Oops! I F*CKED UP!

But before I get to that, let me bore you with a few more pictures of the phenomenal Collon House. 

This was our last morning with our new friends (forgot to get a picture together...damn) and with Michael, the head Bed and Breakfast guy.  We enjoyed our last delicious Irish breakfast together in the fabulous dining room and visited about our upcoming adventures.  Ed and Jane are traveling for 7 weeks in the reverse order that Gordon and I traveled but to basically the same locations and then they fly to Inverness and tour the Highlands of Scotland before going to Edinburgh and Glasgow, the Lake District, Liverpool and in to Wales and the south of England.  Whew!  Ambitious!

Three views of the dining room.

 Now another brief tour but this time in the house across the courtyard where the main kitchen is and another 6 or 7 bedchambers.  At each corner of the dining room if you push the wall it opens into storage shelves, the original safe of the home or one door opens through to the ladies sitting room pictured below.

 Past the grand staircase I walked along to peep in other rooms and saw this completely magnificent "yellow" sitting room.  Jaw-dropping!!!  Later Michael told me the room was originally the ballroom.

Across from the yellow sitting room was this room.....

 Both rooms adjoin this hallway.

Now back in our house is this sweet little sunroom that opens out onto.......

.....a beautiful cutting garden and....

Weeping white cherry...

 ....check this out!!!

This sign is at the bottom of the garden.

Many of the walls of the house are covered in Ivy and Michael is getting rid of it by cutting it off at the bottom and killing the plant.  It's grown into the stucco and mortar of the bricks which will damage the facade.  He's planting Virginia Creeper on top of the Ivy to cover the dead plant.

Secret entry into the garden

The little sunroom leading back into the sitting room in the side of the house we stayed in.

 Sadly we are on our way.  Today was misty as we started off toward Drogheda and crossed the Boyne River over this very modern bridge.

 And arrived at the Port of Dublin to check in for our Ferry.  Now here's the part when I discovered my cock-up!  Today is the 16th.  Our Ferry reservation was for the 15th!  Doh!  Oh no, but .....fortunately there was space available for our little car!

 And the mist gets thicker.....

 So we take our paperwork and go in to pee and grab a "Gaelic" Diet Coke!

And start to wonder if our hotel reservations are correct since I screwed up the Ferry reservation.  Turns out I lost a day somewhere and our last night at Collon House was supposed to be spent at the St. George Hotel in Llundudno, Wales.  CRAP!  Which means our 2 night reservation in Grasmere, England is supposed to start tonight.  SHIT!  Both hotels are already booked and paid for and aren't cheap.  Fortunately we have a phone and Gordon starts calling.  Good and bad news.  The Grasmere property probably will not cut us any slack so we will just show up there tomorrow for our reserved room and miss tonight.  The St. George has agreed to house us for the night in the very last room they have available and I'll show that to you in a minute but first we take the "swift" ferry from Dublin to Holyhead which only takes 1 hour and 50 minutes.  We have Club Class again but it's not nearly as comfortable as the first Ferry we took.   I'm spoiled!

View across Club Class

 After the ferry ride we drove up to Llundudno (pronouced lun-dud-no) in about an hour and arrive at the St. George Hotel where we were previously booked into a beautiful double room overlooking the ocean. 

Now we are booked into a twin room......

 ....overlooking this!

 But at least we have a nice modern bathroom!

We settled in, plugged in all our electronics and went for a walk along the wide Esplanade right in front of the hotel.

 Here's the lovely view of the Irish Sea on another warm and blue sky day!

 Above is another picture of the St. George's Hotel and views of the other hotels along the Esplanade.  They are all painted in pastels of blue, pink, yellow and cream and in very good condition.  It's a typical Welsh/English beach side resort.

This little guy was very excited he found this string!

Welsh words!!!!

The evening sunlight on the buildings was beautiful

Mad-hatter

The entry to the St. George's

 Gordon and I just couldn't take one more fish dinner or pub food so we asked concierge about a spicy, ethnic restaurant and walked to the recommended Chinese/Asian cuisine restaurant called East and had our first Welsh beer!  NOT!

The food was GREAT and we were happily full so decided another walk along the Esplanade was in order.  It was dark but the Esplanade was well lit and there were many people of all ages walking, biking, jogging and strolling along.  Benches line the beach wall and there were loungers with dogs, people smoking cigarettes or people like Gordon and I.  Just sitting on a bench by the Irish Sea in mid September with no jackets, no boots and no umbrella's.  Who knew?

Now we are plopped in our little twin beds which we have pushed together and are making plans for tomorrow.  I'll give you a hint about where we are headed in the morning....

I Wanna Hold Your Hand!