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Started off a little slow, the weather has been cool and rainy and it’s kind of hard to entertain yourself outdoors when it’s like that. We had been taking the bus into Dublin which is a bit of a chore in itself. Riding up top of the double decker is similar to an unruly carnival ride where they speed it up on the curves just to see what happens! OMG! A short person who can’t quite get both feet on the floor at the same time needs to be able to hang on with both hands! We did spend the last two days doing that just to be out of the rain but the novelty has worn off. 

Anyway, it’s Saturday and our last full day here at Donabate. We took the DART/tram/train into the next village (the station reminded me of Downton Abbey!) and then decided to check out our journey for the next day, getting to the train station in Dublin for our trip to Killarney.  A cab ride would be about €50 and we still have the Leap pass to travel on so if we can do it by tram/DART, bus and Luas/light rail, it’s covered already so, like free! We had differing suggestions from our landlady and her daughter and, google maps is sometimes out to lunch so we wanted to do a dry run to be sure because we’ve already paid the €28 each for the train ride and have to be there for 10am. It’s about an hour’s worth from here if all goes well but the first tram doesn’t leave from here until 8:30 am so there is not a lot of room for error. 

We got that sorted by noon, know what to do tomorrow and also picked up our tickets - we were able to book them online from home but you have to pick them up in person - another little detail that could throw a screw into a tight timeline. Somewhere along the way Janet picked up an abandoned magazine that had a listing of the best restaurants throughout Ireland and she discovered there was a Michelin 3 star in Malahyde which is the tram stop before ours.We decided to give it a try for lunch because it’s likely already booked  for the evening. Called Old Street Restaurant, on Old Street, of course,

it was very nicely done. The menu was small but we chose to have the 3 course special for €29 each. There were three choices for each course. Janet had the cauliflower soup to start and I chose the fried polenta with a spicy bechamel and roasted corn. Both were delicious. We each chose the same entree of roasted chicken breast with pea and garlic purée and smoked gubeen puff (which was a type of cheese) and some foam bits - not an overly large portion but really yummy! Janet’s dessert was a lemon tart with coconut ice cream while I scarfed down the sticky toffee pudding with ginger ice cream. Wow! Everything was delish!

By the time lunch was over the weather cleared up and it was beautiful and sunny. We headed back to Donabate, one last stop and hiked out to the beach! It was glorious, about 20C, with a good breeze, and the first time we clicked over 10km (13 actually) on foot, for the day’s tally! Finally something worth leaving home for!