Monday, 28th July               Dublin to Tullamore

Robyn writes: Neither of us were at all impressed when the alarm went off at 7 this morning, but we knew we had to get up and get going, as it was moving day again. We managed to get dressed, organised and out the door by 8 o'clock to walk to the bus stop we needed in O'Connell Street. From here we quite easily caught the 40 bus, with a very nice bus driver who obligingly stopped the bus just near where the Avis depot was located for us. That was the easy bit! The bloke at the Avis depot was very nice, and offered us a size upgrade on our car for just over 100 Euros, which we ended up taking, as the boot in the one they had for us (a Nissan Micra) was fairly teeny. We now have a Toyota Auris which has much more room. No satnav, sadly - we were really spoiled with our last car in Scotland! So we are back to using Lex's phone, though our friend at Avis gave us such good instructions that we hardly needed it today. He's also given us a road map of Ireland which will be very useful over the next month.

The fun bit was getting back to the unit through busy Dublin traffic - our Avis friend had given us directions and told us we could go a certain way through town as it wasn't yet 10am - unfortunately the policewoman on duty disagreed in no uncertain terms and waved us the other way. Possibly it's changed because there is so much road work in central Dublin as they build the new train lines. Luckily the phone satnav stepped in and navigated us across the river and we were soon back at the unit. We quickly packed the car, did a last minute cleanup and then we were off to Tullamore in Offaly a bit after 10.

 Lex outside The Brewery Tap, where we had a lovely lunch

 Me outside the Bridge House Pub near the river. We have a photo of Cait and Cassie in the exact same location in 2006!

 As you can see, various parts of the buildings extend out and over the river. And there's some wild foliage growing there too. We'd never seen anything like the giant rhubarb on steroids in the middle of the picture below! (I may have made that name up, does anyone have the foggiest idea what plant it might be?)

 

 The local Garda station. That's 'Police' to you and I!

 Lex outside the Tullamore Dew visitor centre

Pubs! This place is full of pubs! There's one on  almost every street corner and several more often thrown in for good measure. And almost all of them are very pretty. You can see three in this photo.

 

Getting out of town actually wasn't too bad, and we were soon out on the motorways and it was quite a quick trip - we were here by 11.30. You look at a map of Ireland and think something is a fair distance away, then you're there in an hour on a motorway (the speed is 120km/p/h). We found our hotel quite easily, as we'd had lunch in the pub part by the river in 2006 when we were here. To our surprise, though, behind the nice little pub is a huge, grand hotel! The entrance is extremely impressive and we certainly were impressed! Our room wasn't ready so we went off up the road and had a lovely lunch in a little pub, "The Brewery Tap" then wandered back to find our room was now ready. We're on the third floor and had asked for a quiet room - the receptionist apologised that it doesn't have much of a view because it's at the back but in fact it's not bad, and it is very quiet, especially after very noisy rooms in London, Paris and Dublin! It's a nice big room with a desk, extra bed and a nice big bathroom so we are quite happy. We may be especially grateful for the quietness of being at the back of the hotel tonight as there's a high school graduation going on downstairs and one of the waiters told us gloomily that they'll be there until 6am. Ah, the energy of youth!

We went for a long walk around the centre of town, called in at the Tullamore Dew Distillery for some tourist info, and looked at all of the shops. There are a lot of empty shops but Tullamore doesn't seem too badly off, all things considered. Hopefully they are recovering ok from the recession, but it's a far cry from the days of the Celtic Tiger last time we were here. It's a nice mid-sized town and the locals are very friendly. We are both glad to get out of Dublin for a bit of country peace and quiet!

Lex had a nap this afternoon while I caught up on emails and went to the post office, etc. We are very central, and the local shopping centre is just across the road. For tea, we went to the hotel's Italian restaurant (we were going to try their "Charleville" restaurant, but it was closed tonight) where we had the most magnificent meal - I had a stuffed chicken breast and Lex had the seafood marinara with linguine - both meals were excellent. We were sitting next to the window and were treated to a floorshow, as the graduates were on the terrace outside. Some of the lads had undoubtably been sneaking drinks beforehand, and it was very entertaining to watch them! At least one was indulging in a spot of hurling (only the Australian version, not the Irish sport, if you know what I mean...) A few of them came over to the window for a friendly chat, but were sternly moved on by the bouncers. I may have missed checking out the Marist Formal this year but I've certainly now had my dose of Formal watching! (Just hope we don't HEAR them all night....) Tomorrow we are planning to go back to Daingean and hopefully to Clonmacnoise, which I didn't get to see last time, as I was sick at that stage. It's nice to be back in Offaly.