Sadly our last day in Ireland today. After breakfast we checked out and the hotel kindly agreed to store our luggage to enable us to go out for the day in the car. Readers will recall that although we had a seven-seater Opel Zafira it had luggage space for about three laptop bags - not seven or eight cases! I drove us around Phoenix Park and we stopped for a while at the Papal Cross where in 1979 Pope John Paul II had celebrated Mass with over a million people in the park. It must have been an amazing occasion. The cross dominates that part of the park. I then drove us through central Dublin and out through Clontarf to the Hill Howth - a rocky prominence at the northern entrance to Dublin Bay - notorious at the time of "The Troubles" for being used for gun running and where Ireland's last first generation tramway ran from Sutton to the Summit. There is no tramway there now (although the Irish National Transport Museum is situated at Howth) so we drove up to the summit for more photo opportunities. We had lunch at the Summit Inn (I had to wait for some excellent fresh mussels to be cooked) with our last Irish Guinnesses. We left the Summit at about 2.30 p.m. and were back at the hotel at 4 p.m. (experiencing some traffic problems near the hotel due to major road works) and then "loaded up" the car with our luggage. This meant, as with coming from the airport four days ago, sitting with cases on knees and being really crushed up - all except me who was driving the car! We returned the car, initially, to the wrong area of the airport and received instructions to the correct part by the rather general directions of "You see that shiny building over there [the airport] you need to head for that...!" We did eventually return the car to where we had originally hired it (ignoring the signs indicating "Care Hire Return") and managed to "shoe horn" ourselves out of the car. The photograph shows the the problem of the number of cases v. the size of the luggage compartment! The Russells plane was delayed 20 minutes in leaving but ours, unlike the outward journey, was on time and, in fact, we arrived back at Bristol Airport 15 minutes ahead of schedule. We stopped off for a supper of fish and chips at Shepton Mallet and were back home by 11.20 p.m., exhausted but happy to have had a fantastic break away in one of my favourite cities with good friends.
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
Dublin - Day 4
Sadly our last day in Ireland today. After breakfast we checked out and the hotel kindly agreed to store our luggage to enable us to go out for the day in the car. Readers will recall that although we had a seven-seater Opel Zafira it had luggage space for about three laptop bags - not seven or eight cases! I drove us around Phoenix Park and we stopped for a while at the Papal Cross where in 1979 Pope John Paul II had celebrated Mass with over a million people in the park. It must have been an amazing occasion. The cross dominates that part of the park. I then drove us through central Dublin and out through Clontarf to the Hill Howth - a rocky prominence at the northern entrance to Dublin Bay - notorious at the time of "The Troubles" for being used for gun running and where Ireland's last first generation tramway ran from Sutton to the Summit. There is no tramway there now (although the Irish National Transport Museum is situated at Howth) so we drove up to the summit for more photo opportunities. We had lunch at the Summit Inn (I had to wait for some excellent fresh mussels to be cooked) with our last Irish Guinnesses. We left the Summit at about 2.30 p.m. and were back at the hotel at 4 p.m. (experiencing some traffic problems near the hotel due to major road works) and then "loaded up" the car with our luggage. This meant, as with coming from the airport four days ago, sitting with cases on knees and being really crushed up - all except me who was driving the car! We returned the car, initially, to the wrong area of the airport and received instructions to the correct part by the rather general directions of "You see that shiny building over there [the airport] you need to head for that...!" We did eventually return the car to where we had originally hired it (ignoring the signs indicating "Care Hire Return") and managed to "shoe horn" ourselves out of the car. The photograph shows the the problem of the number of cases v. the size of the luggage compartment! The Russells plane was delayed 20 minutes in leaving but ours, unlike the outward journey, was on time and, in fact, we arrived back at Bristol Airport 15 minutes ahead of schedule. We stopped off for a supper of fish and chips at Shepton Mallet and were back home by 11.20 p.m., exhausted but happy to have had a fantastic break away in one of my favourite cities with good friends.
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