Chapter Second: Fish and Chips

Friday November 13

Okay- so day two did not start out so hot when I had to put on my still wet shoes, but I was cheered quite a bit by Kyle's promise of delicious fish and chips for lunch because we were headed to a seaside town. After about a 40 minute train ride with beautiful views of the ocean we arrived in the very small town of Bray. It was- (get pumped!) only misting so we spent some time wandering along the beautiful pebble beaches enjoying the scenery. Ireland is a country of both mountains and beaches so we set our sights on the small mountain/really big hill that was in the distance. Clearly the boys wanted to hike it, ok I did too - minus the fact that it was ridiculously muddy- so we started up hoping to beat the rain.

It took us about an hour and a half to get to the top, stopping each little bit to enjoy the ever improving views of the city below. I was able to appreciate the rain only for the fact that it keeps the country gorgeously green even mid-way through November. We hiked through some almost fairytale-like clearings covered with green ivy and trees in full autumn glory.
A little bit of whining (obviously on my part) and some very muddy shoes later we made it to the top. I took entirely too many pictures- pretty much all of the same panorama- but I am going to try to splice some of them together. I did force the boys to take a picture of me so Mom wouldn't complain that there were no people in my pictures (I'm so good to you).  Eventually we decided to head back down- via a farmer's field where I could not pry the boys away from looking at the sheep- seriously, the city boys wanted to jump the fence and catch one they were so fascinated.

By that time I had worked up quite a nice hiking appetite so we asked a local where the best fish and chips were sold. A few short minutes later I was holding a shiny silver bag generously filled with fresh from the sea cod and perfectly cooked potato wedges, coated in more salt and vinegar than one person should eat in a week, needless to say I was perfectly happy. We actually ate our delicious lunch at the home of a friend we knew in Bray- she had been a monitrice (kind of like teaching assistant) during our September session- and she told us if we were ever in Ireland to come visit. It was pretty funny to have a conversation with her were we the teachers and she the language student and we had a great time catching up. At that point it was (clearly) raining, more like pouring, so we braved the 30 minute walk back to the train station and headed back to Dublin. After not nearly enough time to dry off at the college we set out in search of a pub with live music, shockingly not a hard feat in Ireland. The place where we ended up had a lot of tourists but a great group with Guitar, violin and accordion. The singer had the thickest Irish accent ever and was full of delightfully so-stupid-they're-funny jokes. I put a video up on my picasa page if your interested :) .....So, at the end of 2 days we'd already covered: meat and potatoes, guinness, fish and chips, and a traditional Dublin pub- not bad for the Irish vacation checklist...on to day 3.