Wimbledon - Day 22

A travel day! We are checking out of the hotel and driving to Belfast, Northern Ireland. Another breakfast at Lemon Jelly, and a walk with our luggage to the car park (not close, and quite rough sidewalks makes for lugging a 22 kg suitcase a real chore after 6 hours of sleep and had I mentioned the 50 Euro parking charge?) we were ready to get out of Dublin. At least, that's what we thought. LOL Now, first let me say that I don't condemn the Hertz Company in general, or the GPS navigation system specifically, but damn was it tough to follow. I got us lost in Dublin, and the downtown area is rife with one way streets. All too often, the GPS, which has a audio component in an English woman's voice, we'd hear the GPS tell us "calculating route" as I tried to get us out of traffic, out of downtown, and well on our way to Belfast. I had no idea how long it was going to take, and we didn't have a room reserved in Belfast at all. I was more than a bit on edge, though I tried to not show my edginess too much to Colleen. (Can you spell failure?) We did finally get out of town, and onto a main artery up the East coast of the island.

Once again, we're mostly meandering, and we know it. We look at the map Sacha loaned to us (she had just come from a tour of Ireland, and had a map with notes and paths, and the like) and saw that Trim Castle was on our way. So, we took the mild detour, and dropped in for a visit. It was a very interesting castle, and we have some reasonable pictures, but I suspect I'll be pretty slow on getting those posted. LOL We are averaging more than 40 pictures a day so far, and I suspect it will only increase based on some of our plans. The tour guide was biased, and claimed this castle was the best preserved of those in the Heritage project (through the Office of Public Works), and claimed that quite a bit of Braveheart, though I can't find any real referencest to that. Still, it was a very large defensive casle, built on a hill, and with a keep that had stood since the 13th century, so I was duly impressed.

We hit the road once again. We found a little tiny castle, that was really just a single tower ruin that had been closed off, in a small coastal town. It was listed as King John's Castle but it was a pretty old building, and there are debates that it is actually a castle of Hugh de Lacy. We still thought it was cool, and it was right on the coast, so if nothing else it was pretty. The map scale gave us the impression that from the point we'd be able to see Greencastle but heat haze, and no real clue where we were supposed to be looking on the horizon, and we didn't manage to see it. The Carlingford Lough was fairly long, and while we could have driven around it and actually seen the castle, I was getting antsy about not having a room for the night in Belfast. So, we walked down, to discover that the town of Carlingford was having some sort of travelling carnival on that day. We could have gotten on some rides, but we were both leery about the safety requirements in EU nations. So, we got back in the car, and headed up the lough toward the main road and on to Belfast.

Now, this is where things in my mind got surreal. We passed through a small town, Omeath, and suddenly, we were in Northern Ireland. Now, I had no idea really what I had expected, but my only real memories of Germany travel involved a lot of border posts. Since the Cold War was over, I understood in Contintental Europe why that didn't exist, though I still had hoped I'd get a passport stamp from each country as we passed through. Here, however, a lot of people (Americans) are under the impression that Northern Ireland is some kind of war zone. There was nothing. We just were suddenly in Northern Ireland. I honestly didn't even know until I saw the sign indicating all posted speeds were in miles per hour. A bit of background on that is in order, I suppose. Northern Ireland is still part of the United Kingdom, so it is on the imperial measuring system, and the pound sterling. So, here we go. I now have to get some pounds (still had a few from London) and had to start paying closer attention to speeds. Of course, one problem.......the rental car only has a speedometer with kilometers per hour. That would mean I'd be doing ballpark math in my head until we were out of Northern Ireland, and that I'd be getting honks and other annoyed responses from folks on the road. At least they didn't also change sides of the road. My head probably would have exploded!

Now, there were several castles along the road to Belfast once we were back on the main road, but I managed to show my ass. I was hungry (we hadn't eaten since breakfast early) and I was still annoyed that we didn't have a hotel room for the night. So, Colleen humored me (how much do I love this woman!) and we drove straight into Belfast. She admitted she was hungry anyway, so I knew she wasn't too much in the mood to argue with me about it. On the way, she used the handy, dandy, GPS system to locate a Belfast hotel. We chose a Holiday Inn Express, thinking that it would be fairly close to one here in the states. It was in the University District, and seemed to be nice on the outside. They had a room, and free parking for guests, and so we checked in. We got up to the room and discovered that we both needed some laundry done. We discussed going to a laundrette so that we could do it ourselves, but in the end, we decided to extend our stay in Belfast for two nights instead of one. The room had no A/C (what is wrong with these people?) and their idea of an ice bucket was a 22 ounce plastic cup, but it was a clean, comfortable room and a place we could crash for the night. But, staying two nights meant handing laundry off tomorrow morning to the hotel, and not bothering with it ourselves, and that meant more time for vacation.

It was after 8, so we decided it would be best to grab some dinner. We chose a trendy little place the name of which escapes me. It was overpriced, and underportioned, but it was a good meal. I got some roasted asparagus as a side, and it was of course massive (I guess I am not high society enough to understand the premise of everything being ala carte, but ignore that) but Colleen helped and it was really very tasty. We read in the phone book that there was supposed to be a Barclay's Bank in Belfast, somewhere downtown, so we took a bit of a walk to try to find it. It is partnered with our bank here in the states, so ATM does not cost us a transaction fee on either side. Banks not on the partnership end up costing us 5 US just from our bank. It wasn't there, so we broke down and used one close by. We tried to walk to a historic pub in downtown, but it was closed for a private party. In the end, we found a bar in a hotel walking back, and stopped in for more than a few rounds. We even got to sample Tennent's beer which was not one we'd seen in Ireland proper. Colleen wanted to have a shot of Jagermeister, but I had to remind her that refrigeration, like A/C was a precious commodity around Europe, and that we'd probably have to drink it warm. We passed, and instead had a shot of a strawberry flavored vodka. After that, we strolled back to the room, stopping in for some Cadbury chocolate and sparkling water. It was just after 11, and the sun had only set what seemed less than an hour ago. And, it was warm in the room. Another rough night of sleep and up early for the next day!

Cheers!