Relaxing in Ireland and Time Spent at the Dublin Airport

Ten days have flown by. I think we’re going to fly back across the Atlantic in a few weeks and realize only too late that our summer in Ireland is over. It will not go unremembered, however. Every week there is something new that we have done or some new story to tell. Following our trip to Germany, we returned to Ireland. We landed here in Dublin at 10pm and got back to our apartment around 11:30. Amy had to unpack her things, and then repack them in order to fly out the following morning for another brief trip to Poland. Her flight left at around 6am and she got about four hours of sleep that night. On Monday morning, I puttered around the apartment, doing laundry, cleaning up and getting everything put back together. Then Heather and I headed out for the beach. Heather had been running and had found a beach not too far from our apartment. So, we put on our swimsuits and headed for the surf. We were looking forward to a day of sunshine and waves. This is the Irish Sea, after all.
We walked about 2 miles to get there only to find that the water was nowhere to be found. The beach is part of an inland harbor that sits off the eastern shore of Dublin City. The part that we were at is a tide-flat. To paint a better picture I must give a few more details. The beach is sandy, except not sandy like you’d see in California or Hawaii or any nice beach you’ve been too. The sand is so fine that what you walk on feels more like clay. It is quite hard when the tide is out. There are odd little piles of sand – small round mounds about 4 inches in diameter and a couple of inches high. These mounds cover an area of beach about 3 miles long. On top of the mounds are little piles of sandy poop-type excrement left by the thousands of sand crabs that live under the sand. It looks gross, and feels gross to walk on. We arrived and discovered that the tide was out, but to say that "the tide is out" to any American does not truly convey what I am talking about. This area of beach is apparently so gradually sloping that when the tide goes out, it goes WAY out…about 2 miles out. We walked out toward where the water should have been on the sand poop mounds for fifteen minutes and still literally could not see the water.
Finally, there was an area where the sand was a bit lower and there was a pocket of water remaining that created a small lake on this beach area where there were some people splashing in the water. At its deepest point it was only up to people’s knees, but we figured, "Hey, we’ve walked all this way, and we are GOING to get in the water!" So, we took off our shoes and waded in. What we discovered was yet another Irish oddity. In the water, there were thousands of little fish-type creatures (perhaps something close to a crayfish or small shrimp, except without pinchers…only about ¾ of an inch long) swimming around. They would dart around in the water and you could feel them under your feet, crawling/swimming around and on top of your feet and it wasn’t a pleasant feeling. BUT, we said again, "We will not be deterred." Heather, by this point, was making some rather amusing noises and walking very carefully so as to step on as few of these things as possible and then let out what can only be called a squeal as she very narrowly avoided stepping on a sand crab the size of a medium sized cookie. Actually, there were many small crabs skittering about under the water. They run sideways along the sandy bottom. They try to get out of your way but are not always successful. Shortly after ending that crabs life, Heather and I decided that we’d had enough. We exited the water and sat down to let our feet and legs dry and then called it a day at the beach. Heather and I relaxed that afternoon and then grabbed some dinner on our way to see War of the Worlds. It was an okay film, but don’t hold your breath folks. It would make a decent rental and really wasn’t nearly as good as it looked.
Tuesday we got up, went down to Grafton Street, where Heather did a little bit of window shopping, grabbed some lunch and headed over to St. Stephen’s Green. We found a great spot in the park under a huge tree and at lunch. We had both brought books and sat in the sun/shade and read. I fell asleep for awhile. The park was packed by 2pm with professionals from the area who were on their lunch break. They come out every day at lunchtime to enjoy what few days of beautiful weather they get every summer and this day was no exception. People just walk over from where they work, eat, smoke, and talk. It was a great day for it too. Tuesday evening we ate at the apartment and watched one of the Lord Of The Ring DVD’s I brought with me from Seattle. Wednesday and Thursday were fairly uneventful. I am taking one class online from SPU and had a project to complete and spent these two days doing research, reading, writing, and wishing I were done with school. The project is done (unless I am told I need to do more), and with the exception of one more small assignment, my schooling at SPU is nearly at an end. While I was doing this stuff, Heather, never the type to sit about idly went and took the opportunity to see more of the sites. Thursday evening, after sitting at the apartment doing homework for two days, Heather and I went out to do another Musical Pub Crawl (see posting from second week, June 27th for description) since she hadn’t gotten to do this yet. Amy got back into town from Poland that evening but still had to work the rest of the week.
Heather and I had signed up for a 1 day hike/tour of the Wicklow mountains for Friday during the day. We got up early, met up with our tourguide and other hikers, and headed out of town. All of us who signed up for the hike were under 30 except for one woman who had accompanied her son on the hike. She and her son were from Norway. There was another guy from Newfoundland, Canada who was our age. The other two people besides Heather and I were two female undergrads from a state college in Binghamton, NY. There were only 7 of us plus the guide and after about an hour of driving we arrived at the beginning of our hike. We are fairly close to sea-level in Dublin and we were still fairly close to that at the trailhead of the hike. Our guide owns this business and he and a couple of other guides take people on 1,2, or 4 day hikes all over the Wicklow Mountains. The weather was great. We set out on our adventure shirking the use of any sunscreen because the sky was overcast and there was a good breeze. Over the course of the next 4 hours we hiked up about 400 meters (about 1300 feet). After doing most of the vertical part of the climb we hiked up another 100 vertical feet through thick ferns and then up into a field of heather (the plant…not the person) along a path used primarily by sheep and goats and then up along a distinct ridge over to another incline. We stopped at the top of the ridge for a great lunch. By this point we were hiking through grange land used by the farmer of the area for their herds. When we stopped for lunch, a pair of sheep was watching us closely. When we stopped, they began to wander in our direction to see if we were also sheep. After determining that the smell of our food was not enticing enough to draw them any closer than 20-30 feet, they departed with a few baahhs and walked away.
After lunch we continued upwards for another two hours or so. We reached a peak of one of the mountains at 659 meters (2,162 feet). Up at this height there are many marshes and bogs on the flat parts of the mountain top because these areas get a much greater amount of rain. The bogs, over the course of the next hundred thousand years, will turn into peat. Walking in these areas was interesting because I had seen where peat had been harvested in other parts of the country and seeing how it started was cool. It starts out as sphagnum moss that grows and then dies, grows and dies, etc. Over time, it becomes thicker. Peat bogs grows at a rate of about 1 inch every 500 years. Our guide knew much about the vegetation, animals, and landscape of this area. At one point shortly after reaching our highest point we were looking at some plants. The guy from Canada was walking next to me about 10 feet to my left and all of the sudden he was up to his knee is bog. He pulled himself out with some effort and was covered in guck but was otherwise fine. We spent the last three hours or so of the hike descending back down around the backside of the mountain we had climbed. We came out above two lakes that were several hundred feet below us. At the far end of both lakes was an old monastery and cemetery. We stopped for a well deserved beer at the monastery inn, and then headed back into town. We had hiked over 15 kilometers (almost 10 miles), and by the end realized we had made a grave error in not using sunblock. The sun had come out shortly after lunch. I had shaved my head the previous morning and I was roasted. My neck and head were torched. Heather also had decent sunburns on her shoulders and neck. We were all tired and decided that pizza was sounding pretty good and walking anywhere wasn’t, so we ordered in and watched some television that evening.
Saturday morning, Amy and I headed to the airport to pick up her parents, who came in from Dallas for a 10 day visit. Heather did her own thing for a few hours and was going to meet us all back at the apartment. Our friends Chad and Joy have an extra room in their apartment and were gracious in letting Heather come and live with them for a few days after Amy’s parents were coming in to stay with us. Amy’s parents’ (Bob and Kay) plane was supposed to arrive around 9am into Dublin and since they had checked bags we knew it would take awhile. As it turned out, the flight from Dallas had been 3 hours delayed, and we hadn’t checked on it before we left. We went and sat in our rental car in the parking lot and read our books for awhile. We went back in to get them outside of the baggage claim. Another hour and half had gone by and there was still no sign of Bob or Kay. By this point we had been at the airport for about 5 hours and couldn’t figure out what the problem was. As some of you may have deduced by now, we had not accounted for the time/day change that was printed on the itinerary we received and had miscalculated when they were supposed to come in. We were a day early to the airport. Annoyed at our own mistakes, we headed back into Dublin and met Heather over at another outdoor street shopping area. Now suffering from a throbbing scalp and neck, and Heather with burnt shoulders, we stayed in the shade as much as possible. We walked around for a few hours and the girls did some shopping. We didn’t do much else that evening and had dinner together.
Sunday morning came and Amy’s parents came in on their plane just as they were supposed to. We told them of our stupidity and all got a good laugh out of it. We went and dropped off their bags at the apartment and Heather, Amy’s parents, Amy, and I all got back in the car and headed south out of Dublin to go to Waterford. Waterford is, as many of you may be aware, the home of Waterford Crystal Company. It claims to produce the finest crystal anywhere in the world. After a couple hours of driving, we got to Waterford, had lunch and headed to the factory. We took an hour tour of the factory in which we got to see parts of all the major production areas and watched as some of the crystal was actually made. It was amazing. The men who were working with molten crystal worked with it like it was wax. Their skills were exceptional and their movements were so practiced that they seemed almost effortless. What came out after all the processes was a spectacular product. Amy and I decided that we would be remiss not to buy anything while we were there, and found two lovely vases that we liked. We had them shipped straight to Texas from there rather than carrying them back and risking them getting hurt.
Monday, we walked around the city for a few hours taking in some of the sights and had a relaxing day. Then on Tuesday, Bob, Kay, Heather, and I drove up to North Ireland, through Belfast, and up to the Giant’s Causeway. This is an area of basalt rock shaped like stacked hexagons (See pictures). It was formed by the same volcanic eruptions that formed the island of Ireland back in history. There are some exceptional cliffs in the area as well. The weather wasn’t spectacular, but that didn’t stop us from exploring the Causeway for a couple of hours. Then we drove up the road a few miles to Carrick-a-rede rope bridge. The rain had come up and so Bob and Kay opted to stay in the car. Heather and I hiked about ¾ of a mile back to the bridge. The scenery was pretty cool. The bridge crosses a 40 foot span of cliffs that salmon swim through every year to spawn where the local fisherman come to make their biggest catches of the year. We walked back and then all headed for home.
We are headed to Scotland this coming weekend. Amy’s parents are here until next Tuesday, and then Amy’s cousin arrives on Tuesday. She is a food-drop coordinator with a food co-op in Africa. She lives in Colorado, but is going to stop over for a few days on her way home to pay us a visit. Only a few more weeks left…I can hardly believe it. I am beginning to feel my first pangs of homesickness. I miss you all and hope you are doing well. Talk to you soon.