Excitement. Good kind, challenging kind -- some is unique to travel, and that travel brand of adventure brings with it rewards, always. Either of overcoming, or of having great stories to recount.
Today's adventures started on the lovely and tame end of the continuum. A wake up with my grandgirl and play in our hotel room...
Messages about Sparrow sleeping through the night and then some! All good stuff. We meet up for breakfast downstairs. It's included with the room so we eat a lot!
Hi Sparrow!
Snowdrop is very glad to see her brother again!
Some of us have some down time and so we walk to the park -- St Stephen's Green. It's a short walk, along this street...
And the park is lovely, in the way that so many parks in Europe and especially in the UK islands and Ireland are lovely!
Foxgloves!
And playgrounds!
(Gaga, does it really look like I want to ride this horsie?")
("I'm okay with the swing...")
The weather continues to be shockingly grand. (Meaning it's not raining all the time.) Note Snowdrop refuses even a sweater.
True, every other child is bundled in jackets and such, but our girl is from Wisconsin! Hardy and rarely cold! Her brother? Well, there's just not much time for that nap, so he needs to let go, in the strangest of places...
By noon, we head for the train station. The hotel staff cant believe it -- you're walking? With the little girl and the sweet lad? And the suitcases? You can't do it, the station is far.
Yes we can!
We stop off at Peaches to get sandwiches and a sweet treat for the little girl and then trudge on.
Here's our first big hiccup of the day: the train crew people inform us that there is a security issue on the tracks. Half way, we'll have to get off and a bus will take us from there to Belfast.
Well now. We have a double stroller. Folding it requires taking it apart. We have bags galore. How will this play out?
This is Ireland. A grandmother, traveling with family and young ones will not be left to manage. "We will help you" is the recurrent theme.
The train is magnificent in the way that so many trains on this continent are magnificent. Snowdrop is so excited: "it's my first time on a train! It's my first time!"
There is a lot to be excited about!
In the end, the train does come to a grinding halt before its final destination, but as promised, a million hands help us with the transfer and it isn't to a bus: merely another, lesser train that will run along different, less troubled tracks.
None of us have ever been to Belfast before. It's clearly not a huge tourist destination because the hotels here are perhaps one third the cost of those elsewhere. We're at the Fitzwilliam -- another bargain at a very comfortable place. The young family is together now in a family room and I'm off in my own quarters, here:
With a view toward the edge of town and the hills beyond.
With the exception of one or two nights, I let the young family make all dinner choices. So long as it's reasonably priced and not more than a 20 (well, okay -- 23!) minute walk each way, I'm up for anything.
(Do we ever get rained on during these dinner walks? All the time! It rains, it clears. It rains, it clears.)
Today's selection (Molly's Yard) is modest, intimate and wonderful.
By the meal's end, both kids are tired. To say the least!
Still, their moods mostly hold. As if it were just another night, where dumplings come alongside goat meat...
... and chocolate ice cream isn't really chocolate, nor ice cream at all. Travel does this to you: it teaches you to roll with the punches. That there are bigger values at stake than merely getting everything exactly right and as you expected.
It's 10p.m. now. The sun hasn't set yet and still, I do believe every member of the young family has long been asleep.
Today's adventures started on the lovely and tame end of the continuum. A wake up with my grandgirl and play in our hotel room...
Messages about Sparrow sleeping through the night and then some! All good stuff. We meet up for breakfast downstairs. It's included with the room so we eat a lot!
Hi Sparrow!
Snowdrop is very glad to see her brother again!
Some of us have some down time and so we walk to the park -- St Stephen's Green. It's a short walk, along this street...
And the park is lovely, in the way that so many parks in Europe and especially in the UK islands and Ireland are lovely!
Foxgloves!
And playgrounds!
(Gaga, does it really look like I want to ride this horsie?")
("I'm okay with the swing...")
The weather continues to be shockingly grand. (Meaning it's not raining all the time.) Note Snowdrop refuses even a sweater.
True, every other child is bundled in jackets and such, but our girl is from Wisconsin! Hardy and rarely cold! Her brother? Well, there's just not much time for that nap, so he needs to let go, in the strangest of places...
By noon, we head for the train station. The hotel staff cant believe it -- you're walking? With the little girl and the sweet lad? And the suitcases? You can't do it, the station is far.
Yes we can!
We stop off at Peaches to get sandwiches and a sweet treat for the little girl and then trudge on.
Here's our first big hiccup of the day: the train crew people inform us that there is a security issue on the tracks. Half way, we'll have to get off and a bus will take us from there to Belfast.
Well now. We have a double stroller. Folding it requires taking it apart. We have bags galore. How will this play out?
This is Ireland. A grandmother, traveling with family and young ones will not be left to manage. "We will help you" is the recurrent theme.
The train is magnificent in the way that so many trains on this continent are magnificent. Snowdrop is so excited: "it's my first time on a train! It's my first time!"
There is a lot to be excited about!
In the end, the train does come to a grinding halt before its final destination, but as promised, a million hands help us with the transfer and it isn't to a bus: merely another, lesser train that will run along different, less troubled tracks.
None of us have ever been to Belfast before. It's clearly not a huge tourist destination because the hotels here are perhaps one third the cost of those elsewhere. We're at the Fitzwilliam -- another bargain at a very comfortable place. The young family is together now in a family room and I'm off in my own quarters, here:
With a view toward the edge of town and the hills beyond.
With the exception of one or two nights, I let the young family make all dinner choices. So long as it's reasonably priced and not more than a 20 (well, okay -- 23!) minute walk each way, I'm up for anything.
(Do we ever get rained on during these dinner walks? All the time! It rains, it clears. It rains, it clears.)
Today's selection (Molly's Yard) is modest, intimate and wonderful.
By the meal's end, both kids are tired. To say the least!
Still, their moods mostly hold. As if it were just another night, where dumplings come alongside goat meat...
... and chocolate ice cream isn't really chocolate, nor ice cream at all. Travel does this to you: it teaches you to roll with the punches. That there are bigger values at stake than merely getting everything exactly right and as you expected.
It's 10p.m. now. The sun hasn't set yet and still, I do believe every member of the young family has long been asleep.
