Honeymoon in Ireland – October 2016 – First Day

​“Whenever you can, change your scene and live a novel plot of your own devising.” — Jane Austen’s Guide to Thrift

Last year, we finally went on our honeymoon, and I do feel that delayed joys are the sweetest.  It was such a lovely trip, and so much fun to see fascinating old places and how other people live.  Canada is so young, in comparison!

The plan was to go to the first country in or around Europe that had seat sales in October, and luckily for me, Ireland was the one.  A special thanks to Chris Myden for the amazing sites that he runs.  If you’re in Ottawa, check his YOW deals here, and if you’re in YVR, check his site here.  *This is not a sponsored post!

Thanks to always living near the airport wherever we’ve settled, we are able to walk to the airport, and walk we did, each with a carry-on in hand.  I insisted on carry-ons, because I dislike intensely having to wait for luggage at the baggage carousel when you want to start your trip already, and the headache of possibly losing something is never to be tolerated.  And one never needs that much on a trip, really, but I digress…

I almost felt sorry for leaving in October, it’s the most beautiful month in Canada, in my opinion.  The leaves were already changing colour, and there was a crisp tang in the air.  I still digress…

The flight was around 8 hours, and Alex managed to spend most of it sleeping, whereas I spent most of it in an intense state of excitement and how-could-you-possibly-sleep-at-a-moment-like-this-ish-ness, before the state of being a mere mortal kicked in and I slept the last 3 hours of the flight.

Upon landing, Alex had decided he wasn’t going to start driving on the other side of the street, so we made our way to the bus stop, promptly ended up on the wrong side, and missed our bus.  It was a good chance to look around and enjoy the feeling of breathing in ‘different’ air.  The day was overcast, chilly and grey.  It felt like Vancouver, and I –perhaps Alex, too– felt right at home.

We finally reached Pebble Mill (which sounds exactly as if it came straight out of a LMM novel) the bed-and-breadfast where we would be staying.  The place had an old-time charm, but we were told it was built in the 1980’s, so is relatively new.  The owners, Monica and Pat, were very nice and considerate despite having to balance the demands of running an establishment with their personal lives.
There were three beds, so it would have been perfect for a family.  In the washroom, I was introduced to the two-faucet system, whereby one runs only cold water, and the other hot.  It was a system trying to get lukewarm water!  But it was int’resting. And it was a room with a view.

That evening, we headed out to Malahide (a coastal suburban town just outside Dublin in Fingal, Ireland) in search of supper and ended up in a lovely little part of the town.  We decided on McGovern’s.  I had fish and chips, and Alex had the pulled pork and quinoa salad on naan bread… both were presented beautifully and were memorably delicious!
Afterwards, we had a little stroll around along the coast, taking in whiffs of the Irish Sea.
We returned to our B&B as the sun started setting, I wish to say without incident; true to self, I tripped over a cobblestone and scraped my knee terribly.  A few hours later, all patched up and clean, we chose one of the three beds to sleep in, in Goldilocks fashion, watched a few episodes of American Horror Story (“It won’t be that scary,” he said), and myself having reached a state of complete terror, fatigue won and we both managed to fall asleep.

And that was our first day.

P.S.  Irish Gaelic for the word minute is nóiméid, but is shortened to nóm at bus stops.  Which then led us to think of nom-noms, thus leading to rather rumbly tumblies, as a certain bear would say.