In summer 2022 when my boyfriend and I were travelling, it was post COVID, and since the number of travellers increased (or got back to normal?), every airport in Europe was crazily crowded. (Tallinn airport wasn’t an exception, but it seemed to be better than Dublin airport or Manchester airport according to news.) Therefore I decided to write a post about how Dublin airport actually was.
First of all, June is generally a vacation season in Europe. In Japan it’s the rainy season, so there may not be many tourists, but in Europe many people take longer vacation days from their annual leave between May and August to travel.
Ireland is one of the European countries where many people go, and of course people mainly go to Dublin, therefore Dublin airport gets very busy and crowded too. For this reason, the airport is more congested than any other season in general.
However, it was a post-COVID time.
According to my Dublin friend F, people forgot the rules for the cabin baggage, and some of them have actually brought big whole bottles of shampoo. Because of such passengers, it seemed to take time for security checks. But this is merely one of the assumptive reasons, and yet mine is:
People were not able to travel owing to COVID, as per which the security checkers were laid off, but then now it’s post COVID, and they need more employees at security checks.
I don’t think airlines and airports increase the number of flights all at once, so I believe we cannot say it is because of the increase of the flight numbers.
In our case, perhaps because our flight was in the morning, the situation was much better than I was worried. However, I thought if it had been a flight in the afternoon, the situation might have been chaotic.
2. From Dublin city centre to Dublin airport
Our plane was planned to depart at 9.30 in the morning Usually, personally I go to the airport 2 hours before the departure, and yet I received an email from Ryanair that the passengers should be at the airport 2.5 hours, and 3.5 hours before the departure if the passengers have check in luggages.
I talked about this to my Japanese friend A’s husband in Dublin, he said he would have been at the airport at 6 am, i.e. 3.5 hours beforehand.
I wondered, and decided to be there at around 6.30 am.
From the accommodation in Dublin to Dublin airport I personally wanted to take the Dublin bus, but we decided to take a taxi the previous night. (I didn’t think about anything, but my boyfriend thought the taxi fee would be cheaper in the morning than when we saw.)
Then, when I was about to call a taxi, he asked me the price, I said “It says maximum 27 EUR.” and he said “Let’s take a bus…”
Man, it’s too late. 😂
If I had known the situation in the airport, I might have been able to change the plan, but the situation was unknown until we arrived there. Since I need to get a visa check at Ryanair and it’s too late to depart by taking a bus, I called a taxi.
As for the taxi, there will be a different article.
It took approximately 10 to 15 minutes by taxi from the centre to Dublin airport.
3. Ryanair’s visa check
When going back from Ireland to Estonia, of course I needed a visa check.
At Ryanair’s check in counter in Dublin airport, there was only one counter for the visa check. Another five or six counters were used for those who have check-in luggages. Even at past 6.30 am, the queue was already organised, and therefore the visa check-in counter was also used for check-in luggages. However, it was meant to be for a visa check, the Ryanair staff let me though prioritised.
Probably because this time we went to the check in counter together, the Ryanair staff gave me two boarding passes.
He looked a bit happy.
I’m happy too.
By the way, the paper that I printed out just in case was not necessary at all as they don’t give us a stamp anymore. There is no point in bringing the printed stuff.
4. Security check at Dublin airport
We were waiting for the security check for quite a while but less than one hour. It took more time than Tallinn airport, and yet we didn’t need to worry about our flight.
However, it took around one hour in total for the visa check and security check eventually.
5. Security check isn’t the only one you would queue in Dublin airport
At Dublin airport, the security check is not the only one you may queue for.
On arriving at Dublin airport, the airport staff asked us if we came for the departure, and then guided us to the specific lane. (The route to the checkin counter was the same as before though. It was a bit irritating that we had to be guided.)
In addition to this, cafes in Dublin airport also had long queues.
I craved coffee, and I was hungry, so I decided to buy something at a cafe near our flight’s gate. On Ryanair’s flight, you can get a cup of coffee (and maybe other non-alcoholic drinks) for 3 EUR, so the price was almost the same. It depends on you whether you buy at the airport or Ryanair’s plane.
★Summary
Eventually, when we arrived at the flight gate, we had enough time so we have no idea how crowded afterwards at the security check in Dublin airport it was. Maybe there was a longer queue. It could happen at that time. Therefore our decision to go to Dublin airport earlier was right.
We arrived in Tallinn at 3.30 pm, and we both were exhausted.
Before the trip, I had seen a post on Facebook thatTallinn airport was crazily crowded, but in real life it was not like that actually. However, I thought we should perhaps be more careful in other cities (especially popular cities in summer).
Being at the airport earlier is better than having a too tight schedule or being late.
Even when you have been on a diet, on a trip you want to eat something you want to try, don’t you. Of course we were not able to afford eating at restaurants and cafes for every meal, but still we enjoyed many restaurants and cafes in Ireland. In this article I include some restaurants where you can eat something Irish!
First of all, let’s talk about Dublin! Dublin is a capital city in Ireland like Tallinn in Estonia, but Dublin is much more urban and you can have a lot of international cuisines.
When I travel from Estonia, I want to eat something not only local but also international which is scarcely available in Estonia and with better quality (because it is not tasty and/or it does not exist in Estonia)…
a. Boojum
Boojum is an Irish burrito chain restaurant. My first burrito in my life was Boojum in Dublin. I still don’t know what super authentic burrito is, and it seems real Mexican burrito seems to be different, but still I like Boojum’s burrito as it tastes good. In Estonia, it’s not easy to get a burrito. (The portion isn’t enough, or personally I’m not satisfied with the contents of a burrito in Estonia.)
We happened to find a Boojum restaurant in Smithfield where we were supposed to stay, so we went there. In Boojum, you can customise your burrito. However, it might be difficult if you don’t know how to do it. (My boyfriend seemed to be struggling a bit, and when I ordered a burrito at Boojum for the first time, I struggled too.) Since it is a chain restaurant, they handle orders really fast.
He had never eaten burrito before, and wanted to compare it with kebab. 😂
The result: kebab is better. 😂
I like both.
They also have a menu called burrito bowl, and yet be careful as the portion is bigger than burritos. (In Estonia the portion of a burrito bowl was better than a burrito at a Mexican restaurant…)
They had light breakfast as well as sandwiches. The sandwiches were hot. The portion was big enough. It was tasty though.
They have teas and coffees but it seemed they didn’t have many kinds of juice. I don’t basically drink juice, but he drinks. It appeared to be only juice with some kinds of vitamins.
As for teas, they have both English and Irish breakfast teas! Of course I chose the Irish one. You don’t need to tell them to give you a jar (?) of milk as they for sure give you with tea. By the way, they serve you tea in a pot, so maybe you can ask for two cups to share? Although It is normal to get served in a pot even for one person in Ireland and Scotland…
I searched some cafes in advance, and on Tuesday morning in Dublin, we went to a nice-looking one (as he didn’t care, I chose there), it was full. The cafe seemed to be small and popular, so we took plan B.
But, it was full too?
What on earth are they doing on Tuesday morning?
I had only 2 plans for breakfast, so I was a bit disappointed, but I immediately searched again on site, and we went to La Pausa Caffe.
Four days in a row, we had Irish breakfast at B&Bs, and he liked it, so he was about to order one again there. However, eventually he chose sandwiches, saying
I understand that feeling. When it comes to something local, I want to eat the authentic one too.
By the way, later he asked my friend A’s husband and friend F if they have Irish breakfast every day. I felt like he had been asking Japanese people if we eat sushi every day, so I enjoyed that moment. (This is because he barely knew Ireland at that time.)
Unfortunately they have Irish breakfast only a few times a year.
I get it, we can’t eat that heavy stuff as a breakfast for 365 days. 😂
The breakfast at La Pausa Caffe was good, but since I have temporomandibular joint dysfunction, I had to close my mouth manually once. It happens regularly, so I know how to fix it and wasn’t surprised, but it bothered me, yes. My boyfriend was surprised. 😂
At La Pausa Caffe you can have bagels too. I chose a bagel. I didn’t have any energy to customise it, hence I selected simply the one with salmon, cream cheese and vegetables. When I came to Dublin in 2019, although it was a different place I had a bagel too.
This is because in Estonia bagels are not sold one by one, and it is not popular at all. LaterI found you can eat bagel sandwiches at a cafe called Ruby in Tallinn. However, I would say that is the only place you can get a bagel not in a dozen or anything. On the other hand Estonia’s neighbour – in Latvia bagels appear to be more frequently eaten. Perhaps due to such cultural differences (More Jewish are in Latvia), he had no idea what bagels were. That actually surprised me as Latvia is just over there for us.
The con in my opinion is that they served me a cup of coffee even before the meal. I wanted it after the meal. However, the overall was good.
In 2016 when I lived in Dublin, I came here some times with my friends. Before going there, suddenly I asked my boyfriend “Do you know Irish coffee!?” and he was like what-the-heck-is-that.
For those who have no idea what Irish coffee is, it is
coffee with Irish whiskey.
It’s alcohol.
Therefore, at Vice Coffee Inc when we were about to order something, I asked him “Do you want to try Irish coffee?”, and he immediately said yes.
Irish coffee
I don’t know the price of Irish coffee at Vice Coffeeto Inc as it was on my friend F, but in general Irish coffee is often a bit less than twice as expensive as normal coffee.
Spiked hot chocolate
That day I tried an unfamiliar drink too: spiked hot chocolate. It’s not just hot chocolate but with Bailey’s (cream liquor)!
Both Irish coffee and spiked hot chocolate tasted good.
If you are not tolerant to strong alcohol or not a fan of coffee, the latter one might be better. Both are eventually alcohol though.
e. White Rabbit
A Korean restaurant that my friend F recommended to my boyfriend who wanted to eat something Korean is White Rabbit. It was also because White Rabbit is close to Vice Coffee Inc.
It was more like a canteen rather than a fancy restaurant, and it seemed partially the menu was a Japanese fusion.
We chose a bowl with sweet and spicy pork, vegetables, and egg, which were on rice. At White Rabbit you can choose a sauce, and we both chose gochujang.
We liked it!
It cost around 20 EUR for two.
f. Pho Kim
We went to Pho Kim with my friend A and her husband.
As per his request to have some Vietnamese cuisine, they selected a Vietnamese restaurant which was their favourite too. The only tasty Vietnamese restaurant that I know in Tallinn is Pho bar. I like pho, and Pho Bar’s pho is good, but they don’t have many varieties.
Since we had a late lunch, we ordered Vietnamese spring rolls and something like an omelette.
We (friend A, her husband and I) thought it’s called spring rolls nevertheless it is deeply friend or raw, but technically speaking it’s officially called summer roll or Vietnamese spring roll. (This is said to be because the fried one is Chinese.)
In Germany where my boyfriend once lived they call it summer roll.
We found this fact because he said “Is this spring roll summer roll? In Germany they called it summer rolls.”
I personally want to go to Pho Kim again, and want to try other dishes. They have lots of menus, and the restaurant appeared to be run by a Vietnamese person.
g. Fibber Magees
The place we spent the last night on this trip was a bar called Fibber Magees. My friend told my boyfriend who loves metal, and since we promised to go for pints a the last night, we went there.
He ordered Guinness twice. He said he loved it.
I had long-hoped Swmithwick’s! It’s red ale. While travelling in west Ireland, I couldn’t buy it as one can… On the final night, I finally could enjoy it! I chose cider for the second pint, but I thought I should have chosen Smithwich’s again or Guinness.
Fibber Magees also had Asahi beer (Japanese beer)!!
If you love metal, you should probably try this bar.
2. Galway
In Galway we went to only two restaurant and cafe! Our accommodation served as breakfast, and I bought microwave meals for one of the two nights.
a. Donnelly’s of Barna Restaurant & Bar
Donnelly’s of Barna Restaurant & Bar is a gastro pub 2 minutes by car from our accommodation in Barna in Galway. (A gastro pub is like a restaurant and bar.)
Perhaps since Barna is a countryside town, there were lots of old people, but they were having fun.
Looking at the menu, we said
“This is expensive…”
However, I thought that in the first place the price range was normal for me, and wanted to pay for his meal as he drove a car a lot, so we stayed there.
I ordered fish and chips, and he ordered a burger with Irish beef. His burger was slightly more inexpensive. The price to dine out in Ireland was as expensive as to do in Sweden. (That is, it costs 1.5 times more expensive than Estonia.)
I like both fish and chips, but I’m not a fan of fish in fish and chips. I ordered it to enjoy malt vinegar. It’s very tasty to add malt vinegar on chips with salt.
In Estonia you can also get fish and chips, and bars have them as part of their menus, but they never have malt vinegar. That’s why I want to have it, and therefore I was satisfied.
I planned somewhere else, but since it seemed they offeufrred only takeaways, we went to Galway Cakery Café in the shopping centre.
At Galway Cakery Café we had an Italian menu. My boyfriend chose calzone, and I ordered panini with goat cheese and vegetables. It didn’t taste like goat cheese… It was good enough though.
In my case I had possibilities to choose cheese. The other option was perhaps feta cheese. (I don’t remember that much…)
3. Mayo
In Mayo we went to only two restaurant and cafe too. This is because on the first day we had sandwiches that the owner of the accommodation in Barna, Galway, for lunch, our B&B in Mayo served us breakfast, and we got food at a supermarket in Castlebar (Mayo’s county town) for one of the two evenings.
a. Maple Chinese Restaurant (Take away)
In Ballinrobe where we stayed in Mayo, there was nothing. We planned to get food at a supermarket, but the kitchen in our accommodation was not for guests, so we were not allowed to use it. In the dining room, there was no microwave either, so I chose Maple Chinese Restaurant where we still didn’t have to pay a lot.
I still don’t know why he selected Chinese, and he found one, but it offered only takeaway. Later we found another Chinese restaurant which was Maple Chinese Restaurant, and we went to the town of Ballinrobe.
However, they closed the restaurant, and they accepted only takeaway orders, so we eventually brought food to the accommodation.
They had lots of dishes though. He chose Chow Mein. I chose the one which I could select the main and the side for, hence I chose the stir fried beef and vegetables in a spicy way, and rice as a side dish. (Of course they offered chips as a side dish! It didn’t cost extra if the order was rice or chips, but it seemed to cost extra if you choose friend rice, etc.)
The price was the same as what he chose, but
“Yours looks tastier than mine…”
😂
The portion was quite big. I was satisfied with two thirds. He ate the rest. I’m glad he enjoyed it.
Personally it was okay, but since we didn’t have many options to get food itself, I don’t make any complaints. 😂
b. Supermacs
Supermacs is Irish McDonald’s. (Of course there are original McDonald’s in Ireland.) This is not in the west or County Mayo but on O’Connell street in Dublin, too.
I have known Supermacs since I lived in Dublin, but I’m not a huge fan of burgers or fast foods in the first place, so I had never been there, whilst my boyfriend loves burgers and sometimes goes to Estonian (or Blatic) McDonald’s – Hesburger. (However he’s not fat at all. How envious it is that he doesn’t have to care about it.) Therefore, as he had wanted to go to Supermac since I talked about Supermacs, we went to Supermacs in Castlebar for lunch.
Beides, he loves bacon. As I expected, he chose a burger with bacon. (Once he was told that the cholesterol level was high, and since then he less frequently had bacon.) I didn’t have anything specifically I wanted to try, so I ordered the cheese burger meal.
If it’s McDonald’s in Japan, we can choose vegetable-fruit mix juice, 100% fruit juice, coffee or tea, and yet in Supermacs they offer only sparkling soft drinks and water.
Me? I chose a bottle of water.
Although you may think “You should have chosen something else cos water costs nothing!”, I don’t like the afterwards of fullness in my stomach with fizzy drinks, so water was fine for me. (Plus, it was helpful for us to hydrate ourselves with that water. Everything was alright.)
The burgers were, even though he chose a big one, small unlike the images, so you don’t need to worry about the size and portions. Therefore, the cheese burger that looked normal size in the image was smaller than I thought so I wasn’t full at all.
In terms of chips, I do prefer McDonald’s. especially the saltiness. For some reason, Supermacs served a tiny bag of salt for chips separately. (They will give you even if you don’t ask.)
Overall I like McDonald’s better in my opinion.
★Summary
When I lived in my hometown, as a family trip, I went to Cairns in Australia and Guam in the US. Although we stayed in the hotels, we always had bread, cheese and fruits that we bought for breakfast beforehand at a local supermarket to enjoy local foods and get them like a local, instead of hotel meals, which was my mum’s idea. I was a teenager at that time, and I was interested in different cultures and felt different and special when it comes to non-Japanese foods which are different from Japanese products even though they were normal in local and normally available in local supermarkets. Therefore I liked this style of travelling.
Because of this, on this trip to Ireland, though I wondered if we would keep going to cafes and restaurants all the time or if we could get food in supermarkets as this was the first time to travel abroad with him, it was something middle of those styles, so I was comfortable. (I was like “Oh you are also okay with supermarkets’ ham and cheese only.”) Since I felt comfortable, I was rather glad that there was no impression that the “Random foods from a supermarket are fine” mentality was not frugal. (My main reason is surely financial. It’s too much in everything if I eat out every meal.)
Even on a trip with friends, the way of thinking about how to spend money is important, so it was good that ours are similar. I thought my solo trip was too frugal though.
In this article Included Irish foods and drinks, and yet those are just part of Irish culinary culture. There are more Irish dishes. Since I love Ireland too much, I want to cook Irish (or Guiness) stew or coddle now. 😂😂 It’s such a pity that I can’t get Irish sausages in Estonia though…
After enjoying Galway and Mayo in Ireland, my boyfriend and I came back to Dublin. We randomly or accidentally set the date and time of the 27th of June, 2022 to return the rented car in Dublin, hence we had this kind of schedule, but honestly I agreed with him and actually wanted to stay in those counties more…
However, I was still personally satisfied in Dublin because I could see my friends as well as sightseeing. By the way, in addition, it seemed to be noisier in Dublin than before. In this article I summarised what we did in Dublin.
1. Harry Styles’s Love on Tour 2022 at Aviva Stadium
The original reason why I decided to go to Ireland was because of Harry Styles’s concert.
Further originally, Harry Styles’s concert that I was supposed to go to was planned to be held in 2020, and it was 2019 when I bought a ticket. It was planned in Oslo, Norway in May, 2020. However, owing to COVID, his tour in Europe had been postponed without any new dates determined, and eventually everything was cancelled. Instead, they expanded the tour itself, and made a new list of the tour dates.
Then I found one in Dublin.
“If I go to Harry’s concert, Dublin is the only option!” I thought. In addition, I wanted to go to Northern Ireland, and I invited my boyfriend as I thought it would be more fun if there was any travel companion. Since in Ireland the traffic side is opposite (to Estonia or the US), he wanted to try (to drive there) and agreed to my suggestion. (Of course, I told him “There will be a moment that we will need to do something separately as I will go to the concert” at that time!)
The concert was held on our first day on our trip in Ireland.
When I was an exchange student in Dublin, I went to lots of concerts and gigs in Dublin, and I have watched Gaelic sports live, so including that, I know Croke Park, 3 Arena, The Academy as well as The Olympia Theatre.
This time I went to Aviva Stadium. Aviva Stadium is located a bit far from the centre, and it’s not too simple to access there. Aviva Stadium is gigantic. As a Japanese person, I can tell you Aviva Stadium is as huge as Kyocera Dome.
Unlike Japanese artists’ concerts, non-Japanese artists’ concerts always have opening acts, so if you are not interested in them, (and if you have a selected seat not General Admission) then you can go there later, which shouldn’t be a problem. (The merchandising might be sold out though.)
Until the time I should be at Aviva Stadium, I spent time with my boyfriend, and eventually I didn’t stay at the concert til the end. We were going to sleep at my Japanese friend who I met in Dublin in 2016 (called friend A)’s place, and I felt bad, leaving him alone in an unfamiliar city, so I left Aviva Stadium earlier, but I perfectly enjoyed Harry’s music even at the DART (train) station while waiting for it.
By the way, as for the transport to and from Aviva Stadium, I used Luas (tram) and DART (train). I knew how often I would need to use transport in Dublin before hand, I bought a 24-hour Leap (8 EUR) at Dublin airport beforehand.
While it seems Aviva Stadium is one of the top 10 sightseeing places in Dublin, personally I wouldn’t go there unless there is a concert again. If interested, then maybe you should go there.
2. If you drive a car in Dublin…
On the trip to Ireland in June 2022, we used a car as a main transport, and yet since the flights were to and from Dublin, the beginning and the ending of the trip was in Dublin.
Therefore, the origin of the main trip was Dublin. Dublin is a capital city in Ireland, and though it is not as congested as London, it’s still crowded enough and noisy, and there are lots of cars and buses. Bedies, there is Luas the Dublin tram which is an unfamiliar transport for the Japanese when it comes to driving.
Furthermore, there are a number of traffic lights, and for drivers for sure it’s time-taking.
What is worse, if you encounter drivers who don’t really follow the traffic rules or who are not really good at driving, it’s irritating.
In Dublin the driving progress wasn’t smooth so my boyfriend seemed to have a tendency to get stressed out.
3. Exhaustion and irritability
When we went to Galway from Dublin, the final destination was Barna which was located beside the country roads along the sea, so there was not so much traffic, and it was comfortable, and even if we got tired, we still had some more mental capacity.
However, when we went back to Dublin from Mayo, the situation was the opposite. It takes around three hours on one way both between Dublin – Galway and Mayo – Dublin.
We left our accommodation in Mayo in the morning, heading to Dublin, and we were all good until we entered County Dublin. After driving for a couple of hours, my boyfriend exploded.
What was worse, we wanted to change the route in Waze, but since he was driving, his Waze accepted only voice. However since my English isn’t American English, Waze didn’t recognise my English. Then I was guiding him based on Google maps on my phone, but perhaps because he was not able to check the map with his eyes, he got much more stressed out.
When arriving in Dublin, we still had some more time to check in the accommodation, so we returned the car, and I took him to a cafe, and I told him:
Can you please stop using swear words to me. I don’t care when you use to others, but not to me.
😅
After this, we checked in the accommodation, and I had him take a nap. I knew if he took a nap, he was able to recharge himself physically so he gets better mentally.
However, in general, you should be careful with going to Dublin from somewhere in Ireland. It was daytime during a weekday, and yet there was a lot of traffic, and I repeatedly wished I had been able to take a turn with him if I had been able to drive…
4. Dunnes Store
Dunes Store is a retail chain in Ireland, and you can buy fashion goods, groceries, houseware, and so on. I bought a green turtle neck sweater in 2016 when I lived in Dublin, and it lasted for 4 or 5 years. If it’s a capital town in a county even like Castlebar in Mayo, there appeared to be Dunnes Store even in the countryside. (Not very sure, but there was, in Castlebar.)
I knew there was Tesco (British supermarket chain) in Jervis shopping centre in Dublin, but it was a bit far for us at that time to walk there, so we grabbed something to eat in Dunnes Store. So the purpose of the use of Dunnes Store for us was just to get food. 😂
On the contrary, I personally think Dunnes Store isn’t satisfactory as a supermarket.
If I needed to use a supermarket in Dublin, I would go to Tesco, Lidl, or Aldi. (And when I lived in Dublin, I literally always went to those supermarkets.)
5. First-time meet up in six years
In Dublin, I met my Dublin friend for the first time in six years. I pinged him before travelling but there was no reply, and no answer when I called him on the first day. It seemed he was sick, and after his recovery, he met us.
We talked a lot. In Europe, even if you don’t really have degrees, you can still get some proper jobs, but Ireland seems quite similar to the UK, so he said it was difficult to get a job in a company if a person does not graduate from a university. Also in his case, there was a company which responded to him after he had been waiting for six months. Overall even for the Irish, it’s very difficult to get a job in Ireland (or maybe in Dublin).
In my personal experience, I have had a first interview with a HR person from a company in Manchester, and she indeed asked me what I had done and what I learnt in the university. This is real.
Besides, Ireland is getting more and more expensive. Of course the rent has been increased, and if you live in a shared flat near the centre of Dublin, around 1000 EUR would be gone every month. (I searched.) In addition there are utilities. Even if the salary looks good, depending on an occupation and a company, the whole salary can be gone for only the cost of living.
Since salaries in general don’t give us an opportunity to save money, I thought Dublin might no longer be a place to live in my life. (But maybe it’s okay to live in the suburbs. As repeatedly said, if I have a car.)
It was great to see my friend again. We also asked him one question as my boyfriend was spoken to by homeless people who thought he was Irish multiple times while he was wandering around Dublin on his own. Though I didn’t agree, my friend said
“You don’t look from Dublin but Galway.”
😂
He appeared to be Galwayan.
😂
We were talking in one cafe in Dublin, and yet as for the cafe, there will be a separate article.
6. Churches in Dublin
I’m more like a castle lover than churches whilst there are multiple churches in Dublin. (Based on my bias, Irish castles seem to be located in the middle or the west in Ireland like Glaweay.) We visited three churches, so here is a list of those churches that we attempted to visit.
a. St. George’s Church
St. George’s Church is a church that we coincidentally found while we were looking for a cafe for breakfast in Dublin. My boyfriend constantly said “This is not a church”, and indeed it didn’t look like a church. However, when we looked at the map, it was marked as a “church”, and he said “This is pagan. (Because there are something like Greek letters) this is not Catholic.”
As I googled, St. George’s Church appeared to be a hybrid of Gothic and Greek Revive.
His mum is Cathoilc, but he himself doesn’t like Catholicism as it’s mentally not good (according to him). Also he has rich knowledge about religions. That’s why he was commenting like that.
You can visit St. George’s Church by walking if you stay in the centre of Dublin as this church is located in the Northern part of the city centre.
b. St. Michan’s Church
St. Michan’s Church was a church that I wanted to go to if we had time. There are mummies, and I wanted to see them.
However, when we visited St. Michan’s Church, it was too late to see mummies. We were 30 minutes late. So given that you wish to see mummies at St. Michan’s Church, you should go there earlier maybe.
You can go there by walk in Abbey street to Smithfield (to the west side of Dublin).
c. Christ Church Cathedral
Friend F recommended us to go to Christ Church Cathedral. I’m not sure if I’m just not interested in remembering names or not good at remembering names, but I was like “where the heck is that”, and yet when we arrived at Christ Church Cathedral, I thought
I have come here before.
😂
However, we couldn’t enter again and only the choir members were allowed.
Christ Church Cathedral is located in the south of the city centre of Dublin after crossing the River Liffey, and just beside the main road.
7. Need to print out something?
I wondered if I needed a printed visa check paper for Ryanair’s visa check, so we went to a stationery shop (Kings Stationery) just in case. This shop is also located in the city centre. You can walk there.
However, in order to print a stuff out, I needed to use an incredibly super old computer (with Windows 7) in the shop, and it cost 1 EUR for 10 minutes. We both didn’t have a 1 EUR coin, and the machine didn’t accept smaller coins, so my boyfriend asked the shop owner to exchange, and she did. (We exchange a 2 EUR coin or two 0.50 EUR coins, but if you have only 5 EUR note, then it might be difficult.)
In addition to the old computer, the mouse didn’t work properly either. (It froze frequently.)
Since there was a 10 minute time limit, I rushed myself, and mistakenly printed out an unnecessary part too. However, it cost only 0.10 EUR for two one-side papers in black and white. 😂
I tend to get stressed out when a machine is super slow, so I peson;ally don’t recommend this shop. (Besides, you probably don’t need to have paper stuff for Ryanair’s visa check.)
In this shop, they accepted a card payment only when the total sum is over 5 EUR. This is a different point than Estonia. In Estonia, even if you print something out in a small stationery shop, and the payment is only 0.10 EUR, you can use a card. I was lucky that I had coins (as I knew I would need for Dublin buses).
I googled several places in Dublin, where I might have been able to print out beforehand, and coincidentally King Stationery was located in a walkable distance, so I chose there, but there are more options if you need to print out.
However, there are still lots of machines that accept only coins, hence I would recommend bringing coins anyway.
8. Hello again in a more proper way
We also met friend A and her husband who helped us on the first day again.
My boyfriend said he wanted to have Korean or Vietnamese cuisine, so we went to a Korean restaurant for lunch, and a Vietnamese restaurant when we met them again. (There’ll be a different article about this too.)
Friend A is around five years older than me, and my boyfriend asked me “Isn’t she your ‘Senpai’?”
“Senpai” means students or colleagues usually who are older than you. Sometimes they can be “senpai” even if they are younger than you but if they join your company or enrol in a university earlier, or if you failed yearly admission exams, decided to study more for your ideal school and enrol in in one year or more. Or if you study further like for a master’s degree, and then join a company.
Friend A is none of them, so she’s not “senpai”.
When I was an exchange student in Ireland in 2016, I joined an independent film shooting team as a crew, and we met there. When I visited Dublin in 2019, we went to a cafe with another post crew who is friend K and lives in Dublin now with her husband and son. However, she got COVID after her business trip, so we couldn’t meet. She’s as old as friend A. Since they are not my “senpai” in a company or school, I use the word “friend”. (And I don’t think it’s wrong.)
My boyfriend was always withdrawn in Tallinn, but perhaps because it was a different place, he met my friends without any disgust. (I often want to meet people who I hung out with a lot in the past when I travel to a place where they live now.) I’ve never been a person who wants to meet new people a lot, and yet I rather want to avoid such occasions, so I understood him, but I’m a person who wants to meet old friends a lot.)
9. Metal bar in Dublin recommended by a local
I was wondering if I should have written about this place in an article where I talked about restaurants and cafes in Ireland, but since this place was the only place for both of us just to have pints, I decided to list it here. I included this place in the other article.
As we met my Irish friend F, due to the fact that my boyfriend likes metal, he was asking the demand of metal in Ireland to friend F. Then friend F recommended us Fibber Magees. It was located just across the Vietnamese restaurant that we and friend A and her husband went to.
The prices of alcohol were normal I guess. They had Asahi beer (Japanese beer). We had Guinness, Asashi, Smithwick’s and Bulmer’s (Irish apple cider).
I asked my boyfriend if he liked Fibber Magees, and he said “Normal”, but his face looked happy. 😂
It seems they had many songs that he knew too. (I don’t really know metal. If we talk about music genres, then I prefer (Japanese) rock.) Therefore, if you are a metal fan, maybe you should go there.
★Summary
In this article at some points the stories weren’t really about sightseeing, but I included them as this article’s topic was most suitable for those stories.
Maybe because I lived in Dublin before, I feel Dublin is no longer a bucket list country to travel to, and on the other hand, I still want to visit Dublin because I want to see my friends. I thought maybe it’s a good idea to go to Ireland for a year when I don’t go to Japan (as both countries are pricey).
Although the duration of staying in Estonia is much longer than in Ireland, Irealnd is still my second hometown. Estonia can never be.
On the trip to Ireland in June, 2022, our next destination after Galway was County Mayo.
It’s a where-the-heck-is-that place, but presumably the trip in terms of the contents is better than Galway? More enjoyable maybe in my opinion? Here I also include some tips on how to drive in the countryside in Ireland.
When it comes to towns and cities in Ireland, you may think of Dublin, Galway, and Cork, and if you have a bit more knowledge, then you may think about Limerick, Donegal, Sligo, and Wicklow.
However, do you know a county called Mayo? I knew only the name but didn’t exactly know where geographically it was.
County Mayo is a countryside county more northern than County Galway. There are train tracks, and yet as repeated mention in this Ireland trip series,
it’s more convenient to have a car.
You may think “There seems to be nothing”, and yet it was a surprisingly fun place to go, hence maybe Mayo is better than Galway in terms of sightseeing, actually.
2. Zooks wanted to visit a castle
Between Ballinrobe where our accommodation was and Westport which I will talk about in the following chapter, there is a castle. I am personally fond of this kind of abandoned castle. In fact when I travelled to Scotland or Siegen in Germany, I dropped by such abandoned castles whenever I found them.
Nonetheless this time I also wanted to get close and see it, I found out that that castle seemed to be a private property while we were looking for a car park, so I gave it up.
It sounded like we could have gotten closer if we had asked the owner, but we didn’t have time to check who the owner was, so we just passed by.
In Galway there are lots of castles too, and yet it was rainy when we stayed in and we couldn’t go, so I think castle fans can enjoy Galway and Mayo when it’s sunny. For this reason, I want to revisit Galway.
3. Small but cute town: Westport
We went to Westport due to my boyfriend’s request.
At that time he wore a pair of three-year-old shoes, and those got flooded inside owing to the rainy days in Galway, hence we were looking for shops where we could buy some trainers.
While wandering around Westport, we were simultaneously looking for shoe shops, but since it was Sunday, almost all of the shops were closed, and the only shop which seemed to sell trainers was also closed. Therefore we couldn’t buy any in Westport.
However, in Westport there are a number of cafes, and it might be a good idea to drop by there for a break on a long trip. It was a small but cute town.
The trademark is a clocktower. When we went to Westport, it sometimes rained but sometimes stopped raining, which is typical Irish weather. This is why my photo doesn’t look marvellous, but the town was really pretty, so I was glad to go there.
My Japanese friend A’s husband also later said “Westport is good.”
4. Mayo’s county town: Castlebar
Before going to Westport, we were searching the destinations, and I told him “There is Sports Direct in Castlebar!”. However, later I realised that perhaps he thought I was talking about some kind of bar. He looked “???” when we were about to leave Westport. I told him “It’s 30 minutes away from here (Westport)”, and he finally understood.
Castlebar is said to be a county town in Mayo, and it was bigger than Westport indeed.
Castlebar has a big parking area in the centre of the town, and it’s shown on the map too. When we went to Castlebar, since it was Sunday, it cost nothing. (Probably this is because of the countryside. I’m sure as I’m from the countryside inJapan.)
We of course went to Sports Direct.
He bought a pair of trainers, and it costs less than 60 EUR.
If you have lived in Estonia, you would feel “That’s so cheap!”. Fashion stuff (particularly shoes) in Estonia should be estimated to cost 100 EUR when buying. He also estimated that price. As he was wondering if he should buy shoes, he said “I would spend too much money if I bought shoes here…” (On the other hand I said “wherever you buy, it’s still an expense.” 😂
Due to the price range in Estonia, he was happy about the inexpensiveness in Ireland. 😂
I’m happy that he found good trainers too.
After that we were just walking around in Castlebar.
Although it is called a country town, as Castlebar is surely much smaller than Dublin, it doesn’t take time to see around. (I felt my hometown might be more satisfactory. 😅)
5. Do you know Achill island?
We went to Achill island via Newport from Castlebar.
Again, it’s a where-the-heck-is that island, and yet the Irish seemed to know there.
I personally like the idea of going to an island by car, so I agreed to it. Achill island is more countryside than Ballinrobe where we stayed in Mayo.
a. Never use Waze
I will write in more detail, but we were heading to White Cliffs of Ashleam by car at that time. We were using Waze which is an app with a map and traffic information, and yet it led us to a weird countryside road. What was worse, there was no way in real life unlike what Waze showed us.
Me: we got to go back. We can’t go forward.
My boyfriend: But where are we going.
Me: If we don’t go back, we can’t do anything.
Therefore, once we went back, and landed on a properly paved road, we were able to go to White Cliffs of Ashleam by using Google maps.
This time we were able to travel on the proper roads indeed!!
I guess Waze works well only in cities.
b. White Cliffs of Ashleam
White Cliffs of Ashleam is not just a cliff. You need to go up the mountain quite a lot. Besides, the roads are pretty winding, and the height is great. At that time it was very windy, and we didn’t have any idea when the sheep would pop in front of us, and the inline was steep too. Hence I was a bit scared.
However, the view from the top was beautiful. It was my first time to see the Atlantic Ocean. “It would be greater if it was sunny”, I wished again… 😅
c. Keem beach
After enjoying the view in White Cliffs of Ashleam, we went to Keem beach weather my boyfriend wanted to go. Achill island is located in the westest part in Connaught. (I get fascinated with something like the most XX.)
The way to Keem beach was safer than going to White Cliffs of Ashleam. The view from the car was also beautiful, so we stopped somewhere, and took some pictures. (On this website or on social media channels related to this website there’s a new profile photo that was taken on the way to Keem beach by my boyfriend without telling me beforehand.)
From some points on the way to Keem beach, there are signboards like “Attention! Sheep crosses the road”. (It wasn’t like “Attention, There are wild animals”, but really like “Sheep may cross the road”.)
The road was for both ways, and because the traffic was nearly silent, we were able to avoid sheep, and yet they didn’t care about us at all. 😂
Keem beach was quite beautiful too. Perhaps the water is clean. It looked a bit greeny, which is my favourite colour of the sea. Since it was a bit rainy and cold, and additionally we didn’t bring our swimwear in the first place, I do not know how deep Keem beach is unless we swim, but it is definitely worth going.
On Google maps Keem beach is marked as a sightseeing place, but even in June when generally there are lots of tourists in Ireland, the tourists in Keem beach seemed more or less locals, so a hidden sightseeing place, I guess. It didn’t seem to be buses from and to Keem beach, so having a car… (again)
d. Appendix
When we were going back to the mainland from Keem beach, on the other side of the road near Keem beach, one sheep was very chilled.
Not even about to escape from or avoid us. Very majestic. 😂
★Summary
You may have a tendency to think that there is nothing in the countryside but in famous counties and cities in Ireland whilst now you know how unexpectedly enjoyable County Mayo is.
In order to live, it is probably hard without a car in my opinion, and yet since you can take a distance from noisiness in Dublin, you might be able to live a relaxing life in Mayo. However, if you spend every weekend, you might get fed up.
Perhaps it was a trip, and therefore I thought it was good. I might also want to swim in Keem beach next time… Not sure it’s grand though.
Sightseeing is a must-do on a trip! On the trip to Ireland in June, 2022, since my boyfriend and I stayed in a few different towns, I decided to write articles about sightseeing depending on the county where we went.
In this article, I focus on County Galway. This is about Galway as a county, so it’s not just about the city centre of Galway.
(By the way, because it was Galway, I played Ed Sheeran’s “Galway Girl” on YouTube for my boyfriend who didn’t know this song at the accommodation. He immediately disliked it, but enjoyed Galway itself. 😂)
First of all, let’s talk about Barna. Barna itself has nothing. There are only a few supermarkets, pubs and restaurants. However, there is a wharf called “Barna Pier”, and you can take a walk near the bay. The wharf faces Galway bay, and if you can see some land in the opposite of Barna, that’s the mainland of Irelnad. It belongs to County Clare. Unfortunately, it’s not Aran Islands…
2. Village called Tawnamachugh which I chose just because of the name
Since my boyfriend said he wanted to drive somewhere not around Barna but a bit far from Barna, I randomly looked for a place on the map, and selected a town called Tawnamachugh.
The reason why I chose this area is because
Its name didn’t sound English.
It took us 20 minutes by car from the accommodation in Barna.
You will suddenly see more countryside, so if you feel you don’t have enough fuel in your car, I would recommend you fill the tank before going there. Hydration for your body as well. When you look at Tawnamachugh on the map, you can guess there is nothing from some point, so be careful.
Also, something very inconvenient in Tawnamachugh was that we could not connect to the internet!!!
Often in this area, either of our devices was connected with the internet, but because of this, even though I wanted to help him while he was driving, I was not able to do that.
The seaside in Tawnamachugh was like a combination of the grass field and beach with rocks. There were few people, and if you see someone, they are probably locals, not tourists.
I noticed that signboards are written in Irish only in Tawnamachugh, and since I had some knowledge about Ireland, I wondered “we were in Gaeltacht weren’t we?”.
In fact, I wanted to visit Gaeltacht once in my life, so it was pleasant to go there though it was so sudden.
I wished I could have tried my Irish. (I remember only “How are you?” and “I’m good” in Irish though. 😂)
4. City Centre of Galway
When you go to Galway, most likely you will go to the centre of Galway won’t you. In our case, we went to only two places in the centre of Galway.
a. Galway Cathedral
I found the Galway Cathedral on the map, so we decided to visit there.
The Galway Cathedral was quite big, had beautiful stained glasses, and was more gorgeous than I thought. There is a car park in the Galway Catherdral’s area, and it didn’t cost us at all as we didn’t stay there so long.
Next to the Galway Cathedral there is another car park, but it seemed to be for those who stay there for a long time like a few days, so we didn’t use it.
b. Galway Atlantaquaria, National Aquarium of Ireland
Galway Atlantaquaria, National Aquarium of Ireland has a free car park, but the vehicle height is limited.
A ticket for one adult at Galway Atlantaquaria, National Aquarium of Ireland was 16 EUR.
If you imagine splendid aquariums like what we have in Japan, you will be shocked. 😂
This is because this aquarium just looks like a collection of fish in a bunch of water tanks. Only the jellyfish section had similar stuff to what I imagined.
I enjoyed Galway Atlantaquaria, National Aquarium of Ireland though. ✌️
5. Moycullen
We were discussing where to go after Galway Atlantaquaria, National Aquarium of Ireland, and we decided to go to Moycullen. I reckon it took us 10 to 15 minutes by car from the centre of Galway.
My boyfriend decided to go to Moycullen, and this is a very small countryside town. There seemed to be some small museums, but he was not interested in such things in general. Instead, he likes taking a walk in the woods, etc. However, at that time it was showering unfortunately.
I found a place called Fairy Trail, but we had no idea where it was. He was just randomly driving, getting tired, so he stopped a car in a pub’s car park.
Then I took him for a short walk as his tiredness provoked his irritability. 😅😅
However, we eventually realised that the area seemed to be private, so we went back to the centre of Moycullen, and took some break in a cafe there. I think there is nothing to do if it’s raining and you don’t want to spend more than 15 EUR or something for activities in Moycullen.
There are outdoor activities and something fun, but it quite costs.
6. Connemara National Park recommended by an Irish man born and raised in Galway
Connemara National Park was our first destination on the way to the accommodation in Mayo from Galway. My Japanese friend A’s husband is from Galway, and he told us about Connemara National Park.
There is no admission fee, and the area is impressively vast. I think it will take a few days for hiking there. It was not very easy to find the entrance for parking, but not too difficult either.
It was raining, and chilly, so we didn’t stay there long, but we took a short walk. The we found:
Later googling, the animals appeared to be Irish goats. I’m not 100% sure though. I’m not sure if they belong to some farmers or they are wild either.
Perhaps given that you go more forward, you might encounter more animals. (It seems there are livestocks in Connemara National Park too.)
Personally I want to go there again.
★Summary
In conclusion, these are places in Galway that we went to on the trip to Ireland in June, 2022.
Again, personally I enjoyed Connemara National Park best. It’s a national park located in an area without anything, but I believe it would be more fun when it’s sunny. I don’t like camping, but I realised I pretty much like hiking. Of course it depends on who I go with though.
There might be some buses to and from Connemara National Park as it is a national park, but it’s good to drive a car…
When it comes to travelling, accommodations are important of course. Otherwise you will be a homeless traveller. As some of you might already know, I usually use a hostel on my solo trip. This is just because it’s cheap. Sometimes I’m very sensitive to sounds that roomates make, voices and foot sounds by other stayers who come back from clubs and bars in the middle of night when I sleep near the room door, and bathrooms with way less cleanness, but since I want to spend more money on other activities as well as foods, I tend to choose inexpensive accommodations.
On the other hand, my boyfriend needs privacy a lot, and cannot definitely share a bedroom with strangers or other people. For this reason, he didn’t go to his company’s event either.
I have had rough sleep multiple times at airports, and used a shower in Sheremetyevo international airport in Moscow, so I’m not very very serious about this point, or you can say I’m a type of a person who is satisfied with minimum things I can do in a daily life during a trip. Therefore, I was adjustable. (Yes, I adjusted to him, but it wasn’t hard for me at all, and yet rather I felt good because it was more luxurious than usual. I actually thought maybe I should do the same even on my solo trip.)
As written “I adjusted to him” above, when we were talking about accommodations before going to Ireland, he said “a hostel would be good, and it’s cheap”. At that time I thought “?? He can’t share a room with multiple unknown people, but a hostel in a travel destination is fine?”
Then I searched some accommodations in Hostelworld and Booking.com three weeks before the trip, made a list, and asked him to choose one and decide. (This is because I had no idea what was necessary and what was important for him at that time.)
The list included one cheap hotel room, but he chose a hostel called Generator Hostel, where we were required to stay at least two nights.
As we arrived in Dublin, we checked in, entered our room, and saw five beds. Although I booked two beds for the two of us together, it was not like bunk beds were for us but just vacant beds were for us. (I have travelled with a friend from Japan a few times, and we always had one set of bunk beds or our beds were next to one another. Hence it was abnormal for me.)
Then he saw those multiple beds and asked me “This room is only for us, right?”, so I said “It’s a hostel, there are other people.” Then he panicked saying “I can’t sleep here!”
I told him “You mentioned a hostel was fine”, and he said “In the US (where he travelled in the past) a hostel wasn’t like this…!”
I thought:
I bet that was a motel.
After a while he said “I guess what I meant was a motel…”
I thought:
I knew it. 😅
If he was not able to sleep, we could not stay there, so I searched for a temporary accommodation with privacy in Booking.com, but everywhere cost over 300 EUR for one night in Dublin. That was way too expensive just for one night.
However, where we were was Dublin. I gave it a try; I called three friends in Dublin… but no one answered right then. The first one was a friend who said something like his family member or someone had an accommodation in Airbnb a long time ago, so I recalled it. I also messaged him, so I called him again when he replied to me, but nothing was available. The second friend had no responses. (Later he told me he had been sick.) The third one is Japanese, whom I saw again when I travelled to Ireland in 2019. She called me back, and I explained the situation. It was so kind of them – she told me that she can let us stay at their place as her husband’s friends stayed there once too. But only one night. (This was because it was so sudden and happened in the middle of the week. We so appreciated their kindness.)
I asked her to explain to my boyfriend directly on the phone, and she gave us some time to consider. Later I told her that we would like to have stayed at their place.
That day, since I went to a concert, my boyfriend and I had separate activities, and at the end of the day when we met again in the hostel he started saying “I’m too tired… I’m okay with the hostel…”, and yet my friend already prepared a bed for us, so we took a taxi, and headed there.
To be honest, in the plane from Tallinn, I felt “This too smoothly going… there will definitely be something…!”, and indeed it happened. 😅 (I feel something happens whenever I travel.)
On the next day of the stay, both my friend and her husband had to work from home at 9, we promised to leave there by 9.
Whilst I feel we were lucky because we were in Dublin, I reckon “Well I’m blessed with people in the end.” 😂
I’m not sure if we will travel together again, but I will definitely avoid any hostels. 😂
2. Day 2 and 3 (Barna, Galway)
After leaving my friend’s place, we rented a car, and decided on the next destinations and an accommodation in the next destination at a cafe in Dublin. The very first destination was Wicklow, but we just dropped by there, and the final destination of the day was Galway.
We decided to stay at a B&B at the coastal areas in a town in Galway called Barna.
a. Where is Barna?
Barna is located in Galway 15 to 20 minutes by car from the city centre of Galway. It was a B&B, so we stayed in one room in a house for two nights.
From the B&B accommodation we could see the Galway bay, and also the mainland in the opposite direction due to the geography.
It was challenging to find an actual accommodation in Barna, but when we called the owner, she came to the nearest supermarket, and guided us to the accommodation by car.
b. What is “eircode”?
The reason why it was challenging for us to find the house is because we were unable to find the exact place even in a map searching by the address, and we arrived somewhere as a destination which was on the opposite of the road, and the road ended.
When ringing her, she told us “The eircode is in the confirmation email!, but I had no idea what it was even though I have lived in Dublin because it was possible to find places by their addresses like in a regular way. (When we went to my friend’s house, we used the actual address in teh amp.)
Googling what the eircode was, it seemed to be an Ireland-specific thing, and if we enter it in the map, the exact location was shown.
You may wonder “Why didn’t you check the confirmation email”. Although it was me who paid, the email address used was my boyfriend’s, so I had no idea.
c. Seaclusion B&B
The accommodation we stayed in Barna, Galway is called “Seaclusion B&B” which also has a room with a private bathroom. In our room, there was only a double bed and some furniture, and we needed to use a shared bathroom.
In Booking.com the score of the accommodation is pretty high marking 8.7 out of 10. Without a car it would be hard to go and stay there, so I wouldn’t choose it on my usual solo trip in terms of its location, we (both) didn’t care that much how far it was as we rented a car.
This accommodation is a B&B, so you can have a buffet and Irish breakfast in the morning. It was good as the menu slightly changed daily.
In the morning when checking out, the owner asked us where we were going next, and she gave us lunch (sandwiches, jelly and cupcakes). It was really appreciative.
3. Day 4 and 5 (Balinrobe, Mayo)
The next destination after Galway was Westport. It’s a small town in county Mayo. Therefore, I booked one accommodation somewhere around there while staying in Barna.
a. Small mistake in terms of the accommodation location
Westport in county Mayo faces Galway bay, and the B&B we booked was also close to the water area, so we both thought the B&B was in Westport, and yet searching the actual location in the map, we realised the accommodation was near a lake in county Mayo. 😅
We kind of made a mistake, but as we rented a car, it wasn’t a big deal. (However, he as a driver was really tired, of course.)
b.“Journey”
He always uses an app called Waze that shows the traffic information as well even when driving in Estonia, but it seemed that it didn’t work properly in the countryside in Ireland.
On the way to the accommodation, Waze told us to go straight to the one way road which width was for just one car, so went and kept going forward as we were not able to go back, and we encountered
sheep!!!
Besides there were two sheep!!!!
We laughed a lot together. 😂
I knew that it was normal to see sheeps in the west in Ireland, but all the sheep I saw from a car were inside of the fences, so it was so beyond expectation.
Really, I wondered where they came out of. 😂
What was worse, even if our car went forward a bit very slowly, the sheep didn’t care at all. 😂
Perhaps they thought our car was some kind of a huge animal. 😂
My boyfriend was like “Oh my god 😅, what should we do”, but as I can think relatively fast, I said to him “Just a sec,”
“Uwaaaaaaaaa—–!!!”
I screamed and simultaneously was running toward the sheep, and they ran away too.
I dashed so it didn’t last long, and I went back to the car, but then the sheep stopped in front of us again as well. 😅
I opened the car’s window and screamed “waaaa”, but they didn’t seem to be afraid of the voice.
So, I got out of the car, and chased the sheep. 😂
I was unable to keep dashing, so from time to time I was walking, but when I showed myself as if I would start running and chasing them again (I just made foot noises), they escaped. So I repeated this a few times, and finally the road was separated into three directions, and fortunately the sheep went to one of them which we didn’t go to.
Zooks the shephers dog.
In addition, it was showering at that time, so of course I got a bit wet. But it was one of the fun and good memories. 😂
Also I realised again that I don’t have any femininity. 😂
c. Devenish Lodge B&B
After going through the countryside road, we arrived at an accommodation called Devenish Lodge B&B.
There was a gate, and we were wondering about how to enter, so I sank or swam, pushed the gatebell, the gate was just open without any voice.
Then we saw
sheep!!!
The sheep were staring at us (and our car).
That was a funny scene in a way though. 😂
Those sheep seemed to be moved to another field from time to time, and on the second day at Devenish Lodge, the sheep were in the field which we were able to look down from our room windows. (Also their voice was my morning alarm. 😂)
Devenish Lodge was also a B&B, so we could have some breakfast. In this accommodation there were two choices of Irish breakfast: full Irish breakfast or vegetarian breakfast, and during our stays, we both had full Irish breakfast.
As a buffet, there were also some cut fruits and muesli.
Our room was for three people at maximum with a private bathroom. (This was just a coincidence that such a room was available and cheaper than other rooms.) It was spacious, but the TV in our room didn’t work properly at all. In Devenish Lodge, the kitchen was not for guests, so in the room there was an electric kettle, instant coffee, some team bags, and biscuits.
As we were not allowed to use the kitchen, we could not buy microwave meals at a supermarket either. Therefore, we took away some Chinese dishes, and dined with dinnerware in the dining room for breakfast the next morning.
Moreover, there were bottled water which number was the same as the number of people who could stay in a room, and yet when I asked the owner if we could drink water from the bathroom, she said no. However, she had got a good head on her shoulders, and gave us a pitcher of tap water separately. (It was really great as then we didn’t have to buy extra bottled water.)
Devenish Lodge scores 9.2 out of 10 in Booking.com. (Something like a certificate was decorated in the dining room as well.)
However, the location could be problematic, so without a car it would be very hard to go there and stay.
I really felt that a car was so convenient…
4. Day 6 and 7 (City Centre, Dublin)
By 3 pm, on the 27th of June, 2022, we had to return the car in Dublin. After checking out, we immediately headed to Dublin from Devenish Lodge.
The accommodation in Dublin was of course more expensive than Devenish Lodge. (In addition, it was because the accommodation was in the centre of Dublin.) Anyway, it was a private room, he agreed, and I booked it, but later I found that that accommodation was used as student accommodation on regular days.
a.”Student accommodation” for the first time in a while in Ireland
In Ireland you can start living in student accommodation in September, and stay there until the entire academic year ends, but right after that you will be kicked out. It might also depend on accommodations, but during the summer accommodations not in a campus are offered to travellers for temporary stays. (Literally travellers use, and in 2016 when I used Shanowen Square, I needed a place to live as I extended my study-abroad period.)
The best point in the student accommodations in Ireland is that you can have your own bathroom in your room!
Personally this is the biggest pro. In Estonia there is no such a thing.
b. Yugo Kavanagh Court – Student Accommodation
We stayed in a “double room”, but the bed was too small for two people. (I felt it was like a bit wider single bed. My own semi double bed in my flat might have been bigger.) Besides, I always wonder why the beds are so small in Ireland although the Irish (guys) are quite tall. I’m 162 cm, and my boyfriend is much taller than me, so I thought he might not be able to rest enough in a bed that is supposed to be used for resting as the bed’s length was a bit shorter than him.
Yugo Kavanagh Court seemed to be relatively a new building, but as a travel accommodation, it was not satisfactory.
First of all, there was nothing in the kitchen! I saw a few plates and one pan in the dishwasher, but there was no cutlery. Since there were no mags and glasses, we were not able to make tea even though there was a kettle. In Shanowen Square where I stayed in 2016, there were mags.
Furthermore, although the outside temperature was around 20 degrees, astonishingly the heater was turned on, so I went to the reception to complain. There was some kind of switch that looked like it was for the AC or something, and I reckoned maybe that one was a switch for the heater, but I wasn’t 100% sure. When I told this at the reception, one of the staff members kept saying “There is no AC” for a while. So I said:
Whatever it is, the heater is turned on!
Then a female staff member called technicians for repair.
I didn’t care whether the switch was for the AC or the heater, or whatever. That was not my point.
After that, we also realised there were no linens for the duvet. I went to the reception again, got one, and was putting it on the duvet before going to bed. Then we found some kind of dirt-looking dirt whilst the linen seemed to have been washed. What was worse, that dirt was on the head (upper) side, so I asked my boyfriend to go to the reception this time. Then when he came back to the room, he said
“They said there was no linen, so they gave me a bunch of linens for the mattress. 😅”
😂
Again, I thought “Shanowen Square was better in terms of this point as well…” 😅
Eventually we just slept with two linens as it was hot although I liked that heavy duvet.
Yugo Kavanagh Court scorers 6.2 out of 10 in Booking.com. I doubted personally if it was worth 6.2.
Besiddes, you cannot check in Yugo Kavanagh Court before 3 pm. If you need to come earlier, they take care of your luggages though.
If I looked for an accommodation in Dublin, I would choose a better place. (If you plan to book way beforehand, then definitely there are more options.)
★Summary
To sum up, here were the accommodations that we used on our trip in Ireland in June, 2022! I personally praise myself a lot due to my actions that I took on the first day when we encountered the sheep. Also, really what you should have is friends! Since my friend and her husband helped us, I told her that I would thank her later, though it might be quite late.
Also, so far whenever I travelled by myself, I used hostels, but now I reckon that it doesn’t have to be expensive, but accommodations with a private space like hotels called business hotels in Japan could be my options. Honestly, I felt more relaxed in such an accommodation. A good sleep is important on a trip. While I believe I would still use hostels on my solo trips in the future as it’s cheaper, it’s physically hard to plan what to do and research something in a narrow space in bunk or triple bunk beds.
Due to the low JPY value, I was planning to visit Japan being a bit wealthy, if it’s affordable, I thought I wanted to stay in a hotel too.
In 2021, I planned to go to Northern Ireland and Sweden in March, 2022. Although I have been to Northern Ireland before, I spent only a short time in Enniskillen that is just beyond the border of the Republic. Therefore, I wanted to go to the eastern coastal area, Giants Causeway, etc on the trip in 2022. (The purpose of going to Sweden was to go to a gig by Louis Tomlison from One Direction, by the way.)
At that time (in 2021), I also planned to go to a concert in Oslo, Norway by Harry Styles from One Direction too. However, the tour in Europe had been postponed without any certainty due to COVID. Thereinto, he cancelled all the concerts in the tour in the end, and yet extended the tour itself, so I had to buy a new ticket for a new date. Then, I found one day in Dublin in June! In addition to it, I wanted to visit Northern Ireland, see my friends in Dublin, and to try to travel with my boyfriend, so that was a great timing, and I decided to go there. I suggested to him to travel together with my solo plan to go to the concert, and he agreed “I want to drive a car in Ireland (because in Ireland it’s left-hand traffic opposed to the right-hand traffic in Estonia)”.
Well, eventually we didn’t go north but went west, but as planned we rented a car anyway, so here I’m going to talk about a car rental in Ireland.
1. In Ireland: manual transmission vs. automatic transmission?
First of all, you may be curious which transmission type is more common in Ireland: manual or automatic. In Ireland, the manual transmission is more common. It seems few people use cars with the automatic transmission.
On the other hand, according to a staff member in one driving school in Estonia, it’s fifty-fifty. There are of course the manual transmission-cars, but personally it seems more cars with automatic transmission are sold in Estonia. Unlike Japan, in Estonia it costs the same in a driving school for both driving licence for the automatic transmission and the manual transmission. In regards to the hand traffic, similarly to other Continental countries, it’s the right-hand traffic (the American way) in Estonia.
Therefore, my boyfriend constantly said “I need a car with automatic transmission if I drive in Ireland” (because he had to change the speed with the opposite hand). So we were looking for a car with the automatic transmission when I suggested to him to book a car, but in April 2022, the prices for cars with the automatic transmission got twice as expensive as before. (It seemed to cost around 500 EUR at the end of March given that we rented a car with the automatic transmission for one week, but after that the price increased to 1000 EUR with the same conditions and period.)
We both were just saying “this is too expensive”.
2. Car rental vs. car sharing
Later on, one Estonian that I knew suggested to me “Perhaps it’s cheaper if you choose something like Bolt Drive or Citybee (car sharing)”, hence I googled, and found a car sharing service in Ireland called GoCar. I shared this information with him.
A few days after that, I happened to check GoCar’s FAQ, and found a sentence like “We are trying to verify you within 48 hours”, so I shared this information with my boyfriend one week before leaving for ireland. However, he really didn’t like planning (and was not very good at planning either), so it seemed he didn’t do anything… (Also, his mental condition wasn’t great at that time.)
Eventually we decided to rent a car, and didn’t choose car sharing, but at the end of this trip we concluded that renting a car was actually cheaper, maybe if the travelling type was like ours. If you have a specific destination, and no plan to drop by anywhere, I guess you may choose car sharing.
3. How many days and where to rent a car?
I have also heard that if you rent a car on site, it could be cheaper than booking one beforehand, but from the perspective as a Japanese person, you can never do this, especially in Japan…. Basically you need to book everything in Japan, and otherwise you will be necessity-less…
The following morning after arriving in Ireland, I searched for a car on a comparison website like Skyscanner or Google flights as a car rental version called Carhire.ie. (In other words, on Skyscanner, you can see flight schedules and airlines or travel agencies that offer, but on Carhire.ie you can see some car options and which car rental company offers those options.)
I have a Japanese driving license, and it does allow me to drive a car with the manual transmission, but I had never driven a car since I got the license, and moreover, due to the Geneva convention, I was not able to apply for an international driving license as I lived in Estonia more than one year, for whom it required to get a driving license in Estonia by going to the driving school and taking exams like a local person. Plus, I had no idea or knowledge about cars, so I completely asked him to select a car. (He loves cars and driving, and he does watch some YouTube channels about cars, so he has a lot of knowledge.)
Then, we decided to rent a car from the 23rd of June until the 27th of June, 2022.
Why did we select this time period? I was searching on Carhire.ie, looking at his searching filters, so I just put the same period as he did, and it seemed he just kept that filtering, and booked a car.
Well, please check the filtering before deciding.
😂
On Carhire.ie we chose a car rental company called Europcar, and rented at the office in Spencer Dock in Dublin. (The place to return the car for us was the same as well.)
When going to Northern Ireland (since it is the UK), probably the rules are different, and in such a case you need to check further.
When booking a car, it cost around 500 EUR, but at the Europcar office in Spencer Dock, he customised a lot (a car with diesel, a screen that shows the back side of the car, Bluetooth connection, etc), so around 400 EUR was added, and the total sum was approximately 900 EUR.
Also, he eventually decided to drive a car with the manual transmission. (Well it made sense as cars with the automatic transmission were too expensive.)This is why the initial payment was around 500 EUR.
By the way, according to my Japanese friend’s husband in Dublin, the reason why the cars with the automatic transmission were so expensive was probably because they reduced the number of cars with the automatic transmission due to less demand affected by COVID, so at that time, there were fewer cars with automatic transmission available in Ireland.
4. What is “Pay and Display” in Ireland?
Our flights for this trip were to and from Dublin, so our car rental started from Dublin too, but it seemed very difficult and stressful to drive a car in Dublin. I was just sitting next to my boyfriend, but I felt it.
Driving in Dublin.
When we rented a card, we did in the morning so we hadn’t eaten anything yet. Hence we agreed to have something somewhere a bit outside of the city centre, and we were looking for a car park, but
no car park was shown in Google maps!
We randomly went to some street, and temporarily stopped a car there as we could see “P”, and noticed there was a description “Pay and display”. When I searched, it seemed to be a system with which you can pay for parking via its app, by call, or at the ticket machine in that parking area. In our case, the app was not downloadable (in Estonian app stores on both Google Play and iOS), and calling didn’t work, so I had to look for an actual ticket machine. Then I found one.
There the ticket machine accepted the exact amount of coins. In Dublin, unless you have a Leap card, you need to pay in cash when getting on a Dublin bus, and since I knew they didn’t give any change, I had and bought a bunch of coins separately. Therefore, we were able to pay the exact amount of the ticket.
In this system, you need to pay for parking first, and you need to put the ticket in the front glass until you get back there. (The detailed explanation can be found at the ticket machine.)
In Ireland many places had this system, so I got used to it while travelling. In the countryside, some were free on Sundays.
However, the problem is that it is not shown in the map, so it’s hard to find one.
5. Petrol price display in Ireland
My boyfriend drives a diesel car in daily life in Estonia, so I often checked the price for diesel from the Tallinn bus in the days when the petrol prices were rising. In Estonia, the price is shown like “1.99” per litre. This means one litre of petrol costs “1 euro, 99 cents”.
On the other hand, in Ireland for some reason the price was shown in cents, the display was like “219” per litre.
This one shows “216” cents per litre.
In my opinion, if we want to calculate on our own, the Estonian way of display is better.
This section is just for your information. It does not mean “219 EUR” per litre.
★Summary
I really appreciate my boyfriend who drove a car for such a long long time in Ireland, and yet while travelling by car I wished I would have been able to drive a car, many times. Because if I had been able to, I would have been able to take turns with thim. (After that I seriously planned to go to a driving school in Estonia.)
One way took three hours at maximum, so even though he loved driving, it was physically exhausting to drive in a different land and in a different system, I believe.
Also, what I can say for sure is that a car is convenient. (I know it’s taken for granted.) You know we often want to go to places we want to go to while travelling. I reckoned that with a car I could use my time more freely, and visit any paces I wanted to almost without any compromise. However, next time when travelling by car, I definitely want to book one in advance. Even if it would be a solo trip.
Do you have a body fat scale? It’s a type of scale with which you can measure not only weight and fat rate/weight but also skeletal muscle rate/weight, body age, body water, etc. (The measurable items can be different depending on body fat scales.) You can buy a home body fat scale at a reasonable price, and it’s easy to measure. On the other hand it is not super accurate. Therefore, I went to Myfitness which is the biggest chain gym in Estonia (or even in the Baltics?) to analyse my body composition!!
Around in 2019, I used to go to the cheapest gym in Estonia called “Gym!” (paying 15 EUR per month with a one-year contract at that time), but I terminated the contract after one year due to the depression. Then in October 2021, I rejoined Gym!, and started to try to lose weight, but I lost only a couple of kilos regardless of the diet (eating) and exercise. After losing a few kilos, there had been no change until January 2022.
When I came to Estonia (2017), I was less fat than who I was at this time (2021), but due to the atypical depression, I could eat only a specific food. This is the reason why I gained weight. Furthermore, what I was able to eat at that time was biscuits. Furthermore + more, it was something like Oreo. I bought fresh foods but I couldn’t eat because I had no energy to cook, so obviously I gained weight. (I didn’t want to gain weight, so I had a mind to manage and control the amount, but it was still sweet.)
Then I talked to my psychologist at that time about it, and she gave me a list of foods that boost serotonin. For the present, I started eating fruits when I wanted to eat something sweet. Then I started a new job as well as a new Estonian language course, which made me feel as if I had started a new life. For this reason, I gain energy and motivation to resume going to the gym.
In the past, quite a long time ago, I once tried to lose weight, switching the meal plans in the morning and in the evening, and ran after waking up. Since in this way I lost some weight, I tried the same thing again, but there was no satisfactory result. (I personally don’t consider a couple of losses in kilo as an actual weight loss.)
So, I decided to try a ketogenic diet which I had doubted until then, starting at the end of February, 2022. As a result, I lost a lot. (Literally a lot. Although I don’t mention the exact amount here yet.)
To sum up, the diet to lose weight is the very beginning.
2. Not only weight is important
While being on a diet, since I lost quite a lot of weight, I started to pay attention to details such as weight in detailed digits, body fat, muscle mass, etc. Then I bought acme’s body fat scale, and showed the first measured result partially to my boyfriend, and he said
“These numbers are impossible lol”
😂
I did agree with him though.
I wondered if the body fat scale was broken, so I requested to replace it with a new one, but I found that this body fat scale had a very low quality as a body fat scale.
3. How can you analyse your body composition in Tallinn, Estonia?
Even though I understand that with a home body fat scale we cannot measure very accurately, I still wanted to see numbers as accurately as possible. For this reason, I thought before buying a new body fat scale, I should analyse my body composition in a professional way so that I can have a precise date to compare. Then I googled where in Tallinn, Estonia I could get a body composition analysis, and got results that it is possible not only in a medical centre like Confido but also in a gym or spa (in which there is a gym).
As expected, I didn’t choose Confido’s body composition analysis as it cost 50 EUR, but I found in Viimsi Spa a non-gym member could get a body composition analysis for 18 EUR. So I contacted a trainer, and yet because the facility had been under preparation even after waiting for one month, I decided to contact Kalev Spa in Tallinn.
I still have not received any replies.
So I googled the biggest gym, Myfitness, I found the service! Once I contacted them, the communication was so smooth.
4. Body composition analysis at Myfitness
On the day I booked a body composition analysis, I went to one of the gyms of Myfitness in Tallinn. Before the body composition analysis began, they lended me a key and a paddle lock for a locker..
Then I went to the trainer’s room. The first thing that I did was to measure my height.
I didn’t get shorter. 😂
I was still 162 cm.
Then I measured my body with a professional fat scale with 99% accuracy, and immediately I got a result.
The trainer explained everything in the result paper, and my findings are:
My body composition is average in all the items
I should gain a bit more muscle.
(By the way, the result paper was in Estonian, and the trainer was Egyptian.)
When I had this body composition analysis, it was 6.30 in the evening, so of course I gained around 2kg compared to the weight I checked in the morning at that time. However, I’m pretty sure and I also made sure with the trainer that a human gains 1 to 2 kg during the day than the weight when waking up, so it’s not fat but water.
I thought 15 minutes is short for the body composition analysis when I booked an appointment, but it wasn’t that short, but rather quite satisfactory in terms of both time and contents. Besides, it cost only 15 EUR. Payment is done when visiting the reception before the analysis.
★ Summary
Although it’s not expensive, I still got the necessary information, and I think I want to check regularly. After this, I bought a new (Renpho’s) fat scale, but it showed me 2% more fat than the accurate result from Myfitness. On the one hand, I’m more satisfied with this new fat scale and it’s good enough for daily use, and on the other hand as long as I want to measure precisely, checking the analysis at Myfitness is quite a good idea I believe.
I don’t basically choose hotels on my solo trips. Since I came to know using hostels when I was about to go to Ireland in 2015, fundamentally the accommodations during my trips are hostels. At that time, I happened to tell my Irish teacher in my university in Japan “I can’t move into the student accommodation right after arrival in Ireland, I think I need to book a hotel room for a few days” and he suggested to me “Why don’t you stay in a hostel? It’s cheaper”, which was the beginning. Since then, I have used hostels wherever I have travelled. (As a student, due to the flight schedules or airports’ locations, occasionally I had no choice but to stay in B&B.)
In the countryside there are more B&B accommodations, and it’s hard to find a hostel whilst in cities (almost) always there are hostels. Of course, there are hostels in Stockholm and Gothenburg. (Of course of “of course”.) In this article, I will talk about the hostels that I used on a trip to Sweden in March, 2022.
Firstly, I’m going to discuss the hostel in Stockholm. In Stockholm I stayed in the hostel called Crafoord Place Hostel. This was my fourth visit to Stockholm. Depending on dates, times, and situations, the reasonable hostels vary, so this was my first time staying in Crafoord Place Hostel.
a. Super long on-hold booking
I booked Crafoord Place Hostel so as to go to a gig by Louis Tomlinson from One Direction, and yet the gig had been postponed owing to COVID, I had to change the booking dates in Crafoord Place Hostel as well. Initially I booked a bed via Hostelworld, but I directly communicated with Crafoord Place Hostel about putting off the booking.
When changing the booking details, I explained to them “I booked a bed because I planned to go to an event in Stockholm, but the event was postponed, and I don’t know the new date yet” and then they gave me a due date for rebooking for some months.
Before reaching the due date, I contacted Crafoord Place Hostel again, and they gave me another due date for rebooking as it was still in the middle of the pandemic.
After a while, I finally rebooked in 2022. Although it’s Crafoord Place Hostel’s business, they had been waiting for me very patiently. However, since the three-year waiting time made me forget the details of the booking, I thought I would stay in a mixed dormitory, but actually it was a female dormitory. (I was betrayed with my expectation in a good way.)
b. Dusty?
Crafoord Place Hostel was kind of dusty. Or maybe the room where I stayed rather than the entire Crafoord Place Hostel hostel? The room window was always open, and my bed was just under the window. At that time, in Stockholm due to its season, the city was so dusty, and I saw sandstorms several times. Hence, it was dusty in the hostel because of the city environment rather than the uncleanliness of the hostel.
In the hostel I shared a room with some other girls, so while I was out, they opened the window, the dust constantly came into the room. Ah….
c. Overall review on Crafoord Place Hostel
As an overall review to Crafoord Place Hostel, the hostel was okay in my opinion.
The biggest con is that there was no microwave in the kitchen. Also, there were few mags and cutleries either.
The bathroom was not problematic though. There was hot water, and it was clean. However, I needed to look for a hair dryer, but there was anyway.
It was neither good nor bad. However, if a location is crucial for you, maybe Crafoord Place Hostel isn’t for you because Crafoord Place Hostel is located in the centre of Stockholm, but not very close, and moreover, Crafoord Place Hostel is quite far from the old town (gamla stan).
2. Gothenburg – Backpackers Göteborg
In Gothenburg, Istayed in a hostel called Backpackers Göteborg, and yet I honestly don’t remember why I chose this hostel. However, overall the hostel was good, so it was not a bad decision.
a. Location of the Backpackers Göteborg hostel
The Backpackers Göteborg hostel’s location is pretty well. It’s in the centre of Gothenburg, and there are three supermarkets within walking distances. What is better, there was a pharmacy, electronic appliances shop for a rainy day (where I had to buy a cable for my iPhone as it suddenly broke), and tram and bus stops near the hostel.
The con is that it might be hard to find this hostel.
I saw a description like “The address is this, but the location is a bit different!” when I booked. Looking at the map, the Backpackers Göteborg hostel looks like being built together with the next building, but I believe both are the same. When you go to the actual address, you will see the sign board anyway, and you can ask the reception if the building is the Backpackers Göteborg hostel, so it shouldn’t be a big problem anyway.
b. Facilities in the Backpackers Göteborg hostel
The Backpackers Göteborg hostel’s facilities were pretty good too. In the kitchen, there were microwaves, ovens, cookers and lots of dinnerware. (And I accidentally broke one plate…) However, the dining area didn’t seem to welcome a solo traveller in my opinion. The furniture was placed as they had said: please share with other travellers in a friendly way or use it in a group.
The bathrooms in the Backpackers Göteborg hostel were sometimes good and sometimes not so good. In most of the times, it was okay though. The bathroom itself was spacious, which was a good point.
The room I stayed in the Backpackers Göteborg hostel was a female dormitory for 8 women, and each bed had a reading light, socket and curtain. In addition, under the lower beds, there were lockers with the numbers that correspond with each bed’s number. Although having a locker itself was convenient, it seemed like an older (type of) locker, so whenever I or someone opened or closed it, I heard the locker was with
with a creak…
It was very frustrating when I heard it during the sleep.
By the way, the point that a female traveller might be worried about, a hair dryer, was in the dormitory.
c. Overall review on the Backpackers Göteborg hostel
The Backpackers Göteborg hostel should score high in my personal opinion. Hostels can barely have perfect or very high scores, but if there are a couple of or some pros, your evaluation of the hostel would rise. Also, the cleanness of the bathroom is crucial. It affects our opinions and evaluations a lot, I believe.
Personally the biggest advantage was the Backpackers Göteborg hostel’s location, so perhaps those who wish to stay in hostels around the centre of Gothenburg could consider the Backpackers Göteborg hostel as an option.
★Summary
Whilst I don’t have any records or data about Crafoord Place Hostel anymore as the initial booking was too long ago, in the Backpackers Göteborg hostel, it cost around 25 EUR per night. (Yeah, it’s expensive…) Considering this price of a hostel room, hotels cost more, so for budget travellers as well as students hostels are better I guess.
This is kind of out of the topic, but occasionally there are people who think about their ages, and reckon “I’m too old to stay in a hostel”, but I’ve seen a bunch of Russian middle aged old men and women in a hostel in Dublin before, so age doesn’t matter. 👍
Even though my travel is a budget trip (as repeatedly said), I don’t always eat foods from a supermarket. Since Stockholm is still expensive, and I didn’t stay there so long, I didn’t try many restaurants and cafes in Stockholm. However I will introduce a few restaurants and cafes, including some Swedish sweets in this article, so have a look!
In Stockholm, I went to only two restaurants. This is because; on the first day, I went to a gig, on the third day I had a flight back to Tallinn at night, and I didn’t have anything I specifically wanted to eat. (I’m talking about meals and savouries, not sweets.)
First off, Hawaii Poke is a chain poke restaurant over Stockholm. Truth to be told, as I had been on a ketogenic diet since the end of February, and while travelling in Sweden I was taking a break from the diet, I wanted to eat some rice. Also because it was warm in Stockholm, I wanted to eat some raw vegetables. Therefore, I chose Hawaii Poke.
After wandering around the islands such as Djurgården, I went to a Hawaii Poke place in the mainland but close to Skeppsholmen.
I ordered Hula Sunrise. Because the rice was warm, in terms of rice Hawaii Poke’s bowl was better than the ones available in Tallinn, but overall I personally prefer the poke with shrimps and kimchi available in Tallinn. (The restaurant is called Poke Bowl.)
This Hawaii Poke restaurant is so small, and there were only a couple of seats. Perhaps their main business is take-away. I actually had an impression that there were more takeaways.
Before going to Sweden this time, I had a “goal” that was “I will eat kebab in Sweden!”. In Estonia, of course you can eat kebabs but always the selections are chicken, pork and vegetables. Yes, it’s Estonianised. (I mean, although pork is often eaten in Estonia, kebab was mainly developed in Islamic culture.)
But what I want is a beef kebab!!!
Then I found a kebab restaurant called Le Kebab Odenplan. Their rate in Google map is good, and Le Kebab Odenplan restaurant was close to the hostel, so I chose there. It was a pretty fancy restaurant. (Either it didn’t look like a regular kebab place/stand or they didn’t have regular kebab menus.)
The order style was; order first, and then take a seat. I arrived there at 6.00 pm on Saturday, so it was full of people. Due to this, it was difficult to find a seat for even one person.
I ordered a kebab wrap, but there are meal menus too. (I ordered just a kebab wrap.)
Once I ate it, it was much more different than I expected, and it was disappointing. Additionally, the meat’s texture was like minced meat. To be honest, I thought kebabs available at a kebab stand on the street would be tastier. My order cost 139 SEK (around €13) though. By the way, I really liked kebabs at the kebab stand on the street in Siegen, Germany…
Le Kebab Odenplan restaurant can be an option for those who want to eat fancy kebabs, but if you really want to enjoy the tastes, I wouldn’t recommend Le Kebab Odenplan restaurant.
Whilst I wonder “what’s the point of café-hopping?”, “the taste of coffee is almost the same everywhere unless it’s really bad?”, I do like going to cafés. In Stockholm, I visited two cafés. One of the cafés was something I decided to go to right before going there. The other one is a café that I wanted to go to for a specific purpose.
I went to Kaffeverket for brunch when I arrived in Stockholm. I arrived in the centre of Stockholm at past 11.30 in the morning. I found one more cafe that looked good, but since Kaffeverket seemed to close earlier than the other cafe, I chose Kaffeverket so as to prevent me from regretting when I would have felt like going to Kaffeverket later.
In Kaffeverket, there were lots of people, but it wasn’t too crowded. Kaffeverket is a small cafe, and yet there are some more seats in the inner part of Kaffeverket.
I ordered filter coffee and a tuna sandwich because the sandwich appeared to be spicy. However, the tuna sandwich was different from what I expected:
Huge.
This tuna sandwich was like an Asian fusion sandwich, and it cost around 130 SEK. (It’s approximately 13 EUR.) As for the coffee, I wanted them to serve a hotter one to me. It was a bit lukewarm for me.
In Kaffeverket, I could not find any sockets. Their Wi-Fi seemed to require a password. (Since I hate communicating with strangers a lot, I kept roaming on my phone in Kaffeverket, so I’m not still sure whether you can get the password even if you ask the clerk there.) The Wi-Fi’s password could not be seen even in a receipt either.
As the food portion is big, if you wish to go to Kaffeverket, you should go there for the purpose of brunch or lunch rather than breakfast, in my opinion. Also, it might not be good for working or studying unless you are sure that you can get Wi-Fi.
In the morning, on the final day in Stockholm, I went to Gast Café after checking out of the hostel. This is because I had breakfast at the hostel, and just wanted to have some coffee at a café.
Maybe because it was Sunday, when I arrived at the Gast Café at past 11.30 am, it was so crowded. Hence it was pretty hard to find a seat for myself, and I had to choose a stool around which there was no space to put my backpack regardless of the size of the backpack. I really felt that the disadvantage of a solo trip is that you cannot keep a seat before ordering…
Plus, the Gast Café seems popular simply as a café. It was a lovely café, so if you want to try café-hopping in Stockholm, you may want to include Gast in your list.
I went to Vete-Katten for the specific purpose which was
I wanted to try princess cake!!!
I found information that Vete-Katten is highly evaluated, and surely you can have princess cake. That’s why I decided to go there in advance.
Vete-Katten was also crowded, but luckily I was able to keep a seat first. But if your accommodation is close to Vete-Katten, you may consider a take away too. (At Vete, it’s said that there are lots of pickpockets so be careful.)
I’ll write more about princess cake later in this article.
Although it was my fourth time visiting Sweden, I was a poor student at the first visit, and I went there only for the purposes of concerts, I didn’t research almost anything about Sweden beforehand every time I went there. However, I resumed learning Swedish on my own, through the contents in the textbook, I realised there are more Sweden-specific things.
One of the Swedish things is Swedish sweets. There should be more in Sweden given that you research further, but here I’m going to talk about only three sweets. I chose something you will (never I think) be able to obtain in Estonia.
The first Swedish sweet that I picked up is dammsugare. At a confectionery, I tried to pronounce “Dammsugare”, trying to remember the pronunciation in the textbook, the clerk didn’t understand. (Or maybe I misremembered the pronunciation.) so I said “damm…su…gare”. He understood what I wanted. 😂
If you are curious, Google “dammsugare” online. You will see a bunch of pictures of hoovers. You may think
”What???”
This is because “Dammsugare” means “a hoover” in Swedish. At the confectionery that I went to (the name is Ritorno Konditori), they sell dammsugare named “Volta” which is a hoover brand.
It’s a chocolate sweet, and although it’s small, you will get satisfied as its texture is heavy.
It’s tasty though.
As dammsugare was available at supermarkets too, I bought one for my boyfriend who said “What is something Swedish that we can’t get in Estonia lol” before going to Sweden. However, I understand his point because we can get Swedish products such as coffee. I happened to know about dammsugare this time, and yet if I didn’t research like the previous trips in Sweden, or hadn’t bought a Swedish language textbook with Swedish culture, I wouldn’t know dammsugare even now.
Princess cake is a Swedish cake. The sponge cake has cream inside, and it’s covered with a light green marzipan. You can buy a whole princess cake or just a piece of the princess cake.
It tasted lighter than I thought. You can get the princess cake at a supermarket too, but of course it’s displayed at a cake corner, not at the counter for regular sweets.
The last sweets are ball sweets. They are called havreboll, pärlboll as well as chokladboll (boll means a ball in Swedish), so I personally call them “ball sweets”. It seems there are basically those three types, and yet all those three are almost the same, containing oatmeal. Their size is like a mud ball that we used to make when we were kids at a nursery school.
Havreboll looks whitey, and contains coconuts.
Pärlboll doesn’t contain coconuts.
Chokladboll seems the most common and ordinary one among these three. In addition to oatmeal and coconuts, chokladboll’s another ingredient is cocoa powder, so it tastes literally like chocolate as in its name. Beside chokladboll is the best among these three types in my opinion…
You can for sure buy those balls at a green-coloured supermarket called Coop!
Bilar means “cars (indefinite)” in Swedish, and it’s a gummy sweet. Since each gummy shape is like a car, it’s called “bilar”.
I bought a bag of bilar before going to Liseberg in case my friend and I would get a bit hungry there and could share bilar, but we didn’t eat at all, so I brought it back to Estonia and it turned into a souvenir for my workplace. 😂
Bilar has two types: normal one and sour one.The normal one didn’t look tasty, so I bought the sour one, which was the right decision.
Garant is a Swedish food brand. As far as I know, based on my activities in Sweden, in Gothenburg, I found their tea series only in one supermarket called Hemköp.
What I bought were
Camomile, lemon balm and lavender
Mint and chocolate
Earl grey
Black tea with rhubarb and vanilla flavour
For my boyfriend as a souvenir (as a birthday gift), I bought camomile, lemon balm and lavender tea. (It’s because he sometimes works a lot to compensate for a no-work day.)
Upper: camomile, lemon balm and lavender Lower: mint and chocolate
As of now, writing this chapter, it’s already summer, so I haven’t tried all the flavours but mint chocolate that I tried while staying at a hostel in Gothenburg. The mint chocolate one didn’t have strong flavours, but it was extraordinary and changed my mood.
Hemköp where you can buy Garant’s tea series in Gothenburg I know is only here:
The restaurants and cafés above that I went to were for the purpose of something Swedish or something properly unavailable in Estonia. There are many many more in Stockholm of course. It might be fun to find one on the map too. (I personally want to try a meatball restaurant that I found in Google maps. Also I want to find a better kebab place.)
As for the chokladboll mentioned at the end of this article, you can Google some recipes so why don’t you try to make them on your own if you’re interested in them? The ingredients are nothing hard to find, and if what a Swedish YouTuber said is correct, people make it at home in Sweden.
zooks.ee 