Dublin's a wrap...on to the countryside!

I woke up to Matthew saying, “There must be something wrong. The clock says 12:30. did we only sleep for an hour? I feel so awake.” Well, folks it was 12:30 p.m. which was immediately apparent when we opened the shades. To anyone needing a good night of rest, just get a set of black out shades and you won’t even know what day it is. So this was our last morning in Dublin which we slept through, but felt like a million bucks. We headed to Starbucks for a Dublin city mug for Mona and some sandwiches since it was already lunch time. The city was again buzzing with people everywhere and...oh, I forgot the hotel check out story.

Since I forgot to actually activate the SIM card I received for my Blackberry so I could use it internationally, Matthew called Verizon to get that turned on at like 3am the first night since we were up anyway with jet lag. He also called AT&T and had a very lively discussion with them about getting the wireless USB card to have international access (which never happened). Matthew also called our banks to ensure our they knew we were out of the country so there wouldn’t be any holds on the cards. How does this relate to checkout? Imagine our surprise when the “toll free” numbers Matthew confirmed with the front desk were “free” were actually considered “long distance” since the country code for the U.S. was used before the 1-800. So another lively discussion ensued with Matthew and this time the front desk clerk about the about $350 dollars in phone charges. Well, if you know Matthew, you probably know what happened next…the guy removed all charges except the actual “toll free” rate of $2.75 per call made. Phew.

Bags were packed and we headed out of the city for the countryside – still no rain! It was a beautiful ride from Dublin to Letterfrack. I called the Rosleague Manor where we were to stay for a street address so I could plug it into the GPS. The nice woman said, there is no street address. Just come to the viallage of Letterfrack and it will be apparent where it is. How funny! So different than Dublin already. It was quite a bit longer drive than previously anticipated. We ended up in the car for a good half day. It was all beautiful driving, but still not much to do but take it all in.

Scenes along the way to Letterfrack





Matthew has been doing all the driving and I am so thankful for that, but after awhile it definitely all started to make us ready to get out of the car after all the narrow roads constantly hugging the side of the road to make room for other cars. We stopped for gas even though we had only used a quarter of a tank. This is when we got surprise number to. For ¼ of a tank, it was 18 euros (about 25 dollars)! I was sure they guy had it wrong as I read the big sign which said 1.18 euros. Well that’s for LITERS, not gallons! There are roughly 4 liters in a gallons so gas is expensive, not cheap as we had been thinking all along. So far we have not found a single thing that is cheaper in Ireland (than NJ/NYC), including gas.

We arrived at the Rosleague Manor and the view was spectacular. We settled in, had the most delicious dinner, talked with some people, laid on the hammock (Matthew got eaten alive by midges!), headed into town for a drink, talked with our moms, played Connect 4 and just enjoyed being together. We love just hanging out together. It’s a good thing since we are married now, huh! And by the way, on the western side of Ireland, it doesn’t get dark as early…like 11:00 p.m. and the sun was still going
down. So cool.

Rosleague Manor (front of place)



Rosleague Manor (view from the front porch!)