31 May 2018
A Wonderful Taste Of Ireland
Ireland has been on my travel bucket-list for a while now. So when we were invited to a wedding there, it was the perfect opportunity to see some of the Emerald Isle. We only had two and a half days in total, one of which was spent at the wedding, but it was enough to give us a little taste of the beautiful country and I honestly can’t wait to go back one day (soon hopefully).
Bray
Bray is a seaside town just south of Dublin and it seemed like the most obvious place to stop and find lunch once we’d landed, picked up the car and driven out of the city. There wasn’t a lot to see in the town itself but it had a great beach which stretched out to meet the rolling hills in the distance. We had lunch (a pretty sexy falafel and feta wrap) in a restaurant right on the front with floor-to-ceiling windows giving way to an excellent view of the sea and the wind-sailors. We also discovered an ice-cream shop with dozens of different flavours and so enjoyed enormous cones whilst walking along the front.
Powerscourt Waterfall
So this feller is the highest waterfall in Ireland and it was gorgeous. It seems to be a popular place for families to go on a sunny day – the amount of people with flippin’ BBQs! But we all know how much I love a waterfall so I was very happy to have a clamber around on the rocks at the base and take a lot of photos. I liked how there was just unrestricted access so we were able to get really close to the water cascading down. Could have probably gone for a swim tbh.Wicklow Mountains National Park
This place! If you’re a fan of sweeping landscape views from a great height, it’s for you. We pulled over at the viewing point above Lough Tay and the views were stunning. I mean, okay, we were buffeted by the wind and there was the weird moment where a random man and two kids emerged out of the woods and asked for a lift into the hills but other than that…Glenealo Valley
We took a detour to drive through here on our way to the hotel and, again, the views were stunning. It got me very excited for our road trip in the highlands this summer!
Athboy
Where a group of us stayed for the wedding. There seemed to be one woman running the hotel, restaurant and pub and we weren’t entirely convinced that she ever slept. We had some entertaining experiences which will be the source of many in-jokes for years to come I’m sure, but the hotel was genuinely lovely and we were made to feel very welcome. I was a big fan of the pub in particular – it felt very Irish!Dublin
With the river, bridges and several-storey houses, Dublin surprisingly reminded me a lot of Amsterdam. We only had 3 hours in the city so I came up with a spontaneous walking tour, based on a last-minute spot of internet research on the drive back from Athboy. We saw the Ha’Penny bridge, took a wander through the Temple Bar area, mooched around Dublin Castle, found the Molly Malone statue and were slightly stunned at the gorgeousness of the Trinity College campus. Call it a whistle-stop tour of some of Dublin’s key tourist sights. I would very much have liked to have seen the library long room at the college but the queue time (even on a Monday) didn’t allow us to incorporate it into our schedule. Next time for sure. I also enjoyed a slice of Guinness cake and – controversially – deemed that the icing I use on mine is better. I’ll be honest, if I’d gone over to specifically spend a whole weekend in Dublin, I think I’d have been disappointed. I’d go back because I have my eye on that library long room and feel like it’s important to try out some of those Irish pubs (pub crawl anyone?) but it would be whilst passing through on my way back to the Irish countryside. I wasn’t blown away by the city but I was by the countryside; that’s the true highlight of Ireland.
29 May 2018
A Pub In Athboy, Ireland
It is nearly two in the morning and there are six of us propping up the bar in the little Irish pub next to our hotel. It only occurs to us the morning afterwards that the bar man was offering to check two of our friends into the hotel and not inviting us in for a nightcap. Still he took it in his stride, despite the fact he was due to be teaching first thing. We drink Guinness and Baileys and are probably louder than we intend to be, full of laughter and prosecco from the wedding we have just spent the day celebrating at.
The barman – Sean I think – chats Irish history with us; growing up on the Emerald Isle and the impending 8th amendment referendum. He’s interesting, in the way that someone is when their life differs so vastly from yours.
We laugh a lot. We take blurry, messy photographs. I learn family histories of those around me. I pee in a New York-themed bathroom. I drink more Baileys – a recently discovered love – and particularly enjoy the silky texture in my mouth. We play the beer mat flipping game, some better than others. We wave twenty euro notes around in an attempt at paying. I go to bed and flick through photos of the day and think about how all you really need in life is good people.
There are so many laughter-filled nights with friends to look forward to.
Random Lessons From Singapore
In my final post on the joy that was discovering Singapore, here’s a few random things I learnt/things to expect from the unique city-state:
If you board the front carriage of a metro train, you’ll discover there’s no driver. Just a big glass window where you can look directly out into the tunnel. Bit like being on a (very) tame rollercoaster. Adults and children get equally as excited.
Plugs are the same as the UK, they drive on the same side as the UK but, just to confuse you, they stand on the left of the escalator, not the right.
Jaywalking is illegal but all the locals seem to do it anyway.
Caning is still a thing there; just in case you were tempted to break the law.
It’s not possible to go to Singapore and not get lost in a shopping centre. At least for us anyway.
No one seems to cook at home because it’s so much cheaper to just grab something at the hawker centres. Genuinely, the concept of never sitting on the sofa with a bowl of pasta pesto stressed me out slightly.
You have to eat ice cream fast because, in that heat, it’ll have melted before you’ve even paid.
It’s so CLEAN. Cleanest place I have ever been to, no competition.
There are no mosquitos. I mean, okay, there are mosquitos but there’s a distinct lack of them. I didn’t get bitten at all the entire week, and Alice only got bitten once when we were on one of the islands.
Don’t make eye contact with a wild monkey. Thems the rules apparently.
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| Sunrise from our hotel room |
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| Views from Marina Bay Sands |
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| Southern Ridges |
People tell you that alcohol is ridiculously expensive but, honestly, if you’re used to London prices, you won’t bat an eyelid.
Having a cold in 35c heat is fucking horrendous.
‘Kusu’ means ‘Tortoise island’. Fun fact there for ya.
There are temples everywhere. And they’re all stunningly beautiful.
Aircon very quickly becomes your new best friend.
A merlion is a bit of mascot for Singapore. There are a lot of merlion statues dotted about all over the shop.
You can eat stingray… should you get a fancy.
The metro is insanely cheap. 35p-for-a-journey-level-of-cheap.
Everyone speaking English is no guarantee there won’t still be a language barrier; we definitely still had a few communication issues, particularly when ordering food.
Durians are a type of fruit that are famous for their potent stench – which is why you’ll see signs about them at stations; they’re specifically banned on the metro. Apparently they smell a bit like blue cheese…
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| Kusu island |
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| Sentosa |
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| Standing at the southernmost point of continental Asia |
On Wednesday nights, most bars have free drinks for women. In one place, at the end of the night, they started standing on the bar and pouring drinks on top of people. It was a bit weird.
When it rains, it’s so loud that it kinda sounds like rocks are falling to the floor.
If you have this image that walking the southern ridges will be quiet and tranquil… you’d be wrong. I’d recommend doing it but don’t expect to be alone.
Carrot cake is NOT the same as it is in England. It’s not cake and it’s not sweet. Nor does it have carrot in it. It’s either turnip or radish… we never quite got to the bottom of that one.
The bar at the top of Marina Bay Sands (views aside), Sentosa Island and the hawker centres did not live up to the hype in my opinion. Gardens by the bay, the light shows, the general bay area and Haji Lane 100% did. Little India & Island hopping were beautiful and two of my favourites - and bizarrely not really shouted about. Southern Ridges, Chinatown and grabbing a Singapore Sling worth doing if you have the time.
Other posts on Singapore:
22 May 2018
Singapore Diaries | Light Shows (With a Video)
If you asked me to choose my one favourite thing about Singapore, I’d probably say the light shows.
And not the light shows that took place in our hotel room because why so many goddamn light switches?
I actually came down with a cold and cough whilst we were away and spent a couple of days feeling pretty rough. But on this evening, I’d finally got my hands on some flu capsules and cough syrup and I had a new zest for Singapore.
In the early evening, we headed to Satay by the Bay, a hawker centre in the Gardens by the Bay. I wasn’t a massive fan of the hawker centres, but I did really like Satay by the Bay. It felt a little less manic and a little more airy than others and that made all the difference. Plus it’s in the middle of all the greenery and near the water; a great setting for some dinner.
This is where we fell in love with Roti Prata – a signature dish of Singapore and Malaysia. It’s fried stretched dough, flavoured with ghee (Indian butter). A bit like a combination of a naan bread and a crepe? You can have it sweet or savoury either served with a curry or on its own with different flavours. I actually preferred it plain with an Indian-style salsa dip because it was so tasty, but I tried the cheesy one as well and that was also pretty good.
I also had the best satay chicken I’ve ever tasted here. The peanut sauce was delicious; thick, spicy and creamy and I honestly think I could have eaten just the sauce alone. Who needs the chicken?!
We met Alice’s friend Ruby, who is currently living in Singapore, and spent a couple of hours eating and chatting before heading back into the gardens to catch the Garden Rhapsody Supertree light show for the second time.
The theme that night was ‘Sounds of Asia’ and we sat on the ground surrounded by many doing the same, some flat on their backs, and watched those supertrees glow in time to the music. Personally, that light show would never get old for me. But I wasn’t quite expecting to find something even better.
After the show was finished, we walked under Marina Bay Sands and into the bay area. There were a lot of people hanging about on the promenade just underneath the hotel, looking out across the water. Ruby thought she’d heard of another kind of light show that took place on the water, so we decided to sit on the steps and hang around.
We’d seen laser lights being projected from the top of Marina Bay Sands from a distance a couple of times during our stay so I assumed we were just going to see that in all its glory. Reader, my expectations were so off the mark. Lasers did beam out from the top of the hotel across the water for sure, and then fireworks started going off… and then shit really got going.
This was Spectra and the supertree light show that I loved so much paled in comparison. It was a light and water show; the water was shooting about in every direction and if you stood right on the front, you were guaranteed to get wet because the spray. But the spray was the point; colours and images were projected onto the spray and the result was just spectacular. This was all in time to some banging tunes (as the kids would say), and combined with the fireworks going off at the start – it was all pretty epic.
(We ended up going back on our final night and I can confirm it didn’t get any less epic the second time round.)
This is one of those rare case where the pictures and describing it in the written word doesn’t do it justice at all. I’ve included a video of our trip below which includes a lot of footage of these light shows, so you can see for yourself.
We spent the rest of the evening wandering around the bay, checking out the mini carnival that had been set up for Chinese New Year. This was basically more epic lights!
I’m convinced the reason why my overwhelming memories of Singapore are simply colour is because of all these light shows.
Garden Rhapsody takes place at 7:45pm and 8:45pm every evening and Spectra takes place 8pm and 9pm Sunday – Thursday and 8pm, 9pm and 10pm Friday – Saturday.
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