When we make our way back to the Middle East in the summer, we like stopping somewhere about halfway to help break up the trip and take some of the punch out of the serious jet lag that comes from flying west to east. What’s especially cool is that we can usually manage to do this by finding a 5-6 day layover somewhere, which adds virtually no expense to the airline tickets.
This year we decided to stop in Ireland for one of these extra long layovers, splitting our time between Dublin and Wicklow.
Our first hotel was on Merion Street in downtown Dublin, just a few blocks from the hustle and bustle. We began our own walking tour with a visit just across the street to St. Stephen’s Green - a beautifully landscaped park with rose gardens, curving walking paths and duck ponds (which curiously seemed to be overrun with seagulls). We visited the statue of Oscar Wilde in a neighboring park and then made our way down to the Guinness Storehouse - a 5-story circular building that provides the history of Guinness, the brewing process, Guinness advertising campaigns throughout the decades, and of course a sampling. The 5th floor and final stop on the tour is a sky lounge with 360 degree views of Dublin and a complimentary pint. Justin and I took turns feeding Harris some applesauce as we enjoyed the view.
The next stop was to a random pub for lunch. This turned out to be a horseracing bar where they were taking live bets and watching the races. There were only older men in the pub but nobody seemed in the least bothered that we were there or that we had a baby with us. We had a chicken sandwich and a corned beef sandwich as Harris discovered he was a fan of horseracing and bet 20 puffs on his favorite pony - Poppin Corks. Good ole Corks did not win, but no one tried collecting on his puffs.
We then walked past St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin Castle and strolled around the Trinity College campus. There were a fair amount of cobblestone streets - much to Harris’ delight. Finally, we had an early dinner at The Ginger Man pub where I had a delicious Guinness pie (think Shepherd's pie but with a darker, thicker Guinness gravy).
The next part of our trip took us about an hour and a half south to Wicklow - known as “the Gardens of Ireland.” We had reservations at an old hotel called the Glendalough that was previously a Monk settlement in the 6th century. The remains of a medieval cemetery and church were sitting just behind the hotel. From the back of the hotel you could pick up on of several walking trails ranging in distance from 3 to 10 kilometers. We took a different trail each of the 3 days we were here and had a lovely time strolling through the green hills and stopping to rest at one of the 3 lakes along the way. The weather couldn’t have been nicer, with temperatures in the low 70s, no rain, and a nice breeze. On our last day we took the longest trail to a rock quarry of an old abandoned mining village which was pretty cool and we managed to take Harris in the stroller almost all of the way and he seemed to thoroughly enjoy the ride and the scenery.
Something interesting we found was that there was a surprisingly high number of Russian and
Another interesting thing we learned from John, our driver was that the native Irish language, or as we may call it, Gaelic/Celtic was only spoken by about 10% of the population about 10 years ago. So the country made a concerted effort to preserve the language and it was again taught in public schools from the primary grades. So that now, the population who speaks Irish has doubled to about 20% and in another 5 years could be back up to half the population. However, he explained that some of the older generation were complaining that the Irish students are learning in school is not “proper” in terms of formal grammar, due to the whole language approach that has been used to teach school children. John joked that now his grandchildren sometimes speak to him in Irish, knowing that he cannot understand and that they get quite the kick out of this.
After having a flight canceled last minute, we made our connecting flight to London, where we had a day and a night to spend before making the last leg of our journey back to Riyadh. We stayed at a basic airport hotel since we had an early morning flight and made the most of our one day visit with a trip down to Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Big Ben and Parliament, and Westminster which were all conveniently located within a 1 square mile radius. We walked across Westminster Bridge over the Thames River which was incredibly crowded with street performers and onlookers playing shell games. We managed to visit all of these sites within 2 hours and made it back to our hotel for an early dinner and glasses of red wine from the hotel bar sipped slowly and appreciatively - our final adult beverage before returning to Riyadh.
Our original itinerary was supposed to be a direct flight from London to Riyadh, taking about 6 hours. However, the airline made changes to our flight a few weeks prior and we would first have to make a stopover in Jeddah. While this in and of itself would not have been a huge deal, the reason for this added stopover was that the Hajj season had just begun and hundreds of Muslims were making their obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca. Needless to say, the 3 of us really stood out on this flight. Some people wait their whole lives to be able to make the pilgrimage to Mecca and so for many of the passengers, they were elderly and this was perhaps their first time ever on a plane. The male pilgrims all dress in what look like white cotton towels - one wrapped around their waist and another slung over their shoulders almost like a shawl. Their chests are bare underneath. The women wear traditional black abayas. And because of the cleansing rituals that are required during this trip, the lines to get into the bathroom were long and constant throughout the 6 hour flight, which was problematic at times with a baby needing constant changing but we made it work. There was a real collective sense of community on the plane. As we came within 30 minutes of reaching Jeddah - the final stop before Mecca, several men stood up and led the passengers in a chanting sort of prayer, asking God to accept their offerings and bless their pilgrimage. Men on both sides of us were reading aloud from pocket-sized Qurans and if you’ve never hear the Quran recited before, it does have a lovely melodic sound to it that I found quite enjoyable and Harris was also quite intrigued to observe all the interesting happenings around him.
We arrived in Jeddah around 10 pm and virtually the entire plane deboarded, leaving the 3 of us to
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