One Potato, Two Potato

Not every trip I take gets a food related post. This year I've been lucky in the grub department. Our trips to New Zealand and Peru each got me writing a few hundred words about the local fare and if I got nothing else awesome out of our trip to Ireland at the end of the summer, I figured I'd be in for some delicious nosh. I mean after all, British food is my ancestral comfort food. I can eat this stuff anywhere and at any time. If the rest of the trip was a total and complete disaster (it wasn't), I knew I'd be well fed.

Let's stop right there. I know what you are thinking and it's likely something like 'ang on a second...British food? You went to Ireland, not Britain, right? Why on Earth would you think you'd get the same food on both sides of the Irish Sea?

Well, I did think that. I figured I'd be dining on pies and bangers and mash and sticky toffee pudding all washed down with cask beer and when I got peckish in the afternoon I could just nip into a Sainsbury's or Tesco and grab some Monster Munch or Hula Hoops. I just assumed Irish food would be the same as the food of Britain only maybe with more potatoes. I was wrong. Pretty much totally dead wrong!

Now, while I did enjoy some good bangers and mash and found at least one decidedly non-amazing-like-in-England sticky toffee pudding, I found out pretty quickly that Ireland is not a pie country. And by that I mean pastry on all sides of meat, veg and gravy pie. Walk in to any English pub and you are pretty much guaranteed to find a scrumptious pie on the menu. Not so much in Ireland and crossing the border into Northern Ireland (which is actually part of the United Kingdom) doesn't do you much good in this department either.

And cask beer? No, sir! Pretty much all keg over there. We asked the bartender in Dublin's Swan Bar about this and he told us if they ever get a cask it's either gone immediately or they throw most of it away. The better thing for them is just to stick to kegs. Yikes! There goes that assumption!

So here's some of what I downed while I was in Ireland and Northern Ireland a week that wasn't pies and cask beer. Admittedly there are some similarities to being in England. After all, it's difficult to deny no shared heritage there. And I should point out that I was not totally wrong. There were a lot more potatoes.

Boxty

Before every trip abroad that I take, I inevitably make a food checklist of local dishes I HAVE to have while I'm going wherever I'm going. Number one on my food list for Ireland was the boxty. As it turned out, it was the first (and best) meal we had all week. A landing at Dublin airport at about 10 in the morning, clear customs, grab a bus downtown and check in to the hotel and I don't know about you but I'm ready for a meal. Boxty time!!!!

What's a boxty, you might wonder? Well, it's kind of like a crepe, except made from (are you ready for this?) potatoes. I've had these things in local Irish-type pubs around Washington D.C. so I just had to seek at least one of these out during nine days in Ireland and Northern Ireland. 

News flash: boxtys are hard to find. They are not like crepes in Paris that are available pretty much everywhere. Fortunately for us, we found a place called Gallagher's Boxty House right in the Temple Bar area of Dublin. This had to be right.

Little did I know but the term boxty can be applied to a variety of dishes. Three, according to Gallagher's. All three of us opted for the familiar crepe (or pancake in Ireland) form, rather than dumpling or boiled form. Chicken with bacon and leek cream sauce for me (and shown above). It almost made me want to trade off any form of pies for this dish, and that's saying a lot for someone raised with English blood. If I'd known I wouldn't be served a better plate of food in Ireland I might have been both disappointed and completely satisfied at the same time. This is some good stuff.

Note: not all boxtys are created equal. We had one later in the week in Belfast. Not only was it not crepe-like, it just wasn't delicious like our experience at Gallagher's. I recommend Gallagher's. Highly.

Beer

Apparently they have beer in Ireland...imagine that!

Most people who travel to Dublin make it one way or another to a spot where they can have a pint of Guinness. We made it to a lot of such places. I had at least one pint of the black stuff every day I was in Ireland except for our departure day (when we caught a bus for the airport at 7:30 a.m.). I had Guinness in pubs, in restaurants, in the lobbies of both hotels we stayed in and at the Guinness Storehouse, the tourist attraction that serves as the clearinghouse for most tourists' most intimate Guinness experience. Guinness is so ingrained into the personality of the country of Ireland that I could almost have made a separate category for that drink on this post. I decided not to. Because Guinness was not the best beer I had in Ireland. 

I like Guinness. It's good stuff. I hope that was obvious from the fact that I had at least one pint for eight straight days. And it's not like it was the only stuff available.

But before I get to that, I have to say a few words about the Storehouse. The reason I used the word "experience" to describe this place is that's just what it is. It is not a brewery tour. It's a multi-story narrative about the product, history and business of the brewery set up by Arthur Guinness in 1759. If you've been through a brewery tour before (and I have been through many) and you don't like crowds (I don't), I'd probably recommend you skip it entirely. Other than the opportunity to sample some Guinness Foreign Extra Stout (gorgeously bitter chocolate flavor) and Citra IPA (super restrained use of the citra hops that American breweries use with too heavy a hand) I got nothing out of this. Plus it's expensive. It was cool to make a pilgrimage near to the brewery but it had little other value.

The best beer I had in Ireland came with my first meal in Ireland at Gallagher's Boxty House: a Jack Smyth Porter. It was to me a great balance between a classic porter with a perfect finish of hops in the English brewing tradition. Porter is my favorite beer and the English style of brewing (as opposed to German or Belgian) is my favorite tradition. This beer was set up to win. Beer in Ireland was good. But this one was the best. 

Cottage Pie

Let's get back to the potatoes shall we?

I'm sure most people who head to Ireland look for some shepherd's pie on the menus of pubs and restaurants. We certainly did and didn't find it that often mostly because (and I'm assuming here) what people think of as shepherd's pie is actually cottage pie (shepherd's pie is made with lamb; cottage pie with beef). We did find that. And it was really pretty darned awesome.

Cottage pie is a mixture of ground beef and diced vegetables in gravy baked in a dish with a topping of mashed potatoes, although the stuff we found in Dublin at The Hairy Lemon (apparently named after a local dog catcher) was topped with cheese over the mash and came with optional gravy. Want to know how to make cottage pie better than regular cottage pie? Top it with cheese, that's how.

This was likely the second best meal we had in Ireland although it's a close call with a couple of others. I have to point out the excess in the picture above. Cottage pie in Ireland doesn't just come with mashed potatoes on the top of the pie. It also comes with a side of chips. Love those spuds!

Fab Food Trails

Given our limited time in Dublin (just four nights but with two day trips in there), we thought it might be a good idea to take a food tour. The theory here is it would get us off the beaten path into some local spots away from tourists and give us a slice of Irish food different than pub fare. It worked!

We found a company through Lonely Planet that runs food tours on Saturday mornings in Dublin's city center: Fab Food Trails. Their website was pretty effective at selling their tours on us so we decided we'd spend about three hours with one of their guides (Tom, as it turned out) walking us around to some places we ordinarily would have just probably walked right by without a second thought.

We got a quick history of food in Ireland from Tom (it went like this: a nation of subsistence farmers saved by the potato which grows remarkably well in poor soil followed by famine leading to emigration for more than a century until the technology boom brought people back who wanted to spend money on good food spurring a culinary renaissance of sorts) and then we were off. The focus of our tour would be on slow food and seasonal ingredients. Sounded great to us.

I won't give a blow by blow of this tour. Part of the secret of a tour like this is the itinerary, and I won't spoil it. I'd say the highlights were the Coolea cheese, the Power's Three Swallow whiskey, the brown bread at the Pepperpot Cafe and the veal burger (don't knock it until you've heard the explanation) at Broughgammon. There is absolutely no way we would have found all these places (and more) in what effectively was two days in Dublin. Definitely worth the experience and the price of admission especially on the whiskey front. I have never ever bought booze at the duty free on a trip. I bought some Three Swallow at Dublin airport. It's like drinking caramel. 

Fish and Chips

Go to pretty much any non-fine dining restaurant in Ireland and you'll probably find fish and chips on the menu. Why not? I mean the place is completely surrounded by the sea. Between the three of us, we must have had fish and chips at four or five different places in a single week. 

Ideally fish and chips is cod (nothing else is right) in batter (not breading) dipped in bubbling oil. You want a thinnish batter so the fish can cook without the batter soaking up too much of the oil before getting to the fish. Oily batter is not good. No way! But you also want batter thick enough to be crispy and crunchy for texture before you get to the succulent juicy cod beneath. Add some salt, vinegar (none of that lemon stuff), chunky chips (not fries) and ideally and if you are oh so lucky...some mushy peas.

Where's the best place to get fish and chips? Well, a fish and chip shop of course. We did some homework and went to just one: McDonagh's in Galway, a place that's been open since 1902. We figured if it was able to stay open for the last 117 (!!) years, they had to be doing something good. 

All that I hoped for came true here. Fish. Chips. Peas. The batter was good and crispy and the fish was freshly prepared. A little vinegar and some salt on the fish and in the mushies and I was well taken care of here. Maybe top 10 fish and chips ever.

Black Pudding

Over the past few years during my travels, I've made a point to eat food that ordinarily I would not put on my dinner menu at home. Guinea pig in Ecuador, blood sausage in Cologne, springbok and crocodile in Zimbabwe. I mean if you are there, why not? I chickened out on the snails in Marrakech and I've never forgiven myself.

In Ireland, my choice was black pudding, a sausage made from pork blood, some fat and a cereal of some sort, typically oats. It's cooked when it's made into sausage form and then sliced and typically heated up somehow, usually by frying. Because our friend Bryan came along with us on this trip, I made him have some too. Bryan hates all kinds of pudding, but I'm not sure his hatred ever contemplated any pudding like this. :)

Now I kind of cheated here. I picked a place where I could get the pudding in sandwich form with some acid (pickles and tomato relish in the particular sandwich I chose) to cut what I assumed would be a stodgy, fatty meat-ish substance. Plus I sort of hoped the bread might hide any sort of objectionable texture we might encounter. 

I should point out that I've been at a number of tables with black pudding before since I am English. In most cases, they have been fried black with white speckled discs about one inch in diameter and cut maybe one eighth of an inch thick. I've balked every time.

We found the kind of sandwich I was looking for at Oxmantown in Dublin. The four inch or so diameter pudding was slightly warmed (I don't think it was fried) and presented between two slices of untoasted sourdough with the aforementioned relish and pickles along with some aioli (more fat) and rocket (or baby arugula for those of you who don't speak English). The pudding was soft, pretty tasteless and sort of loosely glue-y and chewy. The skin provided a little textural variance but not much. About what I expected and I'm not eager to try it again. I would have appreciated some toast on the bread. That would have added a little crunch which would have been welcome.

Back to normal food. Or if not normal, at least something with potatoes.

Potato Bread

One of the very last meals we had in Ireland was at Belfast's St. George's Market from a place called Sizzle & Roll. St. George's is an 1890s brick and cast iron (assuming there...) covered market in the heart of Belfast. It is the very last of several markets like this built in Victorian times. It's only open on Fridays and weekends so we had to wait until our last day to visit before heading off to Derry for a couple of hours.

Our intent in visiting was to grab some local breakfast from one of the many stalls at the place (it's not all food, to be clear) and see what else was going on. A quick tour round the place got us a look at a number of different types of breakfast dishes and sandwiches. We settled on Sizzle & Roll for just one reason: they sold sandwiches on potato bread. And by potato bread I don't mean the kind of potato bread we get here in the United States. I literally mean bread formed from some kind of mashed and formed potato.

Fried egg, tomato, cheese and more rocket between two patties of potato. I would have liked a riper tomato, a runnier yolk on the egg and there was some kind of sourness in each bite that might have been the potato bread. It was different but it was completely Irish in it's potato-ness. A good last breakfast in a great setting.

Tired of potatoes yet? You might think I was with seemingly every other dish I had included some taters but honestly, despite the focus on spuds, I did not feel like I overdosed on potatoes. I do, though, think I got an honest to goodness Irish potato experience. Interestingly enough, the last two trips I've taken (this one and our Peru trip in May) have been to two countries where potatoes are an integral part of their national food identity. Ireland blew Peru away in the potato category. They know what they are doing over there on the emerald isle.

I came to Ireland with a definite opinion about how my food experience would go. It was different than I thought but similar enough to the comfort food I love and grew up with to make me feel very comfortable. I didn't get cask beer much over in Ireland which surprised me. I also only managed to find one truly English style pie in my week plus there (it was in the same place I found the cask beer).

There was one other notion I was quickly and brutally disabused of and that was that if I needed a snack, neither Monster Munch nor Hula Hoops are readily available. This was almost catastrophic. It took until the very last day of our trip for me to find some pickled onion flavor Monster Munch and then it was only in a 12 pack which I refused to buy because I'd either end up eating them all or throwing 11 of them away (OK, maybe just 10). Hula Hoops were a little easier to find but then again they are made of potatoes rather than corn. We found some of the most excellent BBQ beef Hula Hoops on the way to the west coast. And no, the "most excellent" appellation isn't intended to differentiate those I ate in Ireland from those I've eaten in England. The BBQ beef ones are just freaking awesome all the time. As snack foods go, they are pretty much the apex snack. Unless pickled onion Monster Munch is in the room.

A few last thoughts about our food odyssey in Ireland.

First, we ate way more than I've discussed above but this is long enough already so I had to cut some things out. I did have some Irish stew along with some beef and Guinness stew. Neither dish stood out. We did have some excellent Indian food in Belfast at Nu Delhi. I could go back there about once a week.

Second, despite all the potatoes and other sorts of pub fare, I didn't gain a pound in Ireland. We are typically pretty active when we travel. I'm sure the slightly more than 50 miles we walked over the seven full days we were over there helped tremendously. I ate not much more than bread and cheese in Paris three years ago and had a similar experience. I was a little shocked on this one but I'm glad I stayed the same weight. 

Third (and almost final), most restaurants and cafes we ate at in Ireland had a number coding system for allergens in their dishes and it seemed to be pretty consistent from place to place. I'm not intending to make light of food allergies but I'd honestly never heard of a lupin allergy. Aren't these things flowers? The lupin allergy seemed to be number 14 on most menus we read (see cover pic of this post). We didn't see any dishes marked with a 14 as I remember.

Finally, while I was writing this post I discovered that both pickled onion Monster Munch and BBQ beef Hula Hoops are available on Amazon. I now have a six pack of each en route to me now. I will enjoy. 

Go to Ireland for the potatoes or the beer or whatever. You will eat well. I did!

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How We Did It

I think every food traveler has to seek out what speaks to him or her, even if it's pickled onion Monster Munch and BBQ beef Hula Hoops. But if you want to have any of what I found truly remarkable on this trip, here are some thoughts.

First and foremost, I'd highly recommend a food tour with Fab Food Trails. They will for sure get you to some spots you wouldn't find on your own and you may learn a little or a lot about the history of Irish food along the way. There are some really special spots along the two plus hour walk. They operate tours on most all Fridays and Saturdays starting at 10 a.m. as of this writing in addition to some other days of the week. Check their website by clicking their name in this paragraph for complete availability. If you get Tom as your guide, say hi from me.

Gallagher's Boxty House is located at 20-21 Temple Bar in Dublin. You might want to consider a reservation here when you visit. We didn't have one when we walked in and my impression is that it was almost a mistake. We waited maybe 10 minutes maximum and got a seat at the bar but I'm not sure a table was available to us any time soon. Again, this was the best meal I had in Ireland or Northern Ireland. I'd definitely recommend you stop here. And get the Jack Smyth Porter, which is apparently brewed specifically for Gallagher's.

The Hairy Lemon was probably our best pub experience in Dublin. It's located down near St. Stephen's Green a bit off the beaten tourist path (which is good I think) but the food and drink was worth it. We also heard our best trad music of the entire trip (which we found incredibly difficult to find as it turned out) here on a Monday night. I'd definitely consider a return trip here if I were ever in Dublin again. 

McDonagh's is an institution in Galway. I don't know what more proof you need other than 117 years in business. Get the mushy peas. Please. They are like the cheapest thing on the menu. Even cheaper than water, cole slaw and curry sauce. McDonagh's fish and chip bar is open seven days a week (the restaurant is closed on Sundays) on the very pedestrian friendly Quay Street. If you are searching for some trad music, this street seems like the place to hear it.

I'd recommend a trip Oxmantown in Dublin. I know my review of the black pudding was a little lukewarm but honestly I think that had to do with more than the black pudding. The list of sandwiches they had on their wall sounded awesome. I'd certainly be up for giving it another shot. Oxmantown is located at 16 Mary's Abbey in Dublin.

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Giant Steps

It is possible that not everything written in this post is 100% true. You might have to believe some things which seem unbelievable. Then again, maybe everything written here is true after all.

It seems that there are tales out there that once upon a time, there was a pathway connecting Ireland with the main island of Great Britain. Maybe it didn't go quite all the way to Britain, but it came pretty close. If what I've written in this paragraph so far is at all true, it's possible that the path allowed you to walk all the way from the north coast of Ireland to Fingal's Cave on the island of Staffa just to the west of the Isle of Mull in present day Scotland.

Now, this path wasn't a natural phenomenon. It was made entirely from hexagonal shaped stones and was built by a man. Or more accurately, a giant. Finn McCool to be exact. Old Finn had a way of of doing things like this. He once chucked a piece of Ireland at a rival but missed; it landed in the middle of the Irish Sea and is now known as the Isle of Man. When it came to his path to Scotland, Finn just didn't want to get his feet wet when headed up north so he built a series of stepping stones. Or a causeway, if you will.

Unfortunately for Finn, his path to Scotland had an unintended consequence: it allowed Benandonner, also a giant (but a more giant giant than Finn), to make his way to Ireland to challenge Finn to a fight. Finn of course wanted no part of that bout so he asked his wife, Oona, for some help. When Benandonner came calling at their door, Oona let him know that Finn was out but welcomed him to wait for Finn's return with her and her baby, who was actually Finn in disguise. 

If a giant disguised as a baby sounds a bit farfetched, I agree. But let's keep going shall we.

While Benandonner waited for Finn's arrival, Oona cooked him some griddle cakes, although she managed somehow to make them with pieces of griddle iron inside causing Benandonner to chip a tooth. At this display of weakness, Oona mocked Benandonner's strength, declaring her baby could eat her griddle cakes with no problem. And to prove it, she fed one to Finn (minus a griddle iron of course).

Benandonner was impressed and was determined to see how sharp this baby's teeth were that he could chomp down through something so hard. It seemed to him that the best way to test the bite strength was to put his finger in the baby's month and when he did, Finn bit down hard. That must have hurt, and finding a baby that could do so much damage, Benandonner wanted no part of his daddy so he fled and made sure he destroyed the causeway during his retreat.

But he didn't get it all and today the Irish side of the path remains on the north coast of Northern Ireland in a spot known as the Giant's Causeway.

Standing where Finn McCool once trod. Always in my Timberlands.

When we first picked Ireland as our final travel destination in 2019, the place I wanted to go more than any other was the Giant's Causeway. I knew basically nothing about Ireland at that point except for the Causeway and maybe a little something about some beer. This place was a must see. I had to go see these same sized, uniform hexagonal stones for myself.

It is possible the tale of Finn McCool is a legend and not completely factual. You can choose to believe the story about Finn McCool and the Giant's Causeway if you want. Apparently science has a different explanation for these six sided stones.

Millions and millions of years ago (like 50 or 60 million), the chalk landscape of present day Ireland was subjected to a series of volcanic eruptions which laid layer after layer of basalt lava over the landscape. As the lava cooled, the particular type of basalt making up the lava cracked in a hexagonal pattern and those cracks propagated downwards through the cooling molten rock to form a series of six-sided uniformly-sized columns. To get weirder, the columns themselves ended up being layered  horizontally (the Giant's Causeway wikipedia page refers to this as biscuiting, which I guess works well enough for me to visualize).

The general theory of how this exactly happened was advanced by French scientist Nicolas Desmarest way back in 1771 but it sounds to me from reading three or four articles on the internet (always dangerous, I know...) that his hypothesis was sort of a general one, like "eh, it's probably volcanic". I could be a little off base on that one but that's how it reads to me. 

Since the late 18th century, the conditions at Giant's Causeway have been likened to drying mud, which sometimes forms a geometric pattern as the moisture making it mud-like evaporates. There have also been laboratory experiments conducting using substances like corn starch and water as recently as our own century that produced substantially similar cracking patterns, complete with the columnar-like action seen at the Causeway.

I don't know about you, but the idea the whole science explanation thing is a lot less fun than the story about Finn McCool. But priding myself on being a believer of science, I'll go with the whole lava thing. Probably.

Basalt columns. They really are like columns. And they are biscuited.

So what? So there are a few little columns of stone that happen to be six-sided. Why go all that way? Well, for a start, it's not just a few. Try 40,000 of these things. Not a typo. Forty. Thousand. And the biscuiting of these columns has produced stones at different heights forming a series of steps, although rarely with more than about a foot or so between stones. If you had wanted to build this as a man-made construct, you couldn't have done a better job than Mother Nature herself. But ain't that most always the case.

A small field of naturally formed six-sided stones would have been impressive. But 40,000 of them stretches a long way. And it's quite awe-inspiring. So, sure, they are not all exactly formed into perfect hexagons. But they are remarkably similarly sized. They are like 50,000,000 years old for crying out loud so maybe a little erosion can be forgiven. I've been to some strange landscapes in my time but I'm not sure I've ever walked over a plain quite this remarkable. And that's really saying something. These things would look absolutely gorgeous on a beautiful sunny day.

Yeah...we didn't have a beautiful sunny day. Or even a partially cloudy day. Or even fully cloudy. Well, it was fully cloudy but there was other stuff going on too.

An astonishing landscape. Not sure I've walked over something quite like this ever.

The Causeway is located on the north coast of Northern Ireland. I'm not sure if it's far enough around to the west to be fronting on the Atlantic Ocean but it sure felt like we were there on an unprotected spur of land against a very large body of water when we were there in early September of this year. The sea was wild and before we even got there we knew we were facing a weather forecast that called for rain and 20 to 30 miles per hour winds with occasional gusts to 50 mph. We went anyway. The rest of the week didn't look any better and we had a schedule. Got to stay on schedule.

It's been a while since I've seen a sea that angry. We were on a boat a couple of days prior to our day at Giant's Causeway that seemed pretty rough but it was nowhere near what we saw the day we climbed over those six-sided stones. My hope that day was that we'd be able to walk all the way out to the section of the coast known as The Amphitheatre on a nice leisurely stroll and then make our way back to the Visitor Centre maybe via an alternate route. We fell short of our goal. But had an excellent time anyway.

It is admittedly difficult to stop and smell the roses, so to speak, in an amazing natural landscape when the wind is repeatedly trying to knock you off the basalt columns you are climbing very carefully one step after the next. I'm not positive the wind gusts reached 50 mph that day but I'd totally believe they did. Those blasts stood me up, forcing me to brace into the wind if I was standing still or just stopping me in my tracks if I was walking upwind. That and the rain made it a difficult experience.

Three years ago we spent a day at Hadrian's Wall in late May with my dad. It was freezing. It shouldn't have been that windy or cold but it was. And it afforded us a measure of what the Roman soldiers stationed at the end of the empire might have experienced while gazing over empty landscapes waiting for someone dangerous to attack. I sort of felt the same way at the Causeway. Every once in a while, it's good to experience a little of Mother Nature's wrath. I'm not looking to stand in front of a hurricane or tornado or anything but a little touch every now and then is OK, even if it's not what you wanted on your end of summer holiday.

We made it that day as far as the Giant's Boot, a rock that looks suspiciously like a very large shoe (size 93-1/2 according to the Giant's Causeway website), proof perhaps that giants were at one time real and this whole science thing with the lava and the basalt and the cooling is just a load of bunk! It wasn't as far as we wanted to go but I think I was satisfied with what we saw. The weather made it an adventure. I was proud that we walked all the way from the Visitor Centre to the Boot.

Me and the Giant's Boot. It's got to be real, right? Right? 

We didn't, however, walk back. The walk from the Visitor Centre is downwind and it's refreshing how much help you welcome when walking in bad weather. The trip back was into the wind and the way those gusts buffeted my progress made me convinced that taking the shuttle bus for a mere £1 each was way way worth it. At that point we were soaking wet, cold and tired of just trying to stand up.

I wouldn't trade our Causeway experience for anything. Would it have been nice to be there on a perfect sunny day (or just partly cloudy even)? Sure. But I don't think the wind and the rain and the ocean spray made the day worse. I can think of other days I've traveled where a rainy day would have been way less enjoyable than this one. A rocky coast on the Atlantic is supposed to be unforgiving. Why would it be appropriate for us to experience anything other than what we found that day?

I'll admit, I would have liked to have been able to walk all over this remarkable natural formation. There is a real beauty in the way the stones are formed. The biscuiting has rendered some of the stones with almost identical bowl-like depressions in them. There must be a bunch of upper pieces with ball like formations that are now long gone. Even these, which stood out as puddles on our day there, seemed the same one after the other. 

Sometimes when we identify our number one attraction on vacations they disappoint. Photographs and stories sometimes make us think that places are more wonderful than they actually are. If you had told me before I went there that I would be soaking wet and subject to winds strong enough to stop me in my tracks, I'm not sure I would have looked forward to the couple of hours we spent at Giant's Causeway. 

But other than making us concentrate on where we were walking (and the stones were remarkably non-slippery by the way), it didn't affect what we did much at all. We still made it to the edge of the ocean on the stacked columns even if we had to really focus on where we were rather than taking in all we could see right away. I admit, it would have been better if the weather was perfectly sunny. I'm not convinced that the overall experience would have been better.

It's really super windy here. Makes climbing this small pile of rocks more of an accomplishment. 

One last look at the hexagons.

There are many different Irish (and even Scottish) folk tales featuring Finn McCool. His legend, if not the actual person, certainly got around. Some stories end with Finn being still alive and sleeping in a cave somewhere ready to awake when Ireland needs him most. Maybe he's somewhere in Fingal's Cave on the island of Staffa like I mentioned earlier in this post, although I'm not sure how he'd get there with his stepping stones destroyed.

If you are curious, maybe you want to head up to Fingal's Cave. If you do, you will apparently find a similar spot to Giant's Causeway with similarly sized stones once trod by giants, or at least Finn and Benandonner. Sounds like a must see on a Scotland trip if I ever run out of places to go, even if it is two islands from the mainland. 

This day trip from Belfast got us to a part of Ireland I'll never forget. The gift store at the Visitor Centre sells pictures of the place at sunset suitable for framing. I guess I got to see the place on a sunny day through that one picture. No regrets though on this day. 

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How We Did It

There are plenty of bus tours which run to Giant's Causeway from Belfast each day. Since we wanted a bit of a custom itinerary including the ability to linger as long as we wanted at some spots, we decided to rent a car and drive. I think this was the right call. Belfast city centre is super easy to get out of on the motorway and once you leave the city behind, there are very few cars to contend with while driving on the wrong side of the road. There are also no one lane roads which I was thankful for. 

You can visit the Causeway for free. It's public land and if you can find a place to park and walk to it, you can enjoy it for absolutely no admission charge. However, you can't get inside the Visitor Centre without paying the admission fee. You also can't park in the Visitor Centre parking area without paying for your ticket in. We were tipped off to a couple of nearby places that we might park our car for free and then walk around the Visitor Centre to see the Causeway. We ultimately decided not to do that. This place is a part of the United Kingdom's National Trust and that organization pays for the upkeep of the property. We figured if we were going to spend time there, we should chip in for the maintenance.

The Causeway itself is typically open to the public from dawn to dusk. The Visitor Centre is open most days in the summer from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Check their website for complete details.

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Vacation Of Thrones

Yeah...I know the title of this post is stupid. It's supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. It will make sense later on, I promise. Or at least I hope. 

On Sunday April 17, 2011 at probably just before 9 p.m., I turned on HBO in my place on North Glebe Road in Arlington, Virginia and watched the first ever episode of Game of Thrones. At that point in time fresh off The Sopranos and Deadwood (still the best HBO series ever!) I would have watched any original content on that channel and Game Of Thrones interested me enough after episode one to tune in the next week. Although honestly, I was a little skeptical. 

I warmed to it in a serious way. And for about 72 of the next 422 weeks, I made sure Sunday nights were locked onto that same cable channel wherever I was in the world, be it at home or on a cruise ship off the coast of Alaska or wherever else I was that I could tune in and watch the latest episode live. You might say I was obsessed. Although I'd probably call it dedicated. 

For the first few seasons, I associated Game of Thrones with many different locales that actually exist in our real world. Iceland. Spain. Morocco. Croatia. Malta. But as the seasons wore on and the show reached its conclusion, I started to understand more and more of the show was shot in Northern Ireland, whether it be on sound stages in Belfast or in the countryside around that same city. So in a week in Ireland and Northern Ireland, I was bound to come into contact with something from the show, right? 

I made sure of it. We spent a total of four days in and around Belfast. In three of those four days, we took in plenty of Game of Thrones sights, which have become a significant tourist industry in that part of the United Kingdom. Turns out I'm not the only one out there dedicated. Or obsessed. Pick one if you want; either way you'd be close enough.

The Dark Hedges, also known as the King's Road.

Before I get too far with this post, it does seem odd to me, considering all the amazing places I've been over the past six plus years, that I would travel to see some sites celebrating a television show. I mean a little more than ten years ago, this kind of thing wouldn't have been possible because the show didn't even exist. On the surface, it seems inauthentic in a way. It might even seem like some of the places we visited to get our GOT fix are completely artificial or inconsequential. I'll take all of that if you want to throw it at me. We had fun doing this so I'm writing about it.

Belfast is Game of Thrones central. No pilgrimage (am I really ready to call what I did a pilgrimage?) of this sort could skip the capital city of Northern Ireland. We started our journey there on our very first day after crossing into the United Kingdom on the recently installed Glass of Thrones trail. You thought the title of this post was stupid...just wait. 

Glass of Thrones, I say? I do! The final season of this exalted series featured just six episodes. On the air date of each of those last six, one giant stained glass window was unveiled at six different locations around Belfast by Tourism Ireland. All six together formed a sequence from City Hall over the River Farset to all the way north of Titanic Belfast.  About a mile and a half or maybe a bit more overall in length. They are still there. Instant tourist attraction!! And of course, we had to do all six, one for each of the four central houses in the show (Stark, Lannister, Baratheon and Targaryen) plus another for the white walkers and one final one for the Iron Throne.

Glass of Thrones number five: White Walkers. With Titanic Belfast in the background.

Each of the first four windows features scenes from the history of each principal house. There are plenty of happy memories along with some gruesome stuff in pretty much each one, although there's probably more of the latter than the former. Want to re-live the glory of the North? House Stark's display shows Jon Snow cutting down Boltons with Longclaw in the battle of the bastards (that's a happy memory) offset by the death of Robb, Talisa and Catelyn in the red wedding at the Twins. If you are a Lannister, Baratheon or Targaryen fan you might have to dig a little deeper for the joy in these things. 

Make it to the fifth Glass and you'll find Hodor holding the door against the onslaught of wights fighting to get to Brandon Stark, freshly anointed as the brand new three-eyed raven. If there's a more poignant character in the entire series than Hodor, I don't know who it is. That part of the story brings me closer to tears than any other plot line in any of the eight seasons.

Keep going to the end of the trail and you'll find the Iron Throne waiting for you. Or at least a tractor seat in front of the stained glass depiction of the Iron Throne. It's an inventive touch to add this seat in front of the last backdrop. Plus, after a mile and a half or so, a place to sit is welcomed, especially if it's been raining most of the way along your journey (like it was for ours!). Glass of Thrones done.

Clockwise from top left: Jon Snow, Tyrion with crossbow, poor Hodor and Dany with the baby dragons.

So Glass of Thrones sucked people (or at least us) into Belfast, right? Want more manufactured tourist attractions to get people to Northern Ireland? Try Door of Thrones. I told you it would get stupid-er. But if you decide to do the entire Door of Thrones circuit, be prepared to travel a lot further because they are spread around the entirety of Northern Ireland.

Not familiar with Door of Thrones? I'm not surprised. Turns out that during the filming of the series, some of the trees that flank the King's Road were felled in a storm. Yes, the King's Road is real although it's called the Dark Hedges in real life. We visited that site on the way up to the Giant's Causeway on our second day in Northern Ireland.

Anyway, rather than just cut the downed beeches up for firewood, HBO bought the trees and had doors made out of them, complete with bas reliefs of scenes from the show's history. There are a total of ten of these things. Together, they constitute the Door of Thrones set. And you'll have to travel far and wide to see them all. We found two: one at the Fullerton Arms pub in Ballycastle and one at The Cuan (pronounced queue-ann) pub in Strangford. 

The Cuan owns door number one, which shows a map of Westeros, and the Fullerton Arms owns door number six, which shows a dragon (presumably Drogon, the biggest of the three). During a stop for lunch, we managed to talk to one of the owners of The Cuan about how they acquired their door. It was apparently offered to them as a gift of thanks for housing most of the stars of House Stark along with Lena Headey during the filming of the Winterfell scenes in the early seasons of the series. I imagine the Fullerton Arms might have a similar story (if we had been allowed to stay long enough to ask them) since that pub is near Ballintoy where some of the scenes of the Iron Islands were filmed.

I think this is a pretty cool gesture from the network. If nothing else it perpetuates a constant trail of geeks like me (and worse!) visiting the places that supported the show during filming. We stopped our Door of Thrones visits at two, although we could have easily hit the one in a Belfast coffee shop if we had wanted. Two was enough I think.

The Cuan's Door of Thrones No. 1.

Detail from Door of Thrones No. 6 at the Fullerton Arms, showing Drogon.

So visiting stained glass windows and carved doors is all well and good but there has to be something more fun and real, right? You bet! Want to see the King's Road? Hit up the Dark Hedges (like we did) on the way up to Bushmill's Distillery or the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge or the Giant's Causeway or just a special stop just to see the trees. Want to see where scenes from the first season were filmed right in the historic Irish countryside? Call or email or just sign up for a tour from Game of Thrones Tours.

What's so special about Game of Thrones Tours? Well, if you are a fan of the show, pretty much everything. They offer a series of tours out of Belfast, Dublin or Derry which really amount to two different itineraries. The first is a trip to the north coast of Northern Ireland to see filming locations for the Iron Islands along with the Giant's Causeway (which is NOT in Game of Thrones). The second is a trip south of Belfast to visit Winterfell (yes THE Winterfell) and some other locations in the North associated with House Stark. After all, House Stark is hands down the best house in the series.

There's one more twist to Game of Thrones Tours' agenda: your tour will be led by someone who was actually in the show. No, you won't get Peter Dinklage or Kit Harrington or Emilia Clarke sitting at the front of your bus playing DVDs and providing their personal narrative of their experiences on the show. You won't even get Liam Cunningham (Ser Davos Seaworth) or Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm) or someone like that. All those people I'm sure are either looking for their next gig or spending time on the Comic-Con tour circuit. 

Think "extras".

Castle Audley, otherwise known as one half of the Twins.

Let me introduce you to our guide for the day: Robbie. Robbie's claim to Game of Thrones fame is as an archer for Stannis Baratheon in the Battle of the Blackwater (season two, episode nine, if you must know). If there's a tour guide out there more suited to and enthusiastic about his role in the tourism industry than Robbie is, I don't know who they are or who they work for. This guy was fantastic. He was so completely into the series and the tour he was leading and that commitment was just awesome. Get on Robbie's tour and just wait until he gets to the spot where Tyrion and Jon Snow camped on their way to The Wall. 

Just a bit more about Robbie (indulge me, OK?). He got involved in the show because HBO was looking for trained archers to be part of the cast and he was in a local archery club. Now, realistically speaking, HBO could have faked this, right? I mean it's not like we as viewers would pick up on the fact that trained archers were in the episodes, right? They could have just CGI-ed it or shot it in a way that showed arrows in the sky shot by off camera personnel. But they insisted on using extras that knew how to handle a bow and arrow.

Robbie first attended a casting call for applicants that he figured would be attended by 20 or 30 people (there were hundreds). He passed that audition but only if he spent the next four months growing out his hair and beard (he's working retail at this point but does what the network asks). Four months later (and with a full beard and long hair), he's back shooting arrows at a target for HBO. No accuracy, no part in the show. Fortunately, Robbie's not just in the archery club, he's the coach. He passes and makes it into the show.

For me this narrative is useful for two reasons. First, it shows the lengths that HBO went to get the details right in this series (let's ignore the water bottle and coffee cup in the last season, shall we?). They didn't have to have trained archers in the Battle of the Blackwater but they did anyway. Second, I think it's awesome that Robbie's life was changed completely by chance. He happened to have an interest in archery that translated into an entire new career path based on a television show. How cool is that?

Me. Cloak. Long claw. No glasses in Game of Thrones. Oh well...

The sunny morning and afternoon we spent with Robbie (the only sunny day we saw in Ireland) took us to Winterfell, the Twins, all the way north of The Wall and to the hall where the banner men of House Stark declared their allegiance to the King in the North, Robb Stark. Or in our world, we went to Castle Ward, Tollymore Forest Park and Inch Abbey. You can visit all these places on your own. But I doubt you will get the insight and have as much fun as you would if you joined Game of Thrones Tours for the day. And I really do mean a day. Like 8:30 a.m. to 5ish p.m. This is not a short trip.

Of course when you get to the places where the show was filmed, you don't necessarily see the same structures and scenes you see in the show. Yes, the season one courtyard scenes at Winterfell were shot in the courtyard of Castle Ward but there's only one tower at Castle Ward vs. two at Winterfell and the balconies where Ned and Catelyn Stark watched Bran struggle with bow and arrow target practice are not there at all. The reasons for this are simple: the second tower was added by computer and the balconies were added for the show and then disassembled. After all, Castle Ward is an historic site and legit tourist attraction not related to Game of Thrones. They can't just leave something added by a television network.

I have to say it was a little disappointing. I wanted to see Winterfell and just assumed that Castle Ward would way more resemble the Stark home than it actually did. One of the reasons I assume this was that Winterfell was in play in every season. Heck, the Night King led a siege on Winterfell in season eight. But Robbie pointed out that when Theon Greyjoy captured Winterfell, he set fire to the place. And you can't very well set Castle Ward on fire, now can you? 

HBO's solution to this dilemma was to build a full size replica of Winterfell elsewhere in Northern Ireland. Most scenes in Winterfell after the first or second season were therefore filmed on the fake Winterfell (or is it the real one?) built especially for the show. That location is off limits. For now. It's allegedly being fixed up a little and may be open for tourists as early as next year.

Robbie showing us the magic of television. Comparing real life Castle Ward to fictional Winterfell...

and elsewhere on the property at the hanging tree where Brienne of Tarth got into it with some Stark soldiers.

The other thing that struck me about some of the places we visited that day were how briefly the spots we stood that day actually appeared in the show. We stopped at a couple of points both at Castle Ward and later at Tollymore Forest Park where scenes less than 15 seconds or so in duration were filmed. I felt a little foolish being with a group of 30 or so people watching a clip of Tyrion Lannister and Bronn walking in the woods and talking for less than 20 seconds. We came all this way to see where less than 20 seconds of film were shot??? All told, outside of Castle Ward / Winterfell itself our contact with show locations in all eight plus hours we were on the road totaled probably way less than 30 minutes.

However, I will admit there was a thrill when Robbie took us to the hanging tree, the spot where Brienne of Tarth and Jamie Lannister stumble across some House Stark men who have just hanged three women for cavorting with Lannister soldiers. This was clearly a recognizable unadulterated spot where a scene in the show happened. Pretty cool. Even if it was less than 30 seconds. Brienne killed all the Stark soldiers by the way.

I also loved the spot where the Starks found the direwolf pups is the very first episode. Not because that scene was especially important to me personally (although I guess one could argue that was an event that affected the entire rest of the series) but because there's a wooden bridge that the Stark children walk over to get to the dead direwolf mother that isn't there. HBO built the wooden bridge that they cross for the episode and then removed it. The bridge appears in exactly 24 seconds of the episode. Had to have that bridge!!!

Our fearless leader Robbie showing us where the dire wolf pups were found...

and proving to us that he was actually in the show.

The highlight of the day, though, was our visit to Inch Abbey, a ruined Cistercian monastery first built in the late 12th century, where the lords of the North declared Robb Stark as King in the North. Was it the historic importance of the Abbey or the character of the Norman architecture that made this place special? No it was not. It was that we got to dress up in cloaks and play with swords. Yes, the highlight of my day in Northern Ireland was dressing up and playing soldier. And yes, I'm 51 years old!!!!

Did you know there's a procedure for donning a cloak? I figured it was just slung over your shoulders and tied in front of the neck, although after wearing an actual cloak I could see that method of wearing one of these garments being a strangulation hazard. Take the long part of the strap, pass it around your body and then fasten it to the buckled end of the short part of the strap. How people moved quickly with these things on is beyond me, let alone fight with swords. It was warm, though. Which I guess is part of the point.

Cloak on, sword in hand, our entire party (some with Stark banners) made the short walk to the Abbey itself for a group and individual photo ops. Crazy stuff that this is how I spent an afternoon on my vacation. It was completely silly and tons of fun. Add this to the list of things that I never thought I'd do on my travels around the world. I can't imagine what the legitimate tourists visiting the Abbey that we passed on our way thought was going on.

The promenade to Inch Abbey.

Nothing like dressing up and playing with swords on vacation.

If it seems from everything I've covered in this post like there's a whole industry of tourism that has developed over the last five or ten years in Ireland just related to Game of Thrones, you'd be right. There is. I asked Robbie how many days a week he brings people to Winterfell and his response was that it's his full time job. I figured this was a side gig. It's not. For him, it's his career. I'm jealous in a way.

It's also clear from visiting the Dark Hedges first thing in the morning and not being the first ones there, and being turned away from the lunch serving at the Fullerton Arms because there were too many Game of Thrones tour buses with standing reservations that this show has affected the economy of Northern Ireland and the lives of those involved in catering to nerds like me in immeasurable ways. I wrote earlier in this post that this sort of tourist attraction seems manufactured and inauthentic. It certainly isn't to those living it and making money from it every day. If you are in any way a fan of the show and are visiting Belfast, I'd definitely recommend signing up for one of these tours and embracing everything it can be.

All told, we probably spent about two whole days tracking down Game of Thrones related stuff in Northern Ireland. We could have done way more if we'd wanted to. If we had visited a year later, we would have done more. Next year (in addition to the aforementioned actually replica of Winterfell), HBO is launching the Game of Thrones Studio Tour in Belfast. We definitely would have done that.

While it's a little unlucky that we missed the Studio Tour and Winterfell by visiting this year, we did have a little GOT-related luck on this trip. There is a touring exhibition of artifacts from the show that's making its way around the world (or at least Europe). It's already been to Barcelona, Paris, Oberhausen and is currently (as of the date of this post) en route to Madrid for a late October opening. Between Oberhausen and Madrid, it was in Belfast and was scheduled to wrap up on September 1, two days before we were scheduled to arrive in Belfast. Bad luck again, it would seem. 

Dragon skull from Game of Throne: The Touring Exhibition.

But then in August, it was announced that the exhibit would be extended for one more week. What luck! Perfect for us! Want to see props like dragon skulls, statues from the crypt in Winterfell and actual swords and clothing used in the show? Go find this exhibit. While it's probably not worth making a special trip all the way to Madrid to see this stuff, if you are there and you are a fan, I'd recommend paying what might seem like an ungodly amount of money to spend a couple of hours at this thing. We did. I'd say it was worth it and provided us with just one more way we managed to make this a true pilgrimage. There I go again with the whole pilgrimage thing.

I often take trips that look at a single subject from a number of different viewpoints. We visited several different Gaudí buildings in Barcelona in 2014 and took in what seemed like innumerable temples and shrines in Japan three years after that. These types of explorations allow me to get more than one take on a single subject and add up to a richer examination of something important to me. I just never thought I'd do it for a television show. Totally worth it though.

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How We Did It

There's a lot to unpack here. 

You can find each of the six Glass of Thrones windows by opening up Google Maps and typing "glass of thrones belfast". Each of the six windows will appear on the map stretching from Belfast City Hall to north of Titanic Belfast. Simple, right? Alternately, you can find information about all six along with a map on the visitBelfast.com tourist page. The link is here. 

If you want a comprehensive page for all things Game of Thrones in Northern Ireland, try the Discover Northern Ireland website. They have a whole page devoted to tours and sights related to the show. You'll find (once again) information about Glass of Thrones as well as all ten Door of Thrones locations and beyond. Of course, they've developed an app showing you how to get to about every publicly accessible filming spot. 

If you want more information about the Fullerton Arms or The Cuan where we saw Door of Thrones Nos. 1 and 6, check out their websites. Click the name of each in the previous sentence to access each pub's website. If you go to the Fullerton Arms on your own, make a reservation or be prepared to be turned away. We were. There were two tour buses already parked out front when we got there at a little after 1 p.m. and we saw another pulling in as we departed with empty stomachs. You will likely not have the same issue at The Cuan.

If you want to visit the King's Road on your own (as we did), search for the Dark Hedges on Google Maps to find the location but don't actually drive to that spot. The actual road with the trees is closed to traffic and there's no space to park right outside. Instead, drive to the The Hedges Hotel just about a quarter mile from the King's Road itself and park there and walk. It's OK to do this. They encourage it. There's also a Dark Hedges Experience which involves guided tours in the day and night times. We didn't do this but it departs from the Dark Hedges Estate just a little further down the road from The Hedges Hotel. The webpage for the Experience is here. 

Finally, I'd very much encourage you to book a tour with Game of Thrones Tours. Their Winterfell Tour departs from the Jurys Inn in Belfast's city centre at 8:30 a.m. They do not operate daily so check the schedule of available tours on their website. I've covered some but not all of the locations where they will take you. While you could try to patch it together yourself, I'd recommend you book with them and let them do all the hard work. Besides, if you do it yourself, you won't meet any direwolves on the tour. We met Summer and Greywind!

Whatever you do in Northern Ireland related to Game of Thrones, I hope you have as much fun as we did. Valar Morghulis!

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