Ballynahinch Walk

We had breakfast in the hotel's dining room, which was a buffet-style Irish breakfast. After that, we decided to the do the much longer walk around the grounds to get some exercise. We checked out shortly afterwards and climbed into the rental to drive across the country to Trim Castle, just north of Dublin.

We decided to take the 2K Railway walk around the grounds, which make up part of what was once one of the largest estates in the British Isles.

Trim Castle

We arrived in Trim mid-afternoon and found a pay parking lot near the castle. Paying for parking turned out to be one of the more stressful portions of our trip, money-wise, as we have gotten used to parking lots in the U.S. using credit cards or pay by phone. But we scrounged up enough change and walked over to the castle. There was guided tour of the castle in 40 minutes so we explored the grounds first.

Night in Dublin

Following our Trim Castle tour, we went looking for some dinner and settled on Rachel's Cafe in the town of Trim. This was another cute little restaurant with good food which we desparately needed since it had been a long time since breakfast. After dinner, we headed down towards Dublin, where we were booked at the Holiday Inn Express Dublin South for the next two nights. We checked in and then drove a short distance to Costa Coffee for a late-night hot chocolate and coffee. Our experience at Northwoods Costa was very disappointing as it seemed everyone was in training. We had to give our orders twice and in the process the servers messed up the orders. This led us to avoid Costa the rest of our trip and stick to Starbucks. We got some drinks and snacks from the Eurospar next door. Janie and Rebecca drove back to the hotel while Alex and J. R. walked back. We settled into our hotel where Janie was watching The Big Bang Theory with special audio commentary for blind people (because she couldn't turn it off). This proved to be funnier than the show as it made comments like "Sheldon looks perplexed" and "Leonard walks into the room and back out".