On April 30, I boarded a train from Manchester to Holyhead, Wales on my way to Dublin, Ireland.
Holyhead is a sleepy coastal town approximately two hours by train from Manchester. It is the largest town on the Isle of Anglesey with a population of 13,000 and one small main street. Despite the small size of the town and the lack of activities, Holyhead is a major port for passenger and cargo connections to Ireland, chattering 8,000 ferry movements each year.
On the opposite side of the isle from Holyhead sits the South Stack Lighthouse that was built in 1809. I had initially planned to complete a five mile coastal walk from Holyhead to the lighthouse and back, but I ran out of time and was unable to make the full journey.
Instead, I walked a small portion of the trail that extends just beyond the town into the sea-side cliffs. Just beyond the edge of town, I discovered what looked like an old Welsh castle that was partially gutted and boarded up. I later learned that it is called “Soldier’s Point House” and was built in 1848 by government contractor Charles Rigby to use as his personal residence. An addition was made in the early 20th century that served as a pillbox in the second World War and it was later converted into a hotel. The house fell into disrepair and was badly damaged in a fire in 2011. Although most of the building is boarded up now, the figure still looms over Holyhead port.
After exploring the perimeter of the house, I walked down along the breakwater. The port was filled with commercial, passenger and fishing boats. As the sun set, locals fished in the harbor and campers cooked dinner along the trail. At the breakwater, I watched the sun set over the Welsh cliffs before making my way back to my accommodation for the night.
On Sunday, I woke up early for the 9 a.m. ferry from Holyhead to Dublin, Ireland –a three hour journey. Many people have asked why I did not fly from Manchester to Dublin for less money and likely less aggravation, but I wanted to try something new. I did not want to fly, and I had never taken a ferry as a main method of transportation. And I wanted to see Wales!
The port in Holyhead is accessible as a foot passenger, but check-in closed 40 minutes prior to departure which meant waking up early in order to be on-time. Once on board, I found a seat on the outside deck so I could watch our departure from the harbor. I was lucky and the sun was shining, so I stayed outside for most of the journey and read a book I picked up in London. Towards the end of the journey, I went inside for a quick nap and a coffee before reaching Dublin.
We arrived at noon, and I took a bus from the port to the city center. I left my bags in my room before beginning my adventure in Dublin.
I began at Dublin Castle with the intention of looking around and moving onto my next stop, but I decided last-minute to stay for a one hour guided tour. The castle was built in 1204 under the supervision of King John of England after the Norman Invasion of Ireland in 1169. It remained under English rule until Irish independence in 1922 and was home to the Viceroy of Ireland in addition to serving as a ceremonial and administrative center for the state.
When it was built, the castle had four corner towers surrounding a central courtyard. Of the original towers, only one still stands. The guide took us to see the underground medieval remains of the Powder Tower, where gunpowder was stored. We were also to see parts of the castle’s moat in this section.
The guide also showed us the Chapel Royal that was built in 1814 as the official Church of Ireland chapel. The inside of the chapel contains references to the British monarchy, as it was built for the Viceroy.
The tour concluded in the State Apartments, which previously served as the Viceroy’s personal accommodation until the end of British rule in Ireland. All nine presidents of Ireland were inaugurated in St. Patrick’s Hall inside the apartments.
After the tour concluded, I walked to Phoenix Park to enjoy the weather before the sun went down. It got cold, so I walked back to the Temple Bar neighborhood and found a pub for dinner. Here, I tried Guinness for the first time and loved it!
I had planned to go back to my room and have an early night after I finished my dinner, but my night took a turn. While I was eating, I started talking with a man sitting at the table next to me. He was alone, dressed in sports gear. He is from Las Vegas, but is serving on active duty in Germany and decided to visit Dublin on his own. He asked about my beer and invited me out to see some of the other pubs in the area since we were both traveling alone.
All the pubs in Temple Bar provide live music seven days a week, including the one we were in for dinner. The most famous of these pubs is of course the Temple Bar Pub –the namesake of the neighborhood. I had walked by Temple Bar Pub earlier in the day, but it was completely packed by dinner time.
After dinner, I went with the stranger from Las Vegas first to Temple Bar Pub for another pint of beer, after the two I had at dinner. We found a place to stand inside the bar and talked over the live music.
Most of the musicians that play in the pubs in Temple Bar sing with only their guitar and sing a variety of popular rock and pop songs –often American. The most common songs I heard were “Wonderwall” By Oasis, “Mr. Brightside” by The Killers and everything ever written by The Beatles or Bon Jovi.
We left Temple Bar Pub for another pub down the street, where another musician and his guitar sang the same variety of songs. We stayed there for much longer than anticipated (they played “Closing Time” to get us to leave) and the place was packed with people, none of whom were Irish. It was the most fun I’ve had on a solo trip in a long time. A group of girls convinced the musician to sing a Taylor Swift song, and I was able to make him sing “As It Was” by Harry Styles.
When the pub closed at 1 a.m. the stranger and I went back to Temple Bar Pub that was still open. We were many beers in, but still in the mood to have a good time. With another pint in hand, we made our way to the front of the small stage where different musicians were playing more of the same music. You’d think hearing “Country Roads” three times in one night would get boring, but it's easy to have fun when everyone is in such high spirits. I convinced the two musicians on stage to sing “As It Was” which felt like another small personal victory and we stayed at the pub until they closed at 3 a.m. before heading back onto the streets.
I spoke with the stranger for a while longer until we parted ways for the night. When traveling solo, you often meet people who can be your best friend for the night, but who you will likely never cross paths with again. It felt like an honor to share this experience with someone I did not know and will not know again.
The next morning, I slept in. For breakfast, I found a cute brunch restaurant that served a delicious green salad bowl, which was a much needed break from greasy fried food. I do not know if British people really ever eat vegetables, so finding any sort of salad restaurant in Manchester had been impossible.
I spent a few hours in the National Gallery of Ireland, my favorite activity whenever I visit a new city. I really enjoy seeing art museums wherever I go since I am always pleasantly surprised. I have now seen Monet paintings in so many cities I could not possibly fathom how many paintings he has produced.
I had a small lunch at a Portuguese coffee and sandwich shop and booked tickets for the Book of Kells experience at Trinity College Dublin.
Trinity College Dublin was founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I as a male-only Protestant university. Many Irish students were unable to attend the university until 1793 when certain requirements were removed to allow Catholic students to graduate.
The library at Trinity College is Ireland’s largest research library and became a legal deposit library in 2003 which makes it legally entitled to a copy of every book published in the British Isles. The college receives over 100,000 new items every year and currently contains over five million books. It was also the filming location of the Hogwarts library in Harry Potter!
One of the books in the college’s collection is the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript and Celtic Gospel book written in 800 A.D in either Ireland or Scotland. The book contains the four Gospels of the New Testament written in Latin.
The exhibit began with a text-heavy walkthrough of the history and makeup of the book, including information about how and why it was created. However, only two pages of the book were actually on display in a very dark room and I would have liked to see more of it after reading so much about it!
After seeing the book, the exhibit continued upstairs into the famous library, which was built in 1712. The room was beautiful, but also a bit disappointing. Although the college has over five million books in its collection, they removed all but 16,000 of them to better preserve them in an off-campus facility. I completely understand why this would be necessary, but this left the majority of the shelves in the library empty and when the entire point of an exhibit is that it is a library… well, you get the point.
In their defense, the library does display Brian Boru’s harp –the oldest surviving harp in Ireland dated back to the 14th or 15th century. The harp became the country’s official emblem in 1954 but use of it as a national symbol dates back to 1541. Another part of the exhibit included a display of one of the few surviving copies of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, which was issued by the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army during the Easter Rising in 1916. The proclamation declared Ireland’s independence from England.
Overall, the exhibit was cool but I think my time would have been better spent doing a tour of the whole college, which includes a visit to the library and the Book of Kells. I would have loved to uncover more history, and the end of the “experience” was really just a walk-through of random rooms that contained digital art pieces with vague references to the main exhibit. I was definitely disappointed, but I am still glad I got to experience that part of the university.
This tour concluded my adventures for the day. I took some photos around the campus before heading back to my room early so I could be up early the next morning.
On Tuesday I woke up at 5 a.m. for a full-day bus tour to see the Cliffs of Moher, West Ireland and Galway, Ireland. The tour began at 6:45 a.m. and lasted over 12 hours.
Almost as soon as I got to the bus, I met a German girl who was also traveling alone. She is currently in her final semester of her masters program to become an English teacher in Germany. For her degree, she is required to spend three months living in an English-speaking country and chose Dublin for her stay. We quickly got to know each other, and I was grateful to have a friend for the day –who was coincidentally also a massive Taylor Swift fan.
As we left Dublin, our tour guide informed us of the rich history of the city center and Ireland’s fight for independence. She pointed out that the angels on the O’Connell monument on O’Connell street still have visible bullet holes from the 1916 Easter rising.
The drive was quiet as we left the city since it was still early in the morning and there was not a lot to see in the East Ireland countryside. We stopped at a gas station near Moneygall, Ireland where Barack Obama’s family has lineage dating back to the 19th century. The stop allowed us to buy breakfast and snacks for the day, but also had the chance to see the massive bronze statue of Barack and Michelle Obama waving to highway motorists. For some reason, Irish people are obsessed with Barack Obama.
After another few hours on the bus and an oral history lesson from the guide, we reached the Cliffs of Moher which were by far my favorite part of this trip. The cliffs are over 300 million years old and 700 feet above the sea. They are the most western point in Western Europe, and they filmed a scene from “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” at these cliffs!
We explored the cliffs for two hours. When we first arrived, a heavy fog made it difficult to see most of the coast line but we were very lucky that it cleared up very quickly and we had a great view. It was warm enough to take my coat off in April!
From the cliffs, we drove a short distance to Burren National Park to see rocks that formed 350 million years ago near the equator. Somehow they ended up in Ireland! We only stayed for a few minutes to take photos before bussing off to Galway.
The drive between Burren and Galway was very scenic and we drove almost completely along the West coast. We passed a lot of old architecture, including “famine huts” and a grave marking from the Stone Age. The countryside was very beautiful and definitely another highlight of my trip.
Once we reached Galway, we only had an hour and a half to look around and my friend and I were very hungry by this point in our trip. We made a quick stop at the pub where Ed Sheeran filmed the music video for “Galway Girl” and looked into the shop where the Claddagh ring originated. Claddagh rings are a staple of Ireland and are traditionally used to signify if the wearer is single, in a relationship, engaged or married depending on how it is worn.
After the shops, we enjoyed a quick dinner at a medieval pub in Galway’s Latin Quarter and walked back to the tour bus. Galway to Dublin is a straight three hour drive, where we could wind down. I spoke with my new friend, a woman from Marseilles, France and a girl from Canada. By the end of the ride, we were all exhausted from the long day.
In Dublin I said goodbye to my new friends and slept for 12 straight hours.
On Wednesday I enjoyed a small breakfast before stopping at the Christ Church Cathedral, one of Dublin’s oldest churches and the older of the two standing medieval churches in the city. The cathedral was founded in 1028 under the Viking king Sitric Silkenbeard and was rebuilt in stone in the late 12th century under the Norman potentate Strongbow. The church also contains the largest cathedral crypt in Britain and Ireland, constructed in 1172.
On my walk back from the cathedral, I noticed a man dressed in an Old English suit, coat and top-hat holding the lead to a pony outside the gates to Dublin Castle. He stood out so much in a modern setting that I ventured closer to take a photo under the assumption he was some sort of tour guide or street performer. I quickly realized that he was actually an extra on what appeared to be a film set.
Naturally curious, I lurked nearby to watch the crew work while I tried to figure out what they were filming. I stayed for just over an hour to watch four scenes be filmed and re-set, and later learned that they were filming for a new “Young Sherlock” television drama starring Hero Fiennes Tiffin and directed by Guy Ritchie, who also worked on the two Sherlock movies with Robert Downy Jr. In fact, I saw Mark Strong, who played Lord Henry Blackwood in the Sherlock films, on the set.
Once I’d had my fill of the film set, I booked tickets to the Guinness Storehouse in St. James Gate to appease my dad who begged me to go see the museum. I wasn’t too keen on the idea originally because I am, naturally, not a massive beer drinker at my age. However, it was a lot more fun than I anticipated.
St. James’s Gate Brewery was founded in 1759 in Dublin by Arthur Guinness who leased the building for 9,000 years and has remained the home of Guinness ever since. It became the largest brewery in Ireland in 1838 and the largest in the world in 1886. The original building leased by Arthur Guinness is now known as the Guinness Storehouse, which houses a seven-story museum on the history of the company and its beer.
The museum begins with a walkthrough of how beer is made and where their ingredients are harvested. To make Guinness, barley is roasted at 232 degrees Celsius, which contributes to its dark brown color. Nitrogen is used to add bubbles to the beer instead of the carbon, and each glass contains 300 million nitrogen bubbles which are responsible for Guinness’ smooth, creamy taste.
After learning the brewing process, I was shuffled into a tasting room where we had the chance to smell various ingredients in beer and was served a tasting glass. Employees offered a short oral history of Arthur Guinness and his dynasty before we were allowed to taste the Guinness sample.
The rest of the museum offered exhibits on the history of their mascots and various advertising the Guinness brand used throughout the years. As a Communication Studies and Public Relations student, this really piqued my interest. I was able to view various pieces of past merchandise and physical advertisem*nts, watch a short film about their TV advertisem*nts and browse a digital collection of their old campaigns.
The museum ended in their rooftop bar, where I enjoyed two pints of Guinness with a view over the skyline of Dublin.
Once the bar closed I walked back towards the Temple Bar neighborhood to have dinner in The Church, which was recommended to me by my French host-mom Nathalie. Just as it sounds, The Church is a very beautiful restaurant and bar inside a massive renovated church. Dinner here was delicious and I was able to watch a traditional Irish dance performance while I ate.
This was unfortunately my last night in Dublin, so I stopped at the Temple Bar Pub one last time on my walk back to my room for a few more minutes of live music. At night, the pub is packed full and it is almost impossible to move around inside, so I did not stay long.
The next morning, I ventured to the Dublin Ferry Port for my ride back to Wales. Although I did not have to be up as early as I did previously, this port is much less accessible by foot and I learned quickly the Dublin busses do not accept card or cash payments. Thankfully, a bus driver allowed me to ride for free and took me to the port terminal.
Once back in Wales, I took the train back to Manchester to refresh and relax for a few days before my next adventure.
In hindsight, Dublin was one of the best places I have traveled to on my own. Although expensive, the people in Ireland were extremely friendly and homely and I met so many amazing travelers who made my experience so much better. I would absolutely love to return to Ireland sometime soon and explore more of the West coast and all the cities I did not have the opportunity to see.
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