It’s been beautiful weather over the last few days. There hasn’t been much exciting to warrant daily posts, so I’ll catch up from the most recent day and work backwards.
Today (Sunday), I meet up with my friend CJ to take a day trip up the coast to the town of Malahide, which I had driven past back in December when I was getting my first COVID test at the Dublin airport. For this trip, we take the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) electric commuter train from Connolly Station in Dublin to Malahide, which takes about 30 minutes. The big attraction is the Malahide Castle and Gardens. The castle dates back to the 1100s and was occupied by the Talbot family up until 1976 when the last heir sold it to the Irish state. The “demesne” or the domain/grounds surrounding the castle have several looping paths, and is very family friendly with some fantastic wood sculptures scattered throughout.
After walking around the castle grounds for a good while, we headed into the quaint village of Malahide. Lots of people were out enjoying the nice weather, having some food, and imbibing in a few drinks.
A view of the Malahide marina:
We stopped at a taco place for a snack… I opted for a rib meat bowl that was decent.
Here’s what Connolly Station in Dublin and the DART trains look like — the round trip fare to Malahide was only €4.80:
Map for reference:
Yesterday (Saturday), I stayed in despite the good weather to clean the apartment and do a couple of loads of laundry to wash my bedding (mattress protector and sheets). This took hours to do, given the much longer wash cycles of European washing machines, and it was something that had to get done so I could re-make the bed before going to sleep. The wash cycle for the mattress protector ended with the machine making a periodic beeping sound and multiple flashing indicator lights, so I was afraid it might have broken down. The user’s manual I found online was no help in deciphering what the lights and sound meant; I have the impression the machine is intentionally designed to require a washer repair person instead of DIY troubleshooting. Thankfully, it seemed to work fine after I turned it off and on again.
Throughout the day, I was also backing up my laptop computer and iPhone, which is another time consuming endeavor. In particular, downloading copies of my photos to an external hard drive is an onerous task through the Mac OS Photos app. I started using iCloud Photos last year, which has abated my fears of losing any photos since they are supposed to be automatically uploaded and synced to the cloud storage service, but I still want the reassurance of having an offline copy saved as well. Due to syncing issues, sometimes multiple copies of the same photo get imported into the library, which wastes precious space… my photo library has 64,000+ photos and a couple thousand videos, so even though my external hard drive has 4 terabytes of capacity it’s almost full. At long last, after having to perform a rebuild the library, it seems to be in good order now.
I was somewhat out of sorts on Friday after not sleeping well. As fate would have it, my SuperValu grocery was actually early this week, arriving at around 10:20am, which threw me off even more. Eventually the day got back on track. After completing my usual job searching and studying assignments, I treated myself to a happy hour on the “boardwalk” decks along the northside of the Liffey in the afternoon. A nearby bar, the Grand Social, was serving take-away pints from an impromptu counter set up in the doorway like at many other establishments.
