Day 14 ~ Heading East

Today we were venturing forth to lands unknown. Darryl and Sinead wanted to send us off with a full belly and made a full lunch of ham, potatoes, and veg with cheese sauce! What a thoughtful gesture.

Here is our super cute Golf that we rented for the week.

It was the perfect size for all of us with plenty of room in the 'boot'!

We headed south east with Dublin as our destination. The drive was pretty with many rolling hills, countryside, various weather systems and....road construction! In any country, road construction is a pain! As you can see, on our dashboard is Darryl's most helpful Sat Nav GPS. It was a lifesaver.


I wish I could remember the name of this pretty town. Sinead, if you are reading...help me out! It's in the North as you can see by the red road and MPH speed limit signs.

This is a pretty cool bridge we drove over. Shortly there after we got to go on the M1 which is a terrific freeway with a 120 km speed limit. It's also a toll highway and we had quite the experience figuring that out. Let's just say on the way home we were professionals and it went much more smoothly.

Almost four hours later we arrived at the Best Western Premier Academy Plaza Hotel! That's a mouthful. Liam was FED UP of the car seat by now and we had a bit of an unexpected tour of Dublin due to a small error on the GPS. Apparently typing in PLACE not STREET is a detail of much importance! We were really pleased with our room. It was a good size with plenty of room for a travel cot (playpen) that the hotel provided for us. The bathroom was a bit of a disappointment in that there wasn't a bathtub. It was a set up called a 'wet room'. The shower and bathroom were all one unit. No separation between the two, so when one had a shower the whole room got quite wet. Ugh. But it was spotless and that's what counts to me!

Nice comfy duvets for all.

Liam loved bouncing all over the beds. This was taken shortly before he fell off the bed and landed on his head. Ooops.

When we checked into the hotel we were given a package. I didn't really open it or pay attention because I thought it was promotional material or maybe some tourist brochures. As I put it down in the hotel room I noticed our names were scribbled on it and I became a bit curious. I opened it to find two cell phones and oodles of information about Dublin, bus routes and a little note welcoming us. The kind benefactor was Cormac who is Sinead's brother. Cormac and his wife live in Dublin and as it happens his office building was right beside our hotel! We gave him a quick call from the cell phones and he came over to welcome us. It was great to see him as it had been years and years! We freshened up and then Cormac took us on a quick walking tour of the immediate area. He told us which streets not to walk down after dark, where the sights were, how to find the Garda (police) station and all sorts of completely helpful things. What a lifesaver he was! By now we were all starving and we got him to point out a restaurant that would be good for families. Ireland doesn't really have any chains (besides the fast food places such as Burger King and McD's) so it's hard to know what's a good place or not. We ended up at an Italian/Greek place and had quite a feast on pizza. It was very good.

We then walked to a Tesco Express to pick up a few supplies for Liam and water to make bottles.
By now we were exhausted. We pretty much fell into bed once we got back to our room. We wanted to get a good night's sleep because we were so excited to explore Dublin in the morning!