Dublin – Day 10: 15/08/2007

Today was Núria’s birthday, so I gave her her last present: a tennis trainers and some other tennis stuff. We spent the morning in the language centre. When the classes finished, we went to the nearest restaurant because we had planned going to Dalkey, a very pleasant coastal suburb located 13 km away from Dublin, where famous people live. The DART (Dublin train) picked us up at 13:59 pm and 25 minutes later we stepped out of it.

The first thing you think when you see Dalkey out from the station is: “This is not like Dublin!”… It’s small, lovely and has not that many tourists. What’s more, most of local people (but not in the centre of the village) said ‘hello’ to us! We started a three-hour long tour, and the first place we visited was Dalkey Castle, now a heritage centre, located next to the city hall. A little bit down and across the road there is Archbold’s Castle, another one of Dalkey’s seven castles (but nowadays only remain three). I bought Núria a piece of cake topped with caramel; I asked for two pieces, but the bakery was crowded and, probably, the woman didn’t heard me properly.

We went to Coliemore Road, the main coast road. As we were walking along it, we were able to see the sea (of course) and Dalkey Island, a little island very close to the coast, of historical importance. We continued up the road and, on the top of the hill, we entered Sorrento Park, a beautiful park with splendid views of the island, Wicklow Mountains and Killiney Bay. After turning right, we went along Vico Road. The posh area starts here and we kept on walking until we finally reached the Killiney station, because we had gone too far to go back to Dalkey Station.

At the very end of the trip, we found the biggest and largest house of all the houses we saw that evening. While we were taking photographs at it, the heavy iron gate opened up, and somebody came in… This must be an X-File case…