Jack McDade

Evening, Day Two

Posted on 30. Mar, 2009 by Jack in Ireland

We’ve definitely made it around the Southeast area of Ireland today. We started out this morning in Arklow, after leaving Maeve and Ian at The Gables behind (which sport some pretty cool looking Mediterranean palm trees, surprisingly), we headed south the N11 towards Wexford.

Driving today was much, much easier. Not surprisingly, the lack of sleep really impaired my ability to keep myself from lining the car up on the left side of the road. The hard part being not drifting to the right side of the road, surprisingly, but rather drifting left, so that I line my body up with the LEFT stripe. That was yesterday’s issue. Today? No problem!

Cruising along at 110km we passed a lot of patchwork countryside, sheep, hills and coastal land until we came to the Irish National Heritage Park, recommended by our hosts. The place is a recreated timeline of the Irish settlers covering 9,000 years of history. They have huts starting from simple thatch and working up to an island crannog fort, each pretty faithfully recreated in the style and material of that day. It’s not quite tourist season yet so we had a personal guided tour where we ended up chatting more about Lost than the lost days. All and all, a pretty enjoyable time.

After seeing all there was to see, we packed it up and headed a few miles towards the coast to have some lunch in Wexford. We were surprised at how quaint and pretty the town was! Running along side the coast with all the restaurants facing the water and shopping running parallel a block upwards, we found a place to park (still not used to left-side parallel parking… probably never will) and wandered through the town. We ate a little place called Westgate Design, tucked inside and downstairs of a crystal shop. You’d never know it was there if someone didn’t tell you. Or looked it up on the internet. I saw it listed as the best cheap place to eat during the day. Can’t blame a guy when the exchange rate is $1.39 to €1 The food was great and only €5 a person. Score.

Heading onwards, we stopped at Aldi (heck yes. Aldi is international, and they’re ever few miles.) for some PB & J like the thrifty travelers we are, and over to Waterford.

Unfortunately, the Waterford Crystal Factory is now closed, so we didn’t get a chance to watch the expert glass workers do their magic. We really weren’t impressed with Waterford at all. Just kind of a crowded city on a river, a little dirty, tiny streets, nothing exciting. So we moved on. And boy are we glad we did. We wound up in Tramore, which is a little gem we had never heard of. A beautful and quaint village on the sea with gorgeous homes and buildings. And that’s where I am now. Waiting for Jen to wake up from a quick nap so we can head out to a pub for some eats and hopefully meets!