Driving Around Ireland with my Parents and Grandparents

My grandparents took me and my family to Ireland in summer 2003 and we drove around in a big van for one week. When I was there, I saw all different types of animals.

For example, many of the bed and breakfasts that we stayed in had dogs. The Cliff House in Tramore had a small Scottish Terrier named Sam. Sam was really cute and he would bark whenever a car pulled into the driveway. In Kinsale, the Rossbrin bed and breakfast had a shih tzu named Ollie. He was really cute and he sat under the table when we had breakfast. He did not bark a lot.

In Ireland, dogs are allowed in many public places such as pubs, and dogs are allowed on public transportation such as buses, trains and subways. People also let their dogs walk without a leash everywhere. In the suburbs, people let their dogs roam free in their yards even when their yards do not have any fences. Even in big cities like Dublin, people let their dogs walk without a leash on. 

Dogs are not the only cool animals in Ireland. There are also many sheep. Shepherds let the sheep roam free on the side of mountain roads so the sheep can graze there. This leads to many traffic jams because the sheep roam onto the road. There are also a lot of cows and horses; however, I did not have that many experiences with these animals. 

On my trip to Ireland, I also visited Dublin. Dublin is the capital of Ireland and a very interesting city. I saw many interesting sites. We stayed at the Jury’s Hotel, which is located in Ballsbridge. The hotel was very fancy and had a good breakfast and a big pool. 

One of the most fun things that I did in Dublin was to go to the Guinness Storehouse. It was awesome. They had a very extensive gift shop and they had a room where you could see every Guinness advertisement over the last 50 years. Then when you were done with your tour you went up to the Sky Lounge, which was 100 feet off the ground and had glass walls, so you could get a good view of Dublin. They gave out free beers.

One thing that I also liked was this show that we went to in the really old Olympia Theatre. The show was spectacular. It was called “Ragus” and had a lot of traditional Irish tap dancing.  They also had a band play in between the dances. There was a narrator who said he was from the Aran Islands who was quite funny. He and his friends wrote the show there, then came to Dublin to perform.

We also went to Trinity College. Trinity College is pretty big. It is one of the oldest colleges in the world. A student guided us around and said there are over ten thousand students there. “The Book of Kells” is located there. “The Book of Kells” is an ancient Irish book about the tribal history of Ireland. It is located in an airtight case to prevent molding. There is also a huge library, very tall with ladders along each wall, which is very fun to see.

We then went to the Temple Bar district. We went to see The Clarence Hotel, which is owned by the band U2 but it didn’t seem special to me and I didn’t see any stars there. Here in Temple Bar, they had many cool shops and restaurants. Another restaurant that I thought was cool was called Super Macs. It was like an Irish McDonalds. 

To sightsee, my mom gave me brochures and said I could choose between a Dublin Bus Citytour and the Dublin Land & Water Tour on an amphibious truck called a Duck. At breakfast one day I saw kids with Viking helmets from the Viking Splash Duck tour but I chose the double decker bus. We sat upstairs and could get on and off at many places around the city. We stopped to shop. However, clothes and sneakers are expensive in Ireland, so I did not really get any clothes. 

Regan Bozman was 11 when he wrote this account on www.kidtravels.com of his family’s trip to Ireland, from summer 2003.