Sleeping in seemed the best way to save money so that’s what we did.  Of course we had to eat at Lemon the next morning, but we planned to be in and out in a hurry so as to avoid lots of parking charges.  We happened upon a bit of luck though and managed to park inside Dublin Castle free of charge.  The gate keeper was really nice and assured us that our car wouldn’t be towed or anything unpleasant like that.  On our way back to the car we had a run in with a local bully all grown up into a young man.   On account of the weather I was all bundled up with layers which included my rain jacket.  This apparently struck this guy funny and he asked me if I was going skiing as he stood there on the street smoking a cigarette, imitating a downhill skier and laughing with his friends.  David said something glib in response, I ignored him.  We kept on walking and as we were debriefing, I realized that I really should have snapped a photo of our amusing Irish bully.  Ah well, he’ll have to live on in our memory alone.

We’d decided to fore-go the tour that we’d considered taking and head to the town of Howth which our guide Valerie had recommended as a fun place to visit.  By now we were getting the hang of things a bit better, I was coming into my own as the navigator and our ride was fairly uneventful, but pretty as we were driving out onto a Peninsula.

We found a trail-head of sorts.  David would have preferred something a bit less populated, but we walked along for a while until I had to go to the bathroom.  Despite my better judgment I followed David up a heather covered hill in search of a loo.  It was pretty tough going and I was pretty sure that there wasn’t anything up there, but we continued to climb.  At least David wasn’t complaining about the crowds anymore, we were the only ones who opted for an off-trail jaunt.  Eventually we arrived at a paved road that was considerably lacking in scenery.  Then we had to walk back into town along the road and we finally located a toilet.  Then it was back up the hill through the town to get the car.  Not exactly the scenery we’d been looking for, but it was a picturesque little village and we saw some pretty birds along the way.

We had supper at a little pub.  It was tasty.  We had fish and chips for the first time ever and were pleasantly surprised.  Then we headed back home to pack up and get ready for a morning departure to Yorkshire.

We made it into the city center with enough time to breakfast and wander before the free walking tour started at 11a. We found a really tasty crepe place called Lemon (I seem to remember our guide mentioning that Bono’s brother is the owner). David was in heaven, I was pretty happy too. The people who work there were really sweet and happy, we like Lemon!

It was really cold so our wandering around led us to the shelter of Dublin Castle. We bought a couple postcards and filled them out while we waited for the tour time to arrive.

We arrived at the meeting place to find a great crowd of people, in all there were 4 guides and most of the people seemed to be around college student aged. Our guide ended up being the quiet young lady (Valerie) who was over-shadowed by her fellow male guides who demonstrated lots of bravado and showmanship. She just waited until they were gone and then we got down to business. She’s a history student at Trinity college, and seems to enjoy her job. Good for her and good for us because we had a great tour. Once the guys were out of the picture, she really took center stage and was an engaging guide. At one point we caught up with the other group and saw that the guide was giving a small performance on the Irish tin whistle. Valerie was appalled and assured us that there would be no performances on her tour (apart from the great story telling, that is). I figured that she just didn’t have much patience for silly guys, David thought it had more to do with embarrassment at kitschy culture kind of stuff. Who knows! But it was entertaining nonetheless.

The tour was fun, we learned lots and I think that did go toward mitigating the cold. There was a U of M student along with us so we chatted a bit which was fun for me. I thought it was so funny to be so far and find myself walking alongside a fellow wolverine, but then I guess that goes to show we were amongst tourists.

After the tour we returned to our car to find the bill for parking at nearly 20 euros! Dublin is expensive! Getting out of town was quite a challenge. Without success, we repeatedly attempted to turn right onto the road leading to the countryside. As the failed attempts mounted so did our stress and frustration. Damn roads! Damn signs! Damn maps! Damn drivers! UGH! We finally made it out of there and onto our road only to by stymied again. More of the same, with plenty of bickering and complaining. Finally we arrived on a beautiful country road. The disharmony melted away, if a bit slowly, and we were content. We were beginning to think that a country vacation suited us better!

We had another beautiful walk with a labyrinth at the end (I like the mystery of it, David thinks they’re sort of pointless); then a lovely ride back to the city. On the way we passed lots of sheep and their little lambs, adorable! They were bounding around, doing all sorts of cute jumps and tumbles. We pulled over to try and snap a picture, they were all pretty curious when we were in the car but once we got out they all skedaddled and the opportunity was lost.

We managed to find a very tasty Indian restaurant thanks to my persistent searching and navigation (things seemed to be improving on that front). The matron of the place was like a doting aunt and we filled ourselves right to the brim with our comfort foods. Funny thing, though, once we were done we were pretty much discarded. We had to really fight for the check which we found odd. But we made it out eventually and back onto the M50 (David’s favorite road).

On the way home we took notice of a sign along the M50 that we’d seen once or twice. More or less it said that the M50 was a toll road and that we had until 8p the next day to pay up. We’d been a bit confused by this since we hadn’t gone through a toll plaza and when we got back into the room David went searching online. Through reading over a couple different websites, David arrived at the conclusion that every time we drove on the M50 we were going to have to pay 4.50 euro! It was still unclear exactly how it all worked. For instance what happened when we got off and got back on going the other direction on account of being confused (which had happened a couple times)? David was pretty sick of the price of Dublin at that point, and needless to say the M50 was no longer his favorite road! I took a more sympathetic stance toward our host country and we managed to collect ourselves enough in order to fall asleep.

We woke up pretty late and had full Irish breakfast at the hotel (not good enough to repeat).  We missed the cut off for the city tour that we wanted to take so headed for the countryside instead.  We had a lovely hike along part of the Wicklow Way, which we planned to repeat daily.  Thanks to David the outdoor navigator, we managed a couple shortcuts on the return that kept us from getting soaked.  We just made it to the car when it started to pour!

We had a tasty meal at a famous pub called Johnny Fox’s.  It was fun, thank goodness there’s no more smoking allowed inside restaurants!  Driving through the countryside is equal parts harrowing and stunning.  All those green pastures and stone walls are really pretty, but people drive along very narrow roads at break-neck speeds.  Add in driving on the left side of the road, changing street names at every turn, and trying to decipher google maps on the iphone and there’s plenty of frustration to be had.  The other problem is that driving in the car has the tendency to lull me to sleep rendering my already limited navigation abilities completely useless, and David on his own.