Today was not such a great day. Or it didn’t start great anyway!

We got up, ready for the excitement of the Wild Wicklow Tour. We stopped at the front desk of the hotel on our way our and ensured that we were headed to the correct bus stop and made our way to the famous Dun Laoghaire ferry terminal. We were there fifteen minutes early – ready and eager!

Unfortunately, the bus sailed right past us at 10:00 on the nose!

We were so upset! We ran down the road and tried to catch it but a local told us that, yes, that was the bus, and yes, it had left us. He assured us we were at the correct pick up place. We figured maybe he was wrong…maybe the bus was headed back to pick us up. We waited for a few more minutes – ten to be exact – and after realizing that we’d been abandoned for what we were looking forward to the most, hung our heads as we retreated to our hotel.

We called the tour company from our room and were berated for not being in the correct place and the driver having to wait for 20 minutes! What?! How does that work, you ask? We did too! We waited for nearly thirty minutes for a bus that passed us up and were yelled at?! After two turns at arguing with the person in the WWT office, we were FINALLY assured our money back. American customer service is certainly not universal.

We picked up our bootstraps and figured out Plan B: rent a car and go see the mountains ourselves! Who needs a tour anyway?! We went back to the front desk, told them our sad story, and the lovely woman at the front desk of the Royal Marine got us a taxi to take us to a rental place…that wanted to hold €1400 for the insurance we already have! What?! We picked our jaws up off the floor, bagged that idea and walked – for 40 minutes – back to the middle of Dun Laoghaire. (Pretty lucky that we have a decent sense of directions – we had no idea where we were!)

Finally, after we got over our disappointment, we came up with Plan C: take the DART to the end of the line in Bray and Greystones. What a gorgeous train ride! Both towns were lovely; Bray is all seafront and was host to a small carnival. Greystones was similar with a similar seafront but both were certainly charming. Greystones was also home to the nastiest fish and chips ever. So there’s that! We took some really beautiful walks in each town along seafronts and through historic centers…the scenery wasn’t quite what we pictured when we woke up today, but we were determined to make it a good day – and it was!

Plan C also included heading back to the city center to eat dinner and see what we’ve missed. Once we arrived back in Dublin, we walked from Marion Square to Grafton Street to St Stephens Green to Molly Malone to Dublin Castle to Christ Church Cathedral to Temple Bar where we found the loveliest pub for dinner! We had steak and chicken pies and they were fab – so lushy! We also had front row seats for two amazing Stag Parties: Snow White and HIS Seven Dwarves and some really crazy crazy suits. What a blast!

At the end of it, today was a good day. It was also very frustrating – but ultimately it’s just the bait to get us back to Ireland that much quicker!

Onward to Weston!