After all of our cityness it was nice to be in a quite little sea town and we took advantage of our location by spending a calm day in town! Max and Jean loaned us their bikes so we could get down to town more easily (although its only a 25 min walk). We had a nice calm day sitting in a little coffee shop (people still find it quite strange we want ice coffe and don't quite understand), wandering into the little boutiques, then the quaint bookstore and library. After we had thoroughly seen all the one street town had to offer (reminds me of the cute beach side small towns in CA that have one main street, but an irish version) we made our way to the beach. From the rock-sand of the beach it was very clear where the name "greystones" came from.
It was gorgeous with all the different colored stones making up the sand. We spent a good long time wandering along looking for heart shaped rocks and pretty colored ones. Later we just sat and enjoyed the amazing weather we were blessed with (no rain!) and listened to the waves. I did a little rock photo shoot, stacking them and did many tries trying to get a falling heart rock picture while Erin read her book.
Once back at the house we had a fun night playing with the girls, started a 1000 piece puzzle of ireland with Jessica-Mai and gave that up for a 10 piece puzzle with Nic Nic and later we did our nails with "nail varnish" with Jess before Erin and I tentatively tried to plan out our next days in Ireland.
Today through the Countryside!
original plans for today: wake up at 9:30, go to bray and get coffee see another nice seaside town and then get on a tour bus that would drive us through the mountains with pretty stops and eventually get us to Glendalough, give us time to explore there than bring us back to Dray (only 5 km from Greystones) and head back to greystones
what we did today:
- wake up at 11:30 to discover that the cellphone alarm we had set on Erins jenky abroad phone didn't actually go off with sound - panic - then calmly try to make a new plan
- found out the train times from greystones to rathdrum (we had found a website telling us another way to get to Glendalough is to get a bus or train to rathdrum which is the closest train accessible town by the Wicklow Mts. and then a taxi to glendalough because only private bus companies and taxies actually go to Glendalough) and decided we needed to make the 12:58 train to Rathdrum and then order a taxi to take us (hoping it wasn't too expensive!)
- we had perfect timing to get on the train to Rathdrum, once we arrived we realized that we didn't know how to get from the train station to the town, but fortunately there was a cute irishman with a suitcase that was walking up the road from the train station right behind us so we asked if he was from around here and although he doesn't live there now (he lives on a little island in the north of ireland) he was originally from there and was visiting and was heading to town, aka one little road, and we could follow him
- the walk seemed like a movie, passed little cottages then turned on this dirt road that had an old stone wall on one side and a little pasture on another with horses, then we ended up in town
- of course erin needed her coffee so that was our first mission, went into a bar that said it had coffee and tea - note: this bar looked like 1960's walls covered in hand drawn comics, little decorations and what not it was such a character bar - b.c we had discovered iced coffee or latte's wasn't a "thing" here we took another tactic to try to get what we wanted, here's a recreation of the conversation
- bar tender - how can i help you
- erin- do you have coffee or expresso
- bar tender - yes
- erin- do you have ice
- bar tender - quite confused expression yes
- erin- could you put expresso with milk in a cup over ice
- bar tender- i've never heard of that, such a strange thing but yes
- so summed up thats what happened, she made expesso put it in a mug then gave erin a tall glass with ice in it then handed her the jug of milk so erin could make her drink, haha she said she had never heard of the drink and asked what it was then she told us that she had recently heard of iced tea and wondered if it was similar! so crazy the little cultural differences that fall through the cracks :] then when we asked how much it was she said it was free, but we left her money on the bar, such nice little town ireland!
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| side alley that the bar was on |
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| cartoon in was the one we got coffee from! |
- we then went to the tourist office aka little shack trailer building, got a train schedule so we could get home, and asked the best way to get to glendalough, she said either taxi which we had planned or we could hire a bike b.c it was only 15km away. Surprised b.c there didn't seem to be any place you could rent a bike she said the store across the street with tractors out front had them for 10 euro each
- went to the store which was locked and closed, but than a friendly old man said the owner had just gone out n would be back, just as the lady at the info place had said we could hire two bikes, he then told us that when we get back from glendalough to bring it back to his house which was right by the train station! we later realized how trusting he was bc we didn't leave anything with him, no down payment, no id, just gave him 20 euro and took the 2 bikes!
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| getting our bikes from the cute old man |
- the bike ride there was gorgeous! down a two lane winding highway through the hillside, past cottages, pastures and barns, deep woodlands, it felt like a movie for sure
- finally made it to glendalough and as we did it started to rain of course! so we waited out the rain in the info center and went into the museum, fortunately the rain let up and we got to wander around the ruins of St. Kevins Monastic city from the 6th century, then walk to the lakes and gawk at the gorgeousness of everything (although the sun had long gone behind the dark clouded sky)
- we then made our long way back and this time although the countryside was the same there was more uphill and it was a bit drizzly rather than the perfect sun we had on the way there.
- got home after seeing the most amazing rainbow at the trainstation and then another one on the train ride home
- got welcomed by two excited little girls and then were fed super delicious homemade stew called "Dublin Couddle"
wow super long post but bottom line AWESOME ADVENTURE!
side note- we've been counting all the red heads we've seen since halfway through the first day in Dublin (not strawberry blonde like myself but real "gingers") so far our count is to 92!!!
also rainbow count! since landing in Ireland is 7!
gotta love this country :]
now off to plan what we're doing the next few days yay!
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