miss Money asked whether it was worth exploring the gardens in the rain, the ticket seller said it was… what??!! ¬_¬””

And so it begins…

It was raining quite heavily, but you can’t really notice it in these pictures.

Two rivers cross here… so weird to see!

I was actually really stunned to see trees being yarn-bombed… trying to explain to Miss Money that it must’ve been a very famous street art yarn bombing person. LOL!

Here’s Blarney Castle in the distance. It is north-west to Cork City Centre.

From below it just looked so amazing!

Miss Money wanted to go and kiss the stone, which is on top of the castle, so we patiently waited in line for people to go up and up and up…

LOL! The yarn bombers even crocheted some granny squares for this window. AMAZING!

Haven’t reached the top yet. One elderly woman thought she was a bit on the big side and decided to turn away… lucky woman!

We finally reached the top after so many stairs and carrying all our luggage with us… so tiring!

Here’s Miss Money kissing the stone. Hahahah… It was so windy that I was so scared of doing it myself.

And back down we go…

That was a very exhausting trip going up the castle. It almost felt like I was going up a mountain. :p

Time for a tea break!!!

Miss Money wanted to see some waterfall so we went to The Rock Close gardens.

Found the waterfall, so we went onwards…

And another waterfall!

Ok, so why did I take a picture of the sign “Lavatories”? Well, an Australian or New Zealander (I can never tell the difference) said it was the first time in 50 years since he saw a sign for the loo being called lavatories… Really? In England Miss Money and I see them everywhere! Really?

It was time to go… we were there for a good 3 hours but we didn’t explore all the gardens unfortunately… it was still wet and windy when we left…

Website: http://www.blarneycastle.ie/

Day 1 – still to be continued!