Friday July 25th

We find the tourist bureau quit easily. ( a first, and an excellent sign for us). It's already almost 7:00 at night and of course we have not made any lodging arrangements. So we head into the office and the nice lady says yes she can get us a B and B for €40 euros. GREAT back on budget, lovely sunshine, and feeling like we are at home. Oh, I'm sorry, what was that? Here in Ireland I would like to report that B and B's are per person so we were looking at €80 per night. So I explain that we are looking for €40 in total. That's not going to happen she says. So we start around the €27 per person per night and everyone is full or only has one night. Patrick and I are exhausted and want to settle down for 3 days. We need to meet our dear friend Louise in Dublin on the Monday so we thought we could take a little holiday from the holiday so to speak. So of course we end up in a hotel in Arklow. Now Arklow is not the friendliest, nicest spot in the world. Why the tourist bureau sent us there we will never know. Our cousins, once we get a hold of them, are also wondering how we ended up there.
We end up getting a special at this hotel for 3 nights. It's a B and B type thing, and one dinner included. Technically the 3rd night is free. Total cost (we are never lasting a year) €358.
The hotel although it was a 3 star and was very clean and had everything you could want had awful service and was very overbearing. We were happy to leave. On our days there we travelled down to the beaches. They were beautiful sandy beaches and the weather here has turned quite nice, sunny and warm.
The driving has been pretty easy but boy when they say the roads are narrow, they are NARROW. I was hit by many a branch going through them.

The scenery here is absolutely breath taking. So many shades of green you can't really explain it. The traffic is busy but they all move off to the left for the motorcycle to pass. Patrick is in heaven.

We find a great grocery store called Tesco and buy some soup, bread and such and head back to our hotel room. We sneak up the stove and heat up dinner. Best we've had in days. There is a big hurling match going on so we happily watch that in our room and have drinks and update our diaries.

We start checking the maps as we getting ready to head to Dublin. We booked a hotel on the internet while in Wales and ended getting the Comfort Inn on Talbot Street, which is just down from the main shopping road. We booked through www.laterooms.com and got the room for €69.90 per night for 4 nights. Not great but seeing some of the other prices, not bad. The regular rate for the hotel was €120.
So we are ready for a good night sleep and to head into another big city....