The Daily Diary of a Wandering Restaurateur
Doin' Dublin? Not!

And so another adventure winds to a close, not with a bang but a whimper. As you may have gathered if you've followed any of our trips, we have a very relaxed pace of travel. We fly out of Dublin at 11am tomorrow and while we could easily have stayed in Trim another night and driven the 45 minutes to the airport in the early morning, we prefer to stay at an airport hotel on the final night of a trip and not have to rely on traffic conditions being ideal or connecting flights being on time. It's also nice to have a bit of time to wind down and re-pack. (You do tend to spread out a lot when you can just toss everything in the car!)

I knew I wanted to drop the car off today rather than have to hassle with it the day of the flight (and, frankly, I saw no reason to incur another day's rental cost!), but that could all be done by noon or so. I had briefly toyed with the idea of catching a bus into Dublin in the afternoon and poking around a bit, but we spent three days in Dublin on our first Ireland trip 17 years ago and I just didn't have the energy to deal with public transportation at this point. So I dropped Margene and the luggage at the hotel, returned the car and caught the shuttle bus back to the hotel to get my final trip reports written and filed. In thinking about it, this may be the first time all trip I've really had no pending tasks.

Of course, the morning dawned bright and sunny (although the rain was due back later in the afternoon). So after another wonderful breakfast and some good conversation with a couple from Southern California, we said goodbye to Trim, goodbye to Highfield House and goodbye to Gerry (Geraldine Duigan), our hostess for the past two days.

I'm pleased to say that hospitality seems to be very much a natural part of the Irish culture. I hope one day you'll come over and see that for yourself. You'll find it as enjoyable as we have. So it's ciao for now (or whatever the Gaelic equivalent may be!) I'm going to read for awhile!

[Itinerary Page]

© 2014 Restaurant Doctor