Last few days of Irish fun...

Antrim Coast to ??? to Dublin, August 11-13

Kathryn and I drove away from Portrush in the rain this morning. We followed the coast the majority of the day - what a beautiful part of the country! We were trying to fix it where we arrived in Dublin with little to no gas, so we were purchasing just a few euros of gas at a time. The conversion of gas from gallons to liters AND the euros/pounds/dollars thing really messed us up. So we stopped once but the guy at the station only put half of the amount of gas that we asked... we drove a few miles down the road and stopped AGAIN to get a few more euros worth of gas. I think we ended up stopping 2-3 more times before we got to Dublin to "top off" Rooster's tank:) We drove until early afternoon then started looking for a place to stay. Kathryn had to stop for another "side of the road" bathroom break; I was trying to get her to wait for a town, but she was insistent. As we drove down tiny little one lane roads looking for a good place to stop, we passed a field with a couple of horses grazing in it. I. Love. Horses. Especially Irish horses:) Since Kat got to stop to tinkle, I made her wait while I hopped out of the car and loved on the horses. It was a lovely moment for me.

My Irish loves...

We made it to Newry, which was a town just north of the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland. It was too big (we didn't like the big towns!), so we headed on down the river. We ended up finding a cheap B&B in some little port town (don't ask me the name...). We hung out in our room for a bit, then left to explore the town. We immediately found a parking space and walked the entire perimeter of the town in approximately 20-30 minutes. It was a small town. After our short exploration, Kat and I made it an early evening and were both asleep by 10pm...

Watch out for Granny!

The next morning we woke up and went up the stairs for breakfast... we FINALLY ate Irish pudding! Irish pudding is really a blood sausage, and many of the Irish folks we had met told us that we needed to try it. We both were a bit skeptical - it sounded really gross. However, it was pretty good; we decided it just tasted like a soft piece of sausage. After breakfast we loaded up Rooster and headed back to Dublin! We were determined to NOT get on a toll road, but most roads leading to Dublin turned to tolls close to the city. As a result, we probably took an extra 2 hours to get to Dublin... but Kat and her brilliant navigating got us into the city without paying a cent (of course, we probably spent double what the toll would cost on extra gas). Kat made me stop just before we reached the city so that we could try to buff out the "scratch" on Rooster's bumper. Remember that little fender bender? Anyway, we pulled off the highway into the parking lot of a small gas station. Then we proceeded to try to rub off the scratch with our fingers. I think I lost some skin. Turned out the scratch was too deep, and the outer black plastic was scratched off to reveal the white plastic bumper. So what did Kathryn want to do? She wanted to find a black permanent marker and color in the section of the bumper where the paint was scraped off. Like THAT wouldn't be obvious... Surely the rental agency wouldn't notice THAT?! Thankfully, I was able to talk her out of her Sharpie idea...

We made it back to Dublin without incident. Pulled into the car rental place running on fumes (mission accomplished!) and tried to park in a dark spot so that Rooster's "slight scratch" wouldn't be noticed. Kat and I had talked about how they were probably going to make us pay the deductible to fix the scratch... we were going to go broke... this was going to be awful... We went inside and the rental agency clerk ran outside to go over the car. I was expecting a time-consuming, going-over-the-car-with-a-magnifying-glass type of process, but she came back in the office after 2 minutes or so and said "it all looks good to me, thank you!" We bolted out of the office and put as much distance between us and that clerk as we could before she went back out and found Rooster's scratch! Praise Jesus!

Kat and one of our new friends:) Cute, huh?

Since we had already walked through Dublin for a couple of days at the beginning of the trip, we hit all the souvenir shops on Grafton Street and each picked up cheesy "happys" for our families. One last hoo-rah? Kat and I visited the National Museum of Archaeology where we saw lots of old stuff made by old Irish and Viking tribes. It was fairly interesting, but we both don't have much patience for that kind of stuff. It was early in the evening, and we had an early flight the next morning so we decided to "just stop for a quick pint" on the way back to the hostel. Our quick pint turned into several when we met a group of men who were warming up for an open water swimming race the next day. Before the night was over, we sang Irish songs, drank Irish beer, danced Irish jigs, and flirted with Irish men... it was the perfect evening to finish out our amazing trip!

 

 This is a little video I took of Kat trying to enter our hostel room the last night of the trip... Kinda funny:)