The First Hour of Driving and Finding Respite in Wicklow

The new renault was great, very comfy and smooth. The roads were much narrower than what we were used to and we were driving on the other side of the road which just seemed wrong. There was an election going on and there were signs everywhere. Vote for O'Brien, Vote for Cahill. There were real estate signs mixed in with the election signs. It made finding our highway signs that much more difficult. We were certainly not the fastest car out there and I think that the daily commuters from Dublin and the surrounding area may have cursed us upon occasion. I am also sure that probably the majority were used to tourists learning to navigate their roads as many drivers were very patient with us. Thank you.

It rained off and on, sometimes very hard, and Maureen could not figure out how to keep the windshield wipers going so had to keep turning them on which seemed to use more windshield wiper fluid each time she turned it on. She voiced more than once that she had some concern that we would run out of windshield wiper fluid before too long if we couldn't figure out how to keep them turned on.

We past signs for wonderful sounding places like Ballybrack, Shankill, and Bray.

What romantic Irish sounding names. We went through Kilmadanoge and Rathnew.

we wondered how do you pronounce some of these names? We decided that before we ran out of windshield wiper fluid, we would spend the night in Wicklow and pulled into town. We found the Beach which was stoney and ate some cheese and bread in the car while relaxing from our exhausting adventures of driving in Ireland for about one hour.

The water matched the grey skies but we were happy to see the ocean. Our first glimpse of the Atlantic from Ireland.

Then to find a place to stay the night.

We checked out the Bridge Tavern hotel which was very old with lots of character and they told us the hotel up the road was having a special. We went there but it was full because they were having a special. The lady at the check-in gave us a list of bed and breakfasts in the area and recommended the Aralee House River lodge B&B . "Just find Church hill road and they were halfway up the hill". We navigated our way to the B&B and they had a room with parking in the rear of the house. There were palm trees and flowering bushes and a stone staircase down to the river just off the parking area. Very nice. Our room had two wonderfully comfortable beds and was white. White bedspread, pillows and walls, all white and very bright. We parked the car and walked around town as it is a good sized town but not so big as to be intimidating. Decided dinner was in order so walked down the hill and onto the main street to find french fries. We found a bookie place to place race bets and we found a fast food place but then thought that maybe we wanted to sit down, so ended up at a little place with great food. The Sign said The Coffee shop but the menu said something else. We were so busy chatting and eating that we did not realize that the time was slipping away and we closed the place.

It had stopped raining and the night was dark with no stars when we walked back up church hill road to our B&B.We both settled in very quickly and fell were fast asleep in no time at all.

Woke up to a lot of yelling and carrying on outside our window at about midnight . Seemed that there was a party, maybe a graduation or something and the young men who were quite happy about something were going to their friends house to continue the party. I sure hope they made it. I had no trouble getting back to sleep as the beds were very comfortable.