Filed under: Wicklow
On Sunday we had out final outing with Fearghal. Patrick ditched us to see some archive of letters near Kilkenny. If he wants people to know more, he’ll have to start his own darned blog.
The rest of us went to lunch at Hunter’s Hotel in Rathnew, Wicklow. It is an old hotel. I think Lily put it best when she described it to Patrick “It’s old like Shakespeare – no more like Yeats.” Yeats was closer. I think it was built in the 1700s and has been run by the same family since 1820.
The gardens around the place were beautiful. The restaurant was very, very formal and old school. I felt like I was in school when the waitress came to take our order. I didn’t seem to do it quite right – but it was funny. The food was very good.
The best part of the dinner was when a bird flew into the restaurant. The staff was incredibly calm. One hostess calmly and quickly grabbed the bird with her bare hands but he got away. So then another staff member – the official bird catcher we assume – caught it and set it free outside.
After dinner we went to Avoca, the real life setting of Ballykissangel – a TV show that airs occasionally on PBS. What’s fun is that I’ve always wanted to visit Avoca. Fearghal has a knack for picking just the right place to visit. He’s good that way. We are going to miss Fearghal a lot when we go home. He’s been so generous to us while we’ve been here. In fact, the weekend we were in Dromahair, Aine asked her grandma if Fearghal missed us.
Filed under: Wicklow
Sadly Patrick went to a funeral on Saturday. It was for the mother of a friend of his.
At the funeral Patrick ran into friends of his who have not actually immigrated or who have returned from immigrating. Subsequently we went out Saturday night with his friends in Greystones, which is an outer ring beachside suburb of Dublin – although it might be in Wicklow.
So we met up with David & Andrea Kelly and Paul Jordan. I remembered Paul and David from years back – Andrea is David’s wife, from Checkoslovakia. It was fun to talk to them. We had a great night.
Paul picked us up, we met friends at the pub, it was kind of like being at home.
