Today’s agenda:
1) Get an Irish phone number/SIM card
2) Go for a good walk
The 1st item was done after a brisk preview walk along the canal down to Lower Baggot St. It was lunchtime and all the office workers were lined up in packs of friends along the Grand Canal, eating and laughing and enjoying the sunshine.
For the 2nd item, I walked halfway back up the Grand Canal area to the DART station. I took the next train to Howth, a half hour north of Dublin. I feared my sunshine luck would run out and I couldn’t waste a beautiful day indoors – today I found the 4-mile Howth Cliff Walk along the Irish Sea.
I started at the Harbour, with a visit to local Beshoff Bros for fish & chips.
They didn’t photograph pretty. But the box did!
After the satisfying lunch, I started my trek. I found the Yeats house.
Then came great views of hills and the sea.
Sometimes I needed a warning & direction.
Sometimes I found cliff dwellers.
Sometimes I saw 1 of a dozen ferries, getting newly stranded travelers home.
Mostly I just enjoyed the views.
At the end of the walk, I stopped in at the pub in the station briefly — a very drunk British lass (…is there any other kind? I kid! I kid!…) came running into the loo to tell me excitedly, “Did you hear? Just now, our flight on Ryanair’s cancelled the weekend through! We don’t have to go back to London!” I congratulated her on the good (?) fortune & was on my way.
Later, I joined Mr. T at The Pig’s Ear off Trinity Green for a well-earned nouveau Irish dinner.
Great end to my first week in Ireland!