For those of you that don’t know, my full name is John Patrick Cusick.  This is a very Irish name; my dad’s side ancestors are Irish (another clue is my reddish beard).  Most of my life has been talking about my Irish roots and hearing about the culture of Ireland, the Potato Famine, and how green the country is.  I learned a lot on our trip to Ireland and even got to visit the last known location of my last Irish native ancestors.  Traveling to Ireland had been something I was looking forward to for a long time.  I’m here to say that it is even better than I expected.  The pictures floating around the internet don’t give it justice.  Plus culture can be hard to express in photos or even videos.  Regardless, let me share with you how we spent our time in Ireland, and I hope that you have the opportunity to visit when you get the chance.

Dublin & Irish Whiskey

Dublin is the biggest city in Ireland.  Can you imagine going out on the town in Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day?  It must just be insanity!  We weren’t there during that time, but we got to explore Dublin and the Irish traditions that come with it.  It is an ever-growing city with a lot going on at all times.

Whiskey Distillery Tours

I can’t go much further in this post without mentioning whiskey.  The first thing to know is the origin of the name “whiskey”.  A lot of the whiskey and Scotch markets were shocked by Prohibition in the United States (U.S.).  For many of the distilleries in the UK and Ireland, the U.S. is a very large market and a large part of their annual revenue: and it has been that way for a couple of hundred years.  Due to prohibition and the demand for alcohol in the U.S. through illegal means, many bootleggers and moonshiners claimed their products to be “Irish Whisky” (without the “e”).  This was undercutting the true Irish Whisky makers and that gave them an idea.  They decided to label their bottles with whisky spelled “whiskey” with the “e”.  This would help the consumer tell whether they were getting the real thing.  So, this is why you see whisky spelled without the “e” for whisky made in Scotland, for example.  That is actually the original spelling.

Jameson Distillery – Bow Street

Probably the most well-known Irish whiskey in the US is Jameson.  You can get it pretty much anywhere in the world.  We decided to get a tour of the distillery on Bow Street where it all began in Dublin.  It was a really cool property and was a lot of fun to learn about their distillation process.

The big thing that the Irish lay claim on is their triple-distillation.  For those of you read our post about Scotland, you may remember me mentioning that whisky in Scotland is actually double distilled.  They have a big copper pot that distills into a smaller copper pot which then goes to the next stage.  Irish distillers add another copper pot still to the equation.  They have three different sizes of pots that eventually distill the spirit to move on to the next stage.  The Irish say this makes the whiskey more smooth and pure.  The Scottish will debate you.  But, I’ll leave that to the drinker :).

The distillery on Bow Street in Dublin also has a nice bar.  You can sample pretty much everything under the Jameson umbrella of products.  They also make great cocktails like my favorite: the old fashioned.  They have a whole menu of old fashioneds which I thought was pretty neat.  The distillery and the bar in it are always busy and for good reason: it is a great piece of history that lives on today.

Roe & Co Distillery

It is most definitely worth noting that we had a visitor galavanting with us around Ireland.  For those of you remember from our post about Portugal, one of our best friends, Brandon, joined us there in Portugal.  Well, apparently he hadn’t had enough so he booked a flight to join us in Dublin to travel around Ireland.  He is always a great addition and we loved sharing this time traveling with him.
Britta, Brandon, and I went over to the newer Roe & Co Distillery which is walking distance from Jameson.  However, we didn’t come here to just look at their new facility and to learn about the distilling process; we came to Roe & Co. to mix some cocktails!  They have an experience where you can learn about mixing cocktails using whiskey.  It was a blast and we got to drink the cocktails too ;).

Teeling Whiskey Distillery

Teeling was our last stop on the distillery tour of Dublin.  We got a chance to visit their distillery and actually walk in to see it operating which is something we couldn’t do at Jameson.  For a good portion of Scotland and Ireland, the summer months are when a lot of the maintenance and cleaning happens for the stills.  So, visiting them can be really nice if you want to see it without all the noise and smells of the process.  But, I think it is cool to see how it works.

The unique thing about Teeling is that it is a re-opened distillery in Dublin.  It was a well-known name before U.S. Prohibition but eventually folded.  Within the last decade, it built its brand back up and started up Teeling again.  They now have the Phoenix bird as their mascot of sorts.  It symbolizes a “rebirth” from the ashes of their brand.

Killarney & Gap of Dunloe

We journeyed south to Killarney on the rail.  What I’ve heard is that the railway in Ireland traditionally has been unreliable; however, it has been much better in the past few years.  That was our experience as well.  We were able to see a lot of the countryside full of trees and farms all the way from Dublin to Killarney.

Killarney, in comparison, is a fairly small town.  It has a great deal of places to catch live music and catch a good meal.  But, it is all mostly on the same main street in town.  It is a great place to wander around and just stumble into a pub or maybe a shop or two.

Gap of Dunloe

One big attraction to the Killarney area is the Gap of Dunloe.  Most people either walk the narrow road through the gap or take these little horse carts along it with a driver.  Regardless of the way you do it, the views and experience are unrivaled in Ireland.

We decided to walk the seven miles of the Gap of Dunloe and I’m so glad we did. The walk starts at Kate Kearney’s Cottage and ends at Lord Brandon’s Cottage at the edge of Killarney National Park. The path is paved and the only real thing you need to watch out for is the horse pies along the way.  As you walk through the gap, you see all kinds of sheep grazing in the green and partly-rocky pastures.  The green wraps up into the shallow mountains or hills and is met by wildflowers along the way.  Little creeks babble through and small ponds capture the mountain dew.  You cross a couple of bridges as you go and you cross as the water slowly waves by below.  The peace you get from walking along and seeing more and more mountains ahead is magnificent.  Even the wooden fences between pastures add to the peace as they give your eyes a contrast from the many shades of green.  Scraggly trees pop up along the water every once in a while; they are always crowded by tiny flocks of sheep looking for shade.

As you reach the top of the gap, you can peer over to see the valley beyond.  It is arider, but the pastures are more vast and the count of sheep grows.  You wind down the path and eventually land on the edge of Killarney National Park.

Killarney National Park

After grabbing a bite to eat at Lord Brandon’s Cottage at the end of the Gap of Dunloe path, we took a unique way back to Killarney: through Killarney National Park.  We hopped on a small boat operated by Gap of Dunloe Traditional Boat Tours and took to the water along the lakes and channels toward Ross Castle.  The view of the hills and mountains around is such a cool view of Ireland.

The water is decently low this time of year and as the heat has sat on Europe this summer, it was no surprise.  We even had to get half the passengers off our boat at one point to make sure the boat could make it through a narrow part of the river between lakes.  And, just years ago, a large fire came through the park burning a large portion of the trees and fields.  It is almost unnoticeable though because of how well the vegetation had grown back by the time we went there.  Ireland has really worked to sustain the wild birds (mostly hawks and eagles) populations in this area of Ireland.  With the abundance of water and fish, the area is perfect for keeping the bird population up.

Galway & Irish Music

I feel so much joy when I hear Irish music; it always gives me that feeling of celebration and movement.  The best place we found for live Irish music was Galway.  Many of you are probably aware of the song “Galway Girl” which has been sung by many artists over the years.  This is definitely one of the more popular songs, but many others are just as good or better.  If you want to hear some of my favorites you can see our videos about Ireland on Instagram.

Galway is fairly big and has a lot going on.  It is somewhat of a college town with the University of Galway but is a big tourist destination for good reason.  There are so many places to walk in the city and get any kind of food or drink you want and any live music you fancy.  Many places like Monroe’s Tavern have nightly music which can make any night a night for toe-tapping or dancing on your feet.

Cliffs of Moher & Aran Islands

An additional advantage of staying in Galway is that you aren’t that far from some of the most beautiful places in Ireland.  The Cliffs of Moher are just a short drive south.  And so are the accompanying Aran Islands off the coast not far from the Cliffs of Moher.  The trip there along the Wild Atlantic Way and the destinations themselves were well worth it.

Aran Islands

The Aran Islands are a couple of small islands off the shore of Ireland’s west coast.  They are inhabited and have some really cool characteristics.  We were fortunate enough to make it to Inisheer on a ferry boat.  The island has less than 400 permanent residents and is full of stone walls separating the small plots of grazing land for sheep.  We took a tractor and trailer ride along the dusty roads of the island to get a taste of what the island was like.

Surprisingly, they have a small airport on the island that had a couple of small twin-engine planes landing as we rode by in our trailer.  They also have this really cool old ship wreckage that is all rusted out upon the shore.  The ship got caught on the island during a storm and never was able to get off.  And weirdly enough, the ship had many barrels of whiskey on it as cargo and to this day they don’t know where it went!  I have a couple of theories but I’d only be speculating, but thankfully all the other cargo was recovered.

Cliffs of Moher

Many of you have probably seen the Cliffs of Moher in pictures and may not have even known it.  The cliffs are really high and are a nesting ground for over 40,000 birds each year.  There is even a bird that hatches its eggs on the top of the high cliff edge and the eggs never fall off the edge!  The eggs themselves are designed in a way that if the heavy winds start to blow it, the egg goes in a circular motion keeping it from rolling away.  My mind was BLOWN when I heard this.

We took the ferry back from the Aran Islands and they took us along the shoreline below the cliffs.  The winds are usually pretty fierce and the water constantly crashes against the high wall.  Birds fly by and perch themselves on the notches along the cliff wall.  Dolphin pods swim not far away from the cliffs on the hunt for krill or just some summer fun.

We then took in the sights from atop the Cliffs of Moher.  The green grass carpets the top of the cliffs and onward inland.  The mist of the crashing waves below pops up giving the view a sparkle almost.  The walls themselves stand almost proudly as you walk along the edge to sneak a peak around each gentle bend in the cliffs.  The pictures are awe-inspiring.

County Mayo

Tourmakeady & Glensaul Valley

Like I said at the beginning of the post, I’m Irish.  Part of this trip to Ireland was spent doing research on my ancestors.  I had known before coming to Ireland that my last ancestors lived in County Mayo in Ireland before immigrating to the U.S. We even found the exact town where that ancestor, Michael Cusick, lived.  That town was Tourmakeady, County Mayo.  So, while staying in Galway, Britta, Brandon, and I packed into our car rental and made our way up there to see what we could see.

The town is really small and the town basically consists of an old hotel remodeled into a couple of businesses: a general store, a pub, and others.  The town also has a park not far out where there is a little waterfall and some nice trails leading out to it.  It also nearly bumps out to one of the larger lakes in Ireland: Lough Mask.  We decided to take our packed lunch out to the closest pier south of town to take in the view.  It reminds me quite a bit of Lake Superior in the States but, obviously, at a smaller scale.  It was a lovely place to eat and soak in the thoughts that maybe Michael had been here less than 200 years before.

But, the coolest thing we saw was when we started making our way further south to the Glensaul Valley.  The Lough Mask jets out into a bay on its southern end.  The mountains just west gradually create a valley that looks to the northeast with a backdrop of rolling hills.  It is GORGEOUS!  We took a drive-through and were blown away by how beautiful it was and how we had never even heard of it in our research.  It was even more interesting finding in my genealogy research that Michael may have actually lived in this valley.  Since he was a farmer, he obviously didn’t live right in the town of Tourmakeady and the valley is lush and prime for farming.

Cong

Have you ever seen the movie The Quiet Man?  Many probably haven’t.  It is a movie about an Irishman boxer that moves back to Ireland after leaving the ring in the U.S.  And, whether you believe it or not, that boxer in the movie is played by John Wayne.  It is an old, Ireland-based film capturing the culture of rural Ireland in the 1920s.  The movie is set in a town called Innisfree which is actually a town in Ireland.  However, it was filmed in Cong, County Mayo (the town actually straddles the counties of Mayo and Galway).  And a significant place in the film is the Pat Cohan Pub which still stands today slinging Guinness beer on the same bar shown in the movie.  We had a lot of fun stopping by for a pint and seeing the pictures of the characters of the film on the walls.  There was even a painting of John Wayne that Wayne himself signed.

Dingle & Slea Head Drive

The southern part of Ireland almost feels tropical and you can even see some palm trees that have been planted here and there.  We had the pleasure of staying in Dingle on the southwestern coast of Ireland for the better part of  a week.  It was truly a relaxing experience.  It is a very calm, small town sitting along a calm bay.  The green is iconically Ireland and the pace is just a bit slower.  It gave us a chance to breathe some fresh air and enjoy the natural beauty of Ireland.

Slea Head Drive

You may or may not have noticed that I haven’t mentioned anything about the famous Ring of Kerry in this post.  You won’t see me talk about it at all because we never went.  We had every intention of taking our car on the path called The Ring of Kerry but decided to skip it.

Just outside the city limits of Dingle is a loop drive called Slea Head Drive.  It skirts the cliffs along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.  The views out to the ocean, along the path, and inland, are all spectacular.  They even have sandy beaches to stop at along the way.  The green meets the blue of the ocean and the wildflowers flourish in the more tropical climate.  It was breathtaking.  After taking this drive, we asked our Airbnb host about the Ring of Kerry.  She said that if you have taken Slea Head Drive, then you don’t really need to do the Ring of Kerry.  She said that it has everything that the Ring of Kerry has without the crowds.  She also said you can actually park along the Slea Head Drive and can’t do that as well on the Ring of Kerry.  So, we said to ourselves: why go if you can see the glorious views right here near our place in Dingle?  No regrets.

What’s Next

For those of you that have been following our blog for a while, you may have noticed we have been in Europe for a while.  We have since returned to the U.S. for my brother’s wedding and some time with family.  But, our next leg of the trip around the world starts in AFRICA!!!  We leave TODAY and we look forward to sharing with you all we see on our safari we booked and our experiences in Africa.  If you want to get email updates when a new post comes up, add your email below!  We’ll keep following the sun in the southern hemisphere and hope you join us by following along.

Recap

Miles Walked

• 51 miles over 13 days

Next Up!

• AFRICA!!!

---

Read About Where Else We’ve Been

• New Zealand: A Little Bit of Everything
• Vietnam: North to South
• Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia: New Year’s 2023
• Thailand: Temples, Food, and So Much More
• Australia: The East Coast of Natural Wonders