hiking and beyond...

Saturday, June 16. We are in Bray, a village southeast of Dublin, for the duration of our stay and this morning we are doing the ‘Bray to Greystones cliff walk’. Our streak of winning weather is continuing, and the cool breeze is lovely. This hike is gorgeous! The path is dirt with small pebbles, nice to walk on and the slope is very gentle as it winds around the cliffs and hillside. The path was built back in the 1840s when they were building the rail line - it’s part of the DART system. Very safe, with rock retaining walls  on the sea side and another one slightly above to prevent downslides, I think.

It was very pleasant, with Janet in the lead position and MAO as the sweep, and we completed the eight kilometres in well under two hours. We walked Greystones village to find the DART station to return to Bray. We could have retraced our steps but Janet has this thing about going where she’s already been and is eager to find new trails! Tromped around Bray for the rest of the afternoon and racked up a total of 14 km.

We have dinner reservations at the Italian place, Ragazzi, for 7 pm tonight. 

Carpaccio da braesola for starters - wasn’t what I thought, but good. Lasagna, shucks when am I ever gonna learn? It’s never as good as I expect. Janet had the mussels, clams, etc and she liked it - too much fussing in public for me! and we shared a salted caramel roulade, enough to satisfy the sweetest tooth!

Sunday was reserved for going to the Riverdance performance at 5 pm.

We took the tram/DART back to Malahide to return to the Old Street Restaurant - it was the Michelin 3 star place that we stumbled upon for lunch on our first Saturday here - we had wanted to try dinner there but they were booked up or not open for our remaining days so we settled for another lunch. It was Father’s Day and quite a bit busier than our previous visit and the menu didn’t seem quite as appealing as the first time round, but we still enjoyed it. There was no sticky toffee pudding so I settled for the lemon tart and Janet had the chocolate roll. 

Riverdance (once we found the Gaiety Theatre) was awesome! The music, singing and dancing was a perfect complement to round out our Ireland tour! I particularly liked the Irish bagpipes! Haunting and poignant!

It was fun to experience the crowd at an event like this. People were dressed in anything and everything, from hiking gear to semi-formal wear. The tickets (€61 each) were almost $300 CAD by the time you add in exchange and ticketmaster fees but it was well worth it