A blustery day to say the least! It has rained (occasionally heavily) all day. We drove down to Portland to stay at the Embassy Suites before our departure in the morning. We enjoyed a repast of calamari, wild mushroom ravioli and green salad. It does not seem possible that tomorrow we will begin our journey to the Emerald Isle, Ireland!

Early morning start - on our way to our car, we saw this license plate:

You may all wonder where we have been - after arriving on the morning of the 2nd, we made it to our car rental location, and the journey began! Tony graciously offered to drive, and Pam and I wasted no time in accepting his offer. We got on the M50 and soon we were on our way to Killiney. After some frantic searching on Waze, it appeared that we had made it safely to Killiney. Now to find our VRBO - as the Carpenters sang, “We’d only just begun . . . “ It was a comedy of errors finding it as neither Waze or Google maps recognized the address. Asking a local was no help either. We resorted to calling the couple who owned the VRBO only to find that the phone number they gave us did not work if you dialed from a US cell phone. We eventually made it there and were too early to check in. They knew we were all very jet lagged and offered to get it ready early for us - they suggested that we drive to Dalkey to get some groceries.

A new adventure ensued as we drove up the coast to the village of Dalkey. Tony managed to find us a parking space - learning how to pay for parking even following the directions on the meter showed that even when you travel to country where you speak the language, there are still items lost in translation.

We had lunch at the Corner Note cafe after shopping and then made our way back to the cottage in Killiney. Karen, one of the owners, breezed us into the house and quickly gave us suggestions and ideas about the house and where to eat. We were all glazed about that point, so some of her salient advice went nowhere.

We all enjoyed a light early dinner and sank into bed at long last!

We had planned to visit Kilmanham Gaol - the prison where the 1916 Easter Uprising insurgents were jailed and executed, however, the train schedule was adjusted on Sunday, and we were not going to make to downtown Dublin on time.

As it was a nice day, we decided to go visit someplace outside. We set out for Glendalough (pronounced “Glenda Lock”) - the site of St. Kevin’s monastery. In its day, it was one of the most venerated learning centers in all of Europe. It was impressive with its campanile which dates from around 900 A.D. The walls of the cathedral are still standing, and you can see the gravestones of several people in the floor of the cathedral, including St. Kevin’s cross.

The grounds around the cathedral are the cemetery, containing many gravestones which are so old that the inscriptions on them are long gone. Around Glendalough are many trails, and we saw several hikers and bikers taking advantage of the beautiful grounds as well as the nice day.

We arose early to start our journey to Northern Ireland. It rained off and on during the way to Castlewellan. We stopped in the town to get some pound sterling as we planned to take Andrew out to lunch after our tour. We drove into the park and the castle was easily visible from the road. We drove up to the castle and soon after parking, a man with light red hair approached, Andrew Forson, the gentleman with whom I have corresponded several times during the last few months.