From there, we went to the covered market, where we met an extremely handsome Trinity boy who worked at a cupcake shop.. an hour of chatting won us 2 free cupcakes, and lots of advice on good places to go around town.. quite fun:)
From there, we went to St. Stephen's Green, where we had just sat down to people watch and I was about to sneakily cut my finger nails in the park, when these four boys walked up and struck up a conversation. Turns out they were actually from Manchester, and they stole Alie's camera to take a "model photo shoot"... here are some of the results:)
So much fun:) We had to leave though, run to O'Connell's bridge, get our luggage, run to the train station, and catch the DART to Greystones to meet the lovely family we're staying with. We got there and met the Maxwell's- Alan, Jean, Jessica-Mae, Nic-Nic, and Christian, and had our first homecooked meal in a week.
The next morning (September 9th), we slept in and had a nice relaxing day exploring the town. We biked down to the shore, walked a bit, got coffee, looked in a bookstore, mailed postcards, walked some more, got more coffee, sat on the beach and read/looked for awesome rocks, and basically just wandered and enjoyed. We went back home at night, built puzzles, had another delicious dinner, and relaxed and made plans until we passed out.
That brings us to today, September 10th.
We managed to sleep through our 9:30 alarm, which we needed to wake up in time to catch a ride to the Dart station to go to Bray to hop on a bus that would take us to Glendalough, an ancient monastic sight in a valley. However, we managed to wake up at 11:45 AM, panic, look up the train schedule, threw ourselves together, power-walked downtown, and managed to run aboard the 12:30 train leaving for Rathdrum, hoping we'd be able to catch a cab from there to Glendalough.
When we got to Rathdrum (aka the middle of nowhere, Ireland), we had NO idea which direction to head into town. Luckily, there was an adorable little old man with a giant suitcase getting off the train as well. I asked him if he was from the town, and he said no, but he'd lived there 40 years ago, for 40 years, and knew it well. We ended up chatting with him and he told us his life story (his sister was married in '58, he lives on a tiny island now, etc. etc.), and we walked with him into "town." The town was one street with a few restaurants, a supermarket, a pub, and a clothing store with CREEPY dolls posing as mannequins. We decided to get coffee at the "coffee shop," which was actually just a bar. When we walked in, I asked the lady if they had ice. She said "Yeeess... why?" and looked quite concerned (I've started asking this first, because most placed here only do BLENDED cold drinks, or hot drinks, and find iced coffee to be gross/they can't do it). I asked if I could just get a few shots of espresso, with milk, over ice. She looked absolutely BAFFLED, and ended up handing me some espresso, a gallon of milk, and a cup of ice, and told me to help myself, because she had no idea what I wanted. When I explained that the drink was quite common in California, she said it was the strangest thing she'd ever heard. Then, she suddenly said "OH! I've heard of this strange new thing people are drinking called iced tea.. have you heard of it?"--- I almost DIED laughing. I felt like I took a time machine back to 1962. So crazy.
(sidenote- the coffee ended up being delicious, and she said we could have it for free, because the locals don't ever drink the espresso because it's too strong-- we left her some money anyways, because the coffee was GREAT)
From there, we went to the tourist information center, which was just a wooden shack with an old lady and some papers inside. She ended up telling us that our only options were to take a cab, which would cost about 20 euros both ways, or we could "hire" bikes for about 10 euros each. We decided biking would be more fun and cost efficient, so we headed over to the "bike hire shop," which was actually a canned gasoline shop, where an old man also had a few bikes that he lent out. We got our bikes, paid the 10 euros, and set off on a 14-something kilometer trek to Glendalough. It was GORGEOUS and sunny and pretty on the bike ride, and we saw so many cows/sheep/hills/cute little cottages along the way.
We hiked down to the lake, it started raining again, and we hustled back to the visitor center, walked through the one-room museum, then began our rainy uphill bike ride back to Rathdrum. 14 km later, we arrived, an hour before our train was due to leave. We bought stamps, mailed more postcards, returned our bikes to the man's house (!) (SIDENOTE: I realized when we were in Glendalough that other than taking our 10 euros apiece for the bikes, the man had taken NO deposit, no form of identification of us, or any means of ensuring we would actually return the bikes... he basically handed over 2 nice mountain bikes for a total of 20 euros. crazy. and then asked us to return them to his home. we're definitely not in California anymore...)
We hopped on our train home, where we saw 3 more rainbows to add to our Ireland rainbow tally:
Rainbow tally: 7
Ginger sightings: 92
After having Dublin Coddle for dinner (a traditional dish of sausages and potatoes.. delishhhh), we settled in for some tea, coffee, and teabrack. YUM.
Now, we must decide whether we want to stay here for longer (we were invited to stay through the weekend), or to head off to Galway. Decisions, decisions...
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