Monday July 28th

We head in to Dublin from Arklow. The weather has turned and it is damp and rainy.

The signs are good on the highway and we end up at St Stephen’s Green quite nicely. However our hotel is across the river from St Stephen’s Green. We should have stayed in St Stephen’s Green.

There is a lot of roadwork going on in Dublin and the street signs are located on the side of buildings. You can’t see the road signs until you have already passed them. Also some of these signs are covered by dirt or vines. How the locals get around is beyond me. So we start to get quite lost. To make a long story short it took us an hour to get to our hotel. In reality it would have been a 10 to 15 minute drive with traffic from St Stephen’s Green. There are lots of one way streets and heavy traffic but the real issue was not being able to read the street signs. Also it would be prudent for me to point out that the street names change while you are going down the street. So, the street starts off being called Jones Street, then turns to Mary Street then to John Street. The street is straight, no turns, nothing to indicate a new road……We are happy to park the bike for 4 nights and walk around the town. Very happy.

The hotel has secured parking behind an electronic gate and is included in the room rate. The bike is filthy and needs a good wash but we will deal with that later we think.

We meet our dearest friend Louise at our hotel at 5:00 and have – yes you guessed it DRINKS. We haven’t seen each other in over a year so it was lucky that we could make this happen. She was sort of in the area for a family wedding and had flown over from Toronto to the North of Ireland.

We have 4 days of great fun and walked our feet off. I must admit that we felt a little old down in the Temple Bar area and such. (we are in our thirties). Temple Bar and the downtown section we were in off Grafton Street were pretty much busy all the time. The pubs all seemed pretty full and it didn’t matter that it was a Monday or Tuesday night. We saw the highlights but Dublin is really a city you can see in about 2 days.

On the Wednesday we start to feel a little exploring is in order and head out on the Dublin subway system to a place called Howth. GREAT LITTLE FIND. It’s a nice fishing village right on the coast. We have a nice pub lunch and then head off to find Louise some cliffs to take pictures of.

We end up on a cliff walk around the coast that is fabulous. The views are breathtaking and again the shades of green are amazing. Oddly, we end up coming out of the cliff walk into subdivision and on someone’s driveway. So we head up the hill to try and find a cable car that will supposedly take us back to the subway station. (we’ve walked for a couple of hours by this point). We end up stopping a local and asked her for directions. We were told that the cable car was a) a bad mistake for the city to put in and b) hasn’t been working since the 1960’s. We would like to point out that the cable car route is advertised on the Tourist Map on the cliff walk. Don’t always believe what you read.

We end up taking a local bus into the next town and jumping on the subway. A full day of walking and touring for everyone.

Overall, Dublin is an expensive place. Dinners were expensive and we tried to eat in reasonably priced places. Beer is quite pricey and so was the wine. We tried to keep some of the costs down by going to bakeries for pastries and coffee for breakfast and usually we didn’t have lunch just a snack and then dinner. Even in Arklow, we found it expensive to eat and drink.

We are lucky that my cousin, Danielle is going away on vacation and has offered us her house in Cork for 3 weeks. God bless Danielle. This should get us back into budget and give us a chance to relax. We leave on Friday the First for Cork…….