The night rain has stopped and while the hotel is still full of drunken partiers, the strand is empty.
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| Quiet! |
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| The bandstand actually was in action yesterday! |
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| The Irish Sea at ~6:15 am |
At 8 am I decide to forego the meat-orgy of a 'Full Irish Breakfast' and start wandering into town to get some bread and stuff to put on it. The weather has changed to rain again. While I still won't wear socks in my sandals (What's the point of getting wet socks?), I'm happy I have my hoody. Along the way into town I happily see that this town has Purveyors too, although for slightly different commodities ;-) 
My question about a bakery draws blank stares, but one person points out Malloy's Coffee Shop. One of their windows actually says 'Bakery & Delicatessen', but after I inquire at the counter whether 'the bakery' was in a separate shop, I was informed that it ceased to exist and that Tesco was my only other option. Tesco, of course, is a British company. Before you start grinning: Ever shopped at Safeway, eh?
At Tesco I get 4 mini baguettes, 1 onion, 200 g of Dubliner Cheese, a pack of Parma ham for Euro 9.12. The hotel breakfast would have cost the same, but now I have sandwiches for the train ride!
I arrive at the train station at 9:45. At the station I make a few pictures of the stretch I had to run yesterday to barely catch my train, of a distant cloud-enshrouded Bray Head, and of a figure taking pictures in front of a round mirror.
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| RUN! |
At 10:17 (Irish trains run on time ;-) I am on an Irish Rail train to Rosslare. By now I have got used to power outlets under every table. I forgot my power plug adapter in the hotel in Sligo, but after I expressed the hope that Irish Ferries would have them at check-out this morning, the concierge asked me whether I wanted to keep the one I was just returning. She said "It's not ours; it has someone's initials on it." My Initials are CHBK, and since the initials on the power adapter were CH, I decided to keep to give some method to the madness ;-) The first stretch of the train journey will carry me along the cliffs to Greystones, a journey I completed by train and by foot only yesterday.
Also on board is a lady wearing a pink sach with the red print "Birthday girl". When I wished her "Happy Birthday" after she said something to me, she and her whole group were delighted. Irish people are lovely to encounter in day to day life. But I don't think I would like to have to depend on them ;-)Beyond Greystones, the scenery changes to pure GREEN rolling hills on the right, and pure GREY Irish Sea on the left. I would have thought one could see England from here, but so far no luck.
When writing this part of the post on the ferry, I try to use Google Maps and after a while I figure out why I can't seem to read the writing on the Google page anymore. It is Google Norsk (Norway). There is no land in sight from anywhere on the ship.
The town before Rosslare, Wexford seems to have a special relationship with boats, as these two pictures taking from a moving train suggest.
.Rosslare Europort, the terminal station of the train, is just a ferry terminal, not the town I expected. But unlike other Ferry Terminals (Hello Langdale, can you hear me?), there is something to do here: The ocean and a glorious beach.
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| The view 100 meters out of the train station |
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| Rocks and wall protecting Europort |
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| My first glimpse of Oscar Wilde |
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| And it needs those walls: The Irish Sea on a calm sunny day! |
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| 2 hours to kill: I'll just walk to that point down there ;p-) |
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| Seaweed or something out of Alien? |
Time to go back to the terminal, dump the collected garbage, and take an overnight ferry to France !!!
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