A Rugged Lane, Ancient Ruins, and Sheer Exhaustion

We landed in Dublin at 7am, completely jet-lagged. 

After getting our car, we set our map to take us to a restaurant right by Glendalough. 

Glendalough is the ruins of an ancient monastery. The monastery was founded in the 6th century by Saint Kevin.  

Liam was hoping to hop on the highway, avoiding some of the more complicated roads while he adjusted to driving on the left side of the road. Our Apple Maps had other plans. 

After misunderstanding a couple of the directions and being rerouted a couple of times, we turned onto “Rugged Lane.” Rugged Lane was narrow, and I mean narrow. It’s a “two way,” but the version where if someone is coming, you need to pull off into the dirt on the side. On top of that, rugged road also had some very sharp turns, with low visibility. We were sweating…. It was definitely a trial by fire learning experience. 

Day one started our saying that carried on through the rest of the trip:

“we made it.”

And make it we did. 

We arrived at our restaurant, and sat down to order some breakfast. Seeing the menu item “Full Irish Breakfast,” I decided to jump right in, and experience Ireland. It turns out, even after being on a plane all night, I do not in fact like a full Irish breakfast. 

After finishing our meal, we lived the phrase “you don’t know what you don’t know” while we waited for the waitress to bring us our check. We watched other people finish and pay at their tables, but no check. We sent all the body language symbols (crossing the arms, staring off, looking around for the waitress, etc.) Nada. After what felt like ages, we finally were able to get the check. 

It turns out, you really need to flag down your waiter/waitress and tell them you need the check. We felt super uncomfortable doing this, as we didn’t want to be rude! 

Glendalough was beautiful and surreal. 

And we were completely exhausted. A quick story to demonstrate our exhaustion levels, Liam asked me to put a certain playlist on. While our Meaning of Life playlist is phenomenal, it was a little too mellow to stay for our fatigue levels. No lie, it took me at least five minutes to find and turn the playlist on, as I kept falling asleep before I could find it. 

After Glendalough, we made it to Kilkenny and headed to dinner. Spoiler alert, not even our exhaustion levels could lead to us not recognizing the quality of that experience. 

Petronellas is in downtown Kilkenny, in a small alley. It’s a small, stone building that gives way to a warm interior. Frank, the restaurant owner, quite genuinely made it to the top of our favorites list from the entire trip. 

Frank welcomed us in, and instantly made us feel at home. He walks around and talks with all of his guests, even remembering names. 

As if that wasn’t enough to make for a phenomenal experience, we also sat next to Declan O’rourke, a local singer. Not bad, huh? 

AND, the food was absolutely amazing. We started off with fried brie (ummmm yes?) and a zucchini bruschetta. For the main course, we both ordered pastas and were both blown away by the flavors. To finish, we had a sticky toffee pudding (our first ever) that was topped with fresh fruit (raspberries, currants, etc.) 

Frank and Petronellas set a high bar for the rest of our trip.

After dinner, we came back to the hotel, and slept for 12.5 hours. 

Like I said, sheer exhaustion. 

Cheers,