Killyon, Navan, Co. Meath
This place, on the Dublin Road (N3) in Navan, is gorgeous! It's full of antiques, fresh flowers, and stained glass. When you walk in, you are facing a stained glass wall which separates the entry from the breakfast room. I have described the breakfast room already. The key to the room was the old "skeleton key" kind. I had a twin room in the basement. There was a tray with bottled water and glasses, and a vase of silk flowers.
The bathroom had wooden towel racks and a vanity that was so pretty that I was afraid to set anything on it. There was a deep bathtub, but I opted for a shower instead.
Breakfast was amazing - scrambled eggs with smoked salmon mixed in, and good Irish bacon. I ate with an American medical student who goes to school in Dublin and who was on a six-week fieldwork assignment nearby. It was a struggle to manuever out of the front yard/parking lot but I managed. I felt like such a dope after oversleeping, then almost walking off with their key. It would have totally capped it off to have hit the wall - or the house.
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Pinebrook, Arklow, Co. Wicklow
This place is on a cul de sac about a block or so from the coast. There were beaches nearby, but I didn't know how to get to them (nor was it beach weather, obviously). It was heading toward dark when I got there, anyway. The hallway floor was ceramic tile, and there was a skylight in the hall near my room. The bathroom was gorgeous beige tile, with a row of tiles with pale peach tulips. And it had one of those wonderful instant hot water things - heaven! There was a hotpot for coffee and tea making.
I don't know how many channels the TV got, but it was a lot. I stayed up late watching BBC channels. One of the shows I saw was called "A Wife for William", sort of a critique of the various possibilities among the girls that could be good matches for him. Very silly, but interesting to watch.
The breakfast room was decorated in a mix of sort of Irish tacky and Grand Canyon/Route 66. Breakfast itself was, well, less than great, but it might have suffered from comparison to the day before. I forgot to specify "scrambled", so I got a fried egg, which I managed to eat most of. I was apparently the only guest, which was nice from a noise point of view, but it felt a little weird in the morning when the family was in the kitchen getting ready for the day, while I sat alone in the dining room. It was a really nice place, though, and the woman running it was terrific. And she gave me perfect directions to Kilmainham Gaol.
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Glen Guesthouse, Dublin, Co. Dublin
This was the least attractive of the three places I stayed, but it was nice enough, and well located. My room was a twin room in the basement, but it had a huge window below street level next to the stairs going in. The heat shut off at 9:00, but they turned it back on for me when I asked how to adjust it. The shower here was advertised as a "power shower", and that was pretty accurate. I did wish I had a bathtub, though, when I came in from trudging the Dublin streets all day and really wanted to soak my feet.
The TV only got four channels in English (and one in Irish), but I still found something to watch till I could fall asleep. The neighborhood, I was told, is a little "dicey", but I honestly didn't sense any problems, even after dark. This place is at the Custom House end of Gardiner St, just off of Talbot, and there were plenty of people around. I guess it could have been different at midnight, but the whole end of the street was full of hostels and guesthouses.
The breakfast had a cool faux finish on the walls in orange, but the view left something to be desired. The dining room overlooked the open front of the parking garage in back, with ladders, the washer and dryer, etc., all in view. The girl serving spoke little English (she was Asian), and the food was pretty tasteless. The second morning I just had cereal, juice, and coffee, but I really should have eaten more. It was a long time till dinner on the plane in the afternoon, and the sandwich at the airport wasn't much.
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