An early 8:00 AM breakfast for this travel day. We dine on the typical light Irish breakfast of egg, sausage, bacon, grilled tomato and toast with juice coffee and tea. Back in our rooms we make final adjustments, push the luggage down to the reception for checkout and load up the vehicle for the last driving day of the trip. We depart Faithlegg Club by 9:30 and with only one missed turn, we are on the road to Dublin, a journey of 160 Km and about 2 1/2 hours. We arrive at Dublin airport at 11:55 and find our way back to SIXT, our car rental agency, well before our 12:30 deadline.
After ditching the vehicle we shuttle back to the airport and, owing to crowds and our checkin time at our air BnB of 2:00 we decided to sit in the airport coffee shop for a bottle of water and a muffin. After the crowd surge was down, around 1:45, we hailed a large taxi for the ride into Dublin. Our abode for the next three days is very well located on Fitzwilliam Square, in the heart of the city, near the government offices. It is a 2 bedroom, 2 bath, lower level flat in a typical walk-up building across from the Fitzwilliam Square park.
We have a living area, full kitchen and two bath and shower locations, although one of the baths is “split” with the shower in one area and the toilet in the hallway near the bedroom entry.
Not ideal, but workable. The only drawback is that the sink cabinet is tiny, making lay out of makeup or other supplies problematic. Actually there are quite a few problems with the unit…hastily cleaned (and not well) as well as a smell of old bacon. We opened windows and unpacked and worked at giving it our “smell”. Easier than it sounds, it turns out.
We settled in for a bit of work and rest, while Lee and Howie went out for a scouting walk around the area. After their return we enjoyed some of our leftover wine and discussions about dinner. We walked a bit and found the series of restaurants along the way with sidewalk seating that Howie and Lee had seen earlier. We picked an Italian place that looked clean and had an open 4-top table on the sidewalk. Our Croatian waitress was right on the spot, and we soon had our order for a pair of truffle cream, mozzarella and salami pizzas on wonderful Neapolitan crusts. Starters of calamari and bruschetta with a bottle of Montepulciano completed the meal. We all agreed that it was one of the best pizzas we had ever had! We turned down the dessert offers and instead went for a short stroll around the city on this pleasant Friday evening, looking for ice cream but they had closed up for the night. Howie and Lee had already reconnoitered the area and walked with alacrity while Mark and Deb plodded along wondering when we would finally get home. A slight sprinkling of rain started off and on but not enough to deter us. We stopped at a local Tesco market on our way back to the BnB to pick up some bread and juice for tomorrow and replenish our wine supply for the next two nights.
We returned and soon found ourselves wrapped in nice cool beds and happy to be in the Dublin town.
