Day 23: Welcome to Ireland, Claire & Jerry!

The Happy Pear is a cafe in Ireland run by Ireland's most famous culinary indentical twins! They do a lot of wellness work too, another IG plug

We started off our day the same as usual... with a hearty breakfast, today's at Granville Hotel's buffet. We were then out the door and all 4 of us drove up to The Happy Pear, where we had arranged to meet Claire and Jerry. It's amazing how quickly you can travel in a car when you're used to struggling on a bike and calculating km to miles in your head, and back again, and you've still hardly made any progress. Claire and Jerry luckily had a safe flight and made it through the airport, on to cell coverage, and driving down to Wicklow with no difficulty.

We had lovely coffees and cakes in The Happy Pear and then headed out to Greystones waterfront. Greystones is a wealthy part of Wicklow, only 45 minutes from Dublin. Unfortunately, the weather was not great so we took a quick walk on the boardwalk and a quick walk on the beach and then headed for Bray.

We then drove 20 minutes north to Bray. The walk from Greystones to Bray is a famous one. Unfortunately we didn't have time for it and it was also closed off for some reason, maybe repair?

We got checked into our hotel in Bray called The Palm (I highly recommend) and then made our way to the waterfront for a quick lunch and dip in the Irish Sea. Yes, it was cold! But refreshing and it had to be done. Mom, Jerry and I were the only ones mad enough to go in.

Afterwards, we got showered and dressed and had dinner in the restaurant of The Palm. Claire and Jerry stayed awake all day, impressive given the red eye flight and time change, and finally called it a night around 8pm.

The rest of us had one more drink and also went to bed. Bray has a movie night on Wednesdays where they project a kids' movie at 6pm and a teenager movie at 8pm down at the beach. It's a lovely community event with a great turnout. Mark and I enjoyed hearing the 8pm reactions to the original Karate Kid. Amazingly enough, Claire and Jerry slept through all the noise and commotion outside.

Trivia: the above photo is of Mark and Claire on Bray's boardwalk. What recent TV show had a dramatic scene that was filmed at this very spot? Hint: I really enjoyed the show, but it terrified Mark.