It’s done. We’re home. The last three days have been a bit of a whirlwind with many hours spent in the car flitting about the countryside, visiting family and taking in some of the sights around Dublin. It was, of course, capped with the requisite ordeal of traveling through airports and their byzantine security systems.
Friday we motored from Waterford to Dublin using the iPad and Googlemaps as our navigation tool. We noted, once more, that it’s not the ideal GPS-style system since it’s not quite as responsive as a real GPS tool. There are some areas where O2 has little coverage so the maps didn’t get updated at all and we had to rely on signs to find our way. Remember that in Ireland, they assume you know where you’re going and the signs are spartan, if at all, and tend to be smaller. We got lost a number of times when the cell signal got weak. And then there are the “highways”…the “motorways” are fine though, four lanes of divided highway where you roll at 120 k/hr but then you suddenly find yourself on a cowpath with roundabouts. Most of the minor highways have little or no shoulder and, as previously noted, the vegetation is thick and you get a lot of green “tunnels” like this.
I have to admit that, at times, especially with large oncoming trucks, I drove close enough to the shoulder to have bushes slapping the side of the car, much to Erin’s consternation. I’ll collect my musings on the countryside later.
Once in Dublin, we crashed at Erin’s aunt’s home and planned for our last day in Ireland. It was to have been a short visit with Erin’s cousin John then off to Dublin town for a sight-seeing tour but we had such a good time in postcard-perfect Howth, north of Dublin, that we ended up staying the whole day there and part of the evening. We started off battling the seagulls trying to feed fish to the seals that populate the harbour. The seals bob in the water and, when you throw a fish towards them, the seagulls hover and try to grab the fish before the seals can. The spectacle might be funny until you work out the math. A hundred seagulls hovering above your head is likely to result in several direct hits on your shoulders or head until you release the fish…needless to say, there were several cries to “throw the damn fish!” to the hapless children.
All good fun though. We lingered for awhile before heading to Erin’s cousin’s home on the cliffside where we ordered Indian food and John and I snuck off for a quick pint before picking up dinner. The evening ended too soon and before we knew it, we were on our way home, stumbling through Dublin and quickly tucking the kiddies into bed in preparation for the long journey home. Did I mention how detestable international air travel is?