Day 27: September 28th

After the big night we just had, Mike and I are wiped out and sleep until about noon, when his friend Schmidt bounds into the room where we're sleeping and annonces that he's going to get some breakfast. <sigh> Mike and I take this as an indication that we can sleep for another 30 mins and we do.

Schmidt comes back with sausages - deep fried - and ham and proceeds to make us an amazing breakfast of fried potatoes, ham and eggs. There was some toast too. Caroline gets up and is sleepy, but not as grouchy and thundercloundy as yours truly. Mike and I  get up and get dressed and we have breakfast, which was amazing.

Schmidt suggests we start hitting some pubs, much to my amazement, and Mike stares blearily at him. Caroline, taking pity on us, suggests something else and between the two of them  they sort out that we will visit Powerscourt. I don't care what we'll be doing: I know Caroline has a hairdryer and I want a shower and to blow dry my hair.

After we all shower we walk to the train - the DART - and catch it to Bray, a small seaside town. From the trainstation we catch the city bus to Enniskerry. (Not sure about the spelling of that...) On the way to Enniskerry we hit trees overhanging the road and - to our surprise - a powerline.

The bus drops us at the gate to Powerscourt and we walk for about 15 mins through a beautiful park with many nice trees. To our left there appears an amazing, large building which turns out to be the Ritz Carleton. It's either being built or being refurbished. It's huge and made Mike wish he was rich.

So, we arrive at Powerscourt, which is an old country home. It's beautiful and I'll make sure to post some pictures here.

We have 1 hr to see the extensive gardens of the place and I spend the time rushing Mike, Schmidt and Caroline through the gardens so that we can see everything. It took 10 years to build the valley that the house of Powerscourt looks out onto. It was stunning. They have a Japenese garden, a proper english rose garden and tons and tons of lawn.

We finish our time there and don't have enough time to buy a postcard before the owners are ringing the bells for us to leave. At the gate Mike and Schmidt eat bananas and talk about whether it would be possible to climb the wall, while Caroline and I watch the sunset and eat chips.

We walk back to Enniskerry and exhaustively search the square we're in for a place to eat. Caroline is keen on going to a place a 15 min drive from where we were - it's her birthday and she wants something yummy to eat - but we can't get a cab. We start waiting for the bus to Dublin... but it doesn't come.

I spend my time walking over to the Spar - the grocery\liquor\covienice store - and buying things like chocolate for boys, "Not for girls", mediterranean flavoured crackers, Skittles and nutty chocolate. (The bus took a long time!)

We ride back into Dublin, expecting the bus to tip over onto the wall at the side of the road at any minute, and get there about 9pm. We walk to a nice place for dinner and Mike has chicken, but I have an amazing goat cheese salad, with cooked lentils, roasted zuchhini, red pepper and warm goat cheese and nuts on top. It was great.

Schmidt takes Mike out for a pint after dinner (!!!) and I wash our clothes. Most of them didn't smell, but it's still nice to have them clean.

Mike and Schimdt came back before midnight, I think, and we went to sleep.