Last night was one of our most peaceful nights on the trip. York and the castle are the only locations that have been free of big city noise. However, our bed in York was super sweet, while our bed last night was like sleeping on bare metal springs. I woke up every time I rolled over. The castle is still awesome and I still totally recommend it to anyone, but hopefully they update their mattresses soon.
Breakfast was served in the grand dining room. I had the eggs Benedict, while Melissa had the florentine. All was excellent. I particularly liked the honey ham they served mine with. Melissa was excited that they had cocoa crispies.
After breakfast, we packed and spent some time in the lobby by the fire (using the wifi). Melissa needed to book a place for our return to Dublin, and we wanted to figure out a few things to do or see before we head back. At the front desk on our way out, the friendly staff recommended a few drives we could do near Sligo county.
Originally we had planned on making it south to Galway, but we overestimated the drive from Sligo to Galway. Even though they look close on the map, it is faster to drive from Sligo to Dublin than it is to go from Sligo to Galway.
Prior to setting off for the day, Melissa took the time to document my four wheeled chariot. I have been getting better by the minute behind the wheel. Most notable is that I am not having to think as hard to stay on the left side of the road, As you can see, I have been totally excited to shift lefty.
Our first drive of the day was down to Strandhill, which is the local beach community. Everyone here told us to go down to see the surfers. The drive down was scenic, passing tidal plains and fields of sheep.
The town of Strandhill had a bit of a hippie vibe. The northern Californian in me felt like it was an extremely small Santa Cruz without the sandy beach. The surfers were not in the water, which was probably a good thing because the water looked choppy. There were 8-10 foot waves, but none of them looked rideable. They sat at a picnic table at the surf school in their full body wetsuits waiting for the waves.
Next, we headed to see the Glencar waterfall. To do this, we had to drive back through Sligo and head off on a NW bearing. The last few miles into Glencar were on a narrow road that had a posted limit of 80 km/hr. I got up to 60 a few times and could barely keep the car on the road. On the way there were good views of Benbulben, the headlands overlooking Sligo and the Atlantic.
Once at the waterfall, we parked next to Glencar lake and walked up a paved trail to the waterfall. It was drizzling a bit, and we had the place to ourselves for the most part. The tourist guides said this is the area where Keats lived.
On the way back into town, we took a picture of a common sight here.... Tractors on the road.
We headed back to Sligo the city. Our first order of business was to find long term parking. We found this at the Quays (keys), which is a modern shopping mall. Our first experience in Sligo let us know that everyone here is more friendly that the US, and as such we needed to budget more time in each store to account for people wanting to chat.
We grabbed lunch at a bagel shop. Melissa had a Manhattan Bagel, which amongst other things had guacamole on it. When she ordered it, red flags went up in my head. Sure enough, her guacamole consisted of yellow mustard mixed with pickle relish. Yummers! This also kept my prophesy back at LAX intact. Considering I can barely eat avocados sitting on my countertop before they over ripen, I can only imagine the challenges associated with getting them to Ireland.
Our first shopping stop was to buy a postcard for Peggy, our daycare provider. Melissa carefully selected one with a shot of Benbulben. The next order of business was to walk down the street to the post office to mail it. After getting the stamp and writing a note, we had to hold off because neither of us could solidly say what the zip code is on the other side of the 23. We both think it is 91062, but we weren't 100% positive.
Next, we visited the shop we went to yesterday, Mullany Brothers on O'Connell St. Melissa did some more souvernirs shopping while I chatted witht the shopkeeper. They had a soccer jersey there that I did not recognize. It turns out that the soccer jersey they were selling wasn't for soccer, but instead it was for Gaelic football. After a long discussion with him, I decided that the game sounds lawless and I would love to watch a game someday.
We returned to the car and began our 2.5 hr drive back across Ireland. Other than one roundabout where I had to do two laps and popping a curb at the Dublin Airport, the trip was uneventful.
We took the airport bus back into Dublin to get to our hotel, which was the Dublin City Inn. The location was great, only 2 block straight shot to the spire on O'Connell St (lots of O'Connell Streets here). That is where the good things to say about this hotel end. The halls smelled of musty vomit. The walls in our room were so thin we could hear conversations around us. Our nonsmoking room, complete with signage indicating that there is no smoking, smelled of cigarettes and had a hotel issued ashtray. Our room was adjacent to the elevator shaft so we could hear that humming and rumbling by. The remote for the tv was AWOL. Not a nice hotel at all, and it cost pretty much the same per night as the castle. Big cities come with big city prices.
However, their wifi worked just fine, and I was excited to find a Gaelic football game that was going to be played at historic Croke Park in Dublin tomorrow night. We are so going!
We finished the night by Skyping and then trying to fall asleep.
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