Ireland vacation 2022 recap
On Friday, September 2, 2022, the alarm goes off in the middle of the night – half past three in the morning. A dream we've had for as long as I can remember is coming true; we are going to Ireland.
However, preparing for a holiday is not without stress. Weeks of planning, endless hours on Google Maps, checking every bus connection thirty times and finally having a complete nervous breakdown about the forecast weather, which predicted rain rain and more rain all week. So we just packed our bags with extra rain gear and hope for the best.
At five o'clock AM grandma and her boyfriend are at the door to take us to Amsterdam. Months of news reports of horror scenarios at Schiphol Airport, endless lines at security and lost luggage are all in the back of our minds, but you can’t do more than arrive on time and provide your luggage with stickers and a GPS tag. So we did exactly that, but once arrived at Schiphol the stress turned out to be for nothing. First we had about an hour of waiting at an almost deserted check-in desk, then we took an almost leisurly stroll through a security line of 20 minutes, and then another quiet hour of waiting with far too expensive coffee in the departure hall. The flight was somewhat delayed, but around half past ten we left the runway behind us and climbed up towards the North Sea.
The flight went well, except for the landing, where our ears very painfully indicated that they did not agree with the cabin pressure difference. But then we saw the Howth peninsula, and how the Irish sea pounded upon the cliffs, and it started to sink in; we are really there.
After a somewhat chaotic lunch at Dublin Airport, we had to look for a bus to Bray, where we had booked our Airbnb. After a few more minutes of trudging fruitlessly from one terminal to the other, we were suddenly sent by a couple of helpful ladies to a bus headed in that direction, and we had three minutes to catch it. So we threw the luggage in the belly of the bus and we got on board.
We soon found out that the local Irish are absolutely friendly people, except for bus drivers. This good man was the first we met of many who addressed us curtly and surly. Apparently being a bus driver in these parts is a hard profession.
We arrived at Bray and it took us about a twenty minute walk to get to our Airbnb. Tired, broken, worn out but satisfied we arrived and were warmly greeted by Helen, our hostess, who shares the house with her platonic friend Gerry.
We dragged the luggage to our room upstairs and thankfully plopped down on the comfortable beds, then spent the rest of the afternoon out cold. At dinnertime we made our way to the Aldi further on for the necessary provisions, filled the stomachs with an instant curry and hit the sack after an episode of Stranger Things.
_______________________________________
On Saturday we put on the rain gear and Gerry gave us a lift to the Bray to Greystones Cliff Walk – a walking route that winds between the coast of the Irish Sea and the hillside of Bray Head. The pants of my rain suit turned out to have a big tear at the seam and by the time we got back it had torn from waist to crotch. So that could go to the trash. I'm still happy with my foresight and the extra rain poncho I packed anyway and that kept my butt dry for the rest of that afternoon.
Despite the rain we still walked a beautiful route. Aided by our walking sticks, we dodged huge of puddles of rain on the muddy trail, and marveled at the ease with which the locals walked these trails.
The local birds were extensively photographed by Mom, but the camera soon became too wet to use and disappeared back into the bag.
We followed the trail for about two miles before returning to Bray, pining for a hot lunch, which we eventually found at a joint called Wilde on the boardwalk, where we had an invigorating bowl of mushroom soup and watched football on TV
The bus back to the Airbnb was quickly found. Another nap, spaghetti bolognese for dinner, another episode of Stranger Things, and the first real day of vacation was done.
______________________________
come the next morning the sky was, to our relief, blue and the hills outside our bedroom window bathed in sunlight.
About a half hour walk from our address we found Killruddery House. A large mansion with impressive gardens in which we could get lost. Apparently there was some kind of sappy romance movie being shot there with Lindsey Lohan in the lead role. All kinds of film equipment could be seen in and around the house and the picturesque tearoom in the conservatory had been transformed into a kitschy film set of a wedding location with lots of pink.
A lady in a pink jacket peered through the conservatory window and made a face. 'Not my taste.' she said. We agreed.
Further into the park we found a path leading to a rocky hill overlooking the house and gardens. There we found the lady with the pink jacket again, sitting on a rock, enjoying the view. We sat down next to her and had a nice chat.
She asked us about our motivation to visit Ireland, and we told her that our love for the country started with the music of Riverdance and the like. The lady then told us that Riverdance happened to be showing this week at the Gaiety theater in Dublin. She went there herself this week with her daughter.
The idea of going to Riverdance sounded like the icing on the cake for our vacation to us.
The lady was determined to get us in the mood. She grabbed her cell phone, looked up the Riverdance theme, grabbed Moms hands and started a spontaneous dance. So the three of us – Mom, me and a total stranger lady – were dancing and hopping like crazy on a rock at Killruddery Gardens. We then gave her a big hug, and the lady walked back to the gardens. We stood on that rock for a good five minutes, absolutely stunned, and joked that we had met a real Irish fairy.
One thing was certain; we had to go to Riverdance this week. As soon as we were back at our accommodation, we immediately booked the tickets for the next Tuesday.
_____________________________________
Monday started with gray skies and heavy rain. Since we had covered almost ten kilometers the day before, the legs were getting really sore and we decided to take a rest day. We did some laundry and in the afternoon decided to take a short walk in the neighborhood. We had seen on Google Maps that a block or two away there were ruins of an old castle tower, and we decided to check it out.
We did take our walking sticks with us, given the sore legs. Google maps took us on a strange route and all paths came to a dead end. We wandered through the suburbs for a while, where we got some weird glances because of our walking sticks. When we finally got our sights on the tower, we found that it was surrounded by impenetrable fences and all the paths that ever led to it were bricked up with gray stone walls. A bit disappointed, we continued in the drizzling rain to Lidl to get some groceries and returned to the Airbnb. There we were told that the tower had recently been closed to prevent loitering. Lacking further plans, we got out our deck of cards and spent the afternoon playing Crazy Eights.
_______________________________________
Since we were going to Riverdance on Tuesday evening, we decided to add an afternoon in Dublin. We took the train into town with a vague plan to at least meander through the lanes of St Stephen's Green park, admire Trinity College and check out the adjacent famous Grafton Street shopping area.
Unfortunately, the rain threw a spanner in the works. Our visit to Trinity College went no further than the courtyard, where we quickly moved on because it was crowded and eventually took shelter at a Burger King for lunch. A few minutes of Googling later we found an address to spend the rest of the afternoon out of the elements and walked on to the Dublin Archaeological Museum. The entrance was free, but the necessary euros were spent at the souvenir shop there.
The museum was a great filler for the afternoon, but my legs in particular suffered from fatigue again. Fortunately, when we left the museum it was dry again and we went looking for a phamracy to get something for the muscle pain. A painkiller and a well-deserved break on a bench at St Stephen's Green later got me back on track. In the park quite some seagulls, pigeons and a heron have been photographed. We then headed out to find a cheap restauraunt to have dinner. We found one on the corner of the Gaiaty theater, which was run by Americans and where we ate a plate of pasta with pesto and chicken for little money.
We quickly visited a beautiful indoor shopping center opposite the theater where we bought more souvenirs and a little later we found ourselves in the beautiful Victorian Gaiety theatre. We had arranged pretty decent seats on the side of the front box.
The show itself was phenomenal. We've watched the 1996 New York show thousands of times on videotape, but despite the fact that this version had a smaller dance troupe and the live orchestra consisted of just three ladies, the real thing can't be matched. The first half of the show followed the set list we knew well, but in the second half we were surprised with quite a bit of new songs. By the end our hands were sore with applause and the company received a well-deserved standing ovation.
We found a bus back to Bray and got back into bed by midnight.
__________________________________
The next day, a visit to the enchanting Powerscourt House was on the agenda. The plan was to take the bus to the nearby village of Enniskerry but that turned out to be quite a challenge. The bus we had planned to catch simply didn't arrive and we were told by a local bus driver that the next one was coming in an hour. To kill the time we walked to the beach and the promenade behind the station and admired the waves of the Irish Sea in the sun.
We returned to the station but unfortunately disaster had to strike. Mom's ankle buckled when stepping off a curb and she was suddenly laying on the street with a scraped knee and a sore ankle.
Because to the chaos surrounding the fall, we managed to get to the wrong bus stop and the bus to Enniskerry drove off without us. We were fed up with the local public transport by now, so we opted to take a taxi.
A friendly Lyft taxi driver took us to the gates of Powerscourt Estate. In hindsight it was a good thing we hadn't taken the walk from Enniskerry to Powerscourt as the road went steeply uphill and with Mom’s busted ankle we would never have made it.
Powerscourt was beautiful and we kept it fairly dry until we got to the Japanese Garden where it started to rain. The umbrellas came out and we limped on to the adorable little Peperpot tower. But everything was getting wet and clammy and Mom’s ankle wasn't getting any better. We made our way to the cafe and got orselves two huge cups of hot chocolate with marshmallows, and I tried to book a taxi back using the Lyft app. The app neatly stated that a taxi would be there in about twenty minutes, but somehow I got two confirmation emails. We went to wait at the front gate… and waited and waited… and not a taxi in sight. Over an hour and two more annoyed phone calls to Lyft later, it turned out that they had mistakenly booked two taxis first, (hence the double confirmation in the mail), then were both canceled, and then we were rather rudely told they had no more taxis available. As things were looking now, we were stranded.
We went back inside where we just cought the receptionist before she left, and she managed to arrange an alternative taxi driver for us. A few minutes later an old fellow from Enniskerry with not a single tooth left in his mouth came to our rescue and dropped us off at the Airbnb.
In the evening when we had just gone to bed, the owners of the Airbnb came home again. I informed them that Mom was down with a sore ankle and immediately a cold compress and a support sock was provided and we could even borrow a pair of crutches for the next day that they happened to have lying around. We will not soon forget our hosts’ wonderfull care.
_________________________________________
We had booked a bus tour for Thursday from Dublin to the town of Glendalough, deep in the Wicklow Mountains. Fortunately Mom’s ankle was much better and it turned out to be no worse than slightly sprained. Still, Gerry insisted that we take the crutches with us.
The alarm went off at five in the morning, as the Dublin bus left around eight. Once again we took the train into town and found the Paddywaggon Tours bus at The Spire – a 121-metre-long pole that the locals also dubbed the Stiletto in the Ghetto and the Stiffy by the Liffey – among other things.
The bus was full of tourists and mostly Americans. Our driver entertained us with stories and tidbits about the area with his fantastic storytelling voice during the drive. In the mountains it was wet and foggy but the narrow roads, lined by low stone walls made the ride quite exciting. We stopped at Loch Tay, also known as the Guinness lake. Apparently this was where Kattegat's set from the Vikings series was built. However, there was no longer a Viking to be seen. There was little be seen anyway because of the fog, unfortunately. But just as the bus driver called us back to continue the ride, the fog suddenly lifted enough from the valley to still treat us to a spectacular view of the lake.
Once in Glendalough we were told we had only an hour and a half to walk around there, and the weather unfortunately remained on the wet side. We walked around the ancient ruins and the cemetery, on to the lake and past a waterfall, and far too quickly we had to turn around again to get to the bus in time.
Back in Dublin, Mom was eager for a cup of coffee, but although Talbot Street indicated on Google Maps that there were plenty of pubs, in reality it turned out to be a fairly dodgy street where inviting pubs turned out to be thinly spread. At the end towards Connoly Station we found a pub that looked okay, but were fresh out of coffee, so we settled for a cup of tea. In any case, it warmed our chilled bodies before catching the train again to Bray, where we prepared our suitcases for the return journey.
____________________________________
And just like that, a week has passed and one spends the whole Friday trying to get home. Unfortunately Helen had already left for work, but we were still able to give Gerry a bouquet of flowers and luxurious bars of chocolate we purchased the day before and thanked them profusely for their hospitality.
We once again took the train to the city. In Dublin we found a bus to the airport, but we found out that our flight was delayed at least an hour. After a long wait we finally left Ireland around 4.30pm and flew back to Amsterdam without any further problems, where my uncle picked us up and we arrived back at the safety and familiarity of our homes at around 9:30 PM.
