Return to Ireland

Tiff hasn't traveled for work for a while, but each time she had before we tried to turn it into an excuse to do some travel. So, Thursday rolls around and Tiff confirms she has a meeting in Dublin on Monday. We'd already already covered Dublin, and well, it's no Paris, so we were looking to stay somewhere in the countryside outside of the city. After some intense research we ended up getting the friends and family rate at the Ritz Carlton in County Wicklow. The room was bigger than our flat in London.

As an added bonus, there are two golf courses adjacent to the hotel, one of which was designed by David Kidd - the same guy that designed Bandon Dunes. So, I bit the bullet and got up at 4am to fly out Friday morning to play a round before Tiff arrived later that evening. When I got there, the course was closed due to frost, but it opened at 12:30 and I literally was the only guy out there. Just me, some Ewes and the Sugarloaf Mountain. It was an amazing experience and it got me juiced to play in Scotland with DWT in February so we booked his travel while I was on the course.

Tiff got in late Friday night and I drove our unstable rental car with the icy road warning light on during the two hour drive to Dublin airport and back. We spent the next couple of days exploring the Irish countryside, eating Irish Stew(Tiff), drinking loads of Guiness (Greg) and relaxing at the hotel - enjoying the spa (Tiff), gym (both), NFL on Sky Sports (Greg) and the Gordon Ramsey restaurant. I'm not a huge fan of expensive French restaurants and this one didn't do anything to change my opinion. It was fine, but not worth a car payment.

We headed to Dublin Monday night and it was back to reality. We stayed at the Jurys Inn and the lobby seems nice enough but the room was pretty bad. We went from heated marble floors in the bathroom to mildewy grout throughout. I felt bad for Tiff who had to spend two nights there, but not bad enough to stay the extra night. Plus, I had to get back to the Doodle because our dog-sitters dog had died over the weekend. Very sad. Don't want to end on a downer so I'll throw in a couple more photos.

Tiff - enjoying a "not quite cold enough" champagne cocktail.

The Powerscourt Gardens