June 30 (Grandpa's Birthday!!): Ireland to Wales

I woke up tired, but as I have nearly every day for the past 25 years, I pushed away the exhaustion and put on my exercise clothes. Putting on my running shoes I remembered mornings in Jerusalem when our tour bus was going to leave at 6:00 am so I woke up to exercise at 4:30. I have just learned from experience time after time after time that I feel so much better - physically and mentally - if I prioritize exercise even when my brain is telling me not to. Times when I have been injured or recovering from childbirth have reminded me to be grateful that I have this option every day!!! Anyway, Erik and I worked out in the hotel gym, then as I finished I remembered that Christie  is moving away and I will no longer start my MWF mornings with a run through Rancho with her, and I had to go sob in the stairwell for awhile. Then I pulled it together and went back to the room to wake Sophie and Stone up, packed up our room, and met our small, cheerful, white-haired taxi van driver to take us to the Dublin ferry port. He told us about a cruise he went on that he didn't like because everyone went to bed by midnight and he wanted to be up singing and dancing until 4:00 am. We early birds laughed and shook our heads in wonderment!

Stone and I went outside to take a couple of pictures of the Irish Sea. It's unthinkable to me to imagine crossing that water in a small wooden boat. I kept thinking especially of the Vikings coming from Scandinavia, and the terrified monks escaping from them!

Lindsay and Lucy stayed busy playing cards; Sophie had some alone time with music in her ears

Stone and I read our books (Stone is reading Magnus Chase; I am reading The Story of Britain by Rebecca Fraser) and played hangman. Stone wanted to take a still picture of me, presumably so he can add goofy stuff to it in some app that I am too old and out-of-touch to know about

Welsh is a crazy crazy language. That is a famous town name with an exceptionally long name, but nearly all the street signs look like someone did a glissando on their computer keyboard

The drive to the hotel - so many trees! We were wondering if it would look different from Ireland, and it does.

Our old Victorian hotel in old Victorian Llandudno. Very tired, not very clean, lots of personality but kind of faded and melancholy

And a stuffy stuffy hot room

Stoney and I shared a bed, with Sophie on her own. Erik shared a different room with L&L that was even smaller but at least the window opened toward the sea so it was cooler in theirs.

The view from my window. The line of waterfront hotels looked just like I imagined the setting of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. And something about this town reminds of that book in general. Kind of old and tired and sad and too hot. A place of former energy and excitement, but no one has bothered to maintain it and it petered out long ago.

Another view from the window

We stopped here because it is on the way to England and also because this is our only chance on the trip to go to a beach. After arriving at the hotel at about 5:00 pm we put on our swimsuits and walked down to the water. It is a very very shallow area and the tide had gone waaaaaaaay out (we figured out later), so it was very muddy in patches, and everywhere on the sand were these squiggly shapes which we later learned (after Sophie collected and squished a bunch of them in her hands) were piles of sea-worm excrement.

More fun treasures dotting the sand were hundreds of dead jellyfish. Many were white, the size of quarters. Some were these giant lions-mane jellies, which we studied in fascination for a long time. I found them beautiful but gross. And it put a damper on our desire to go out into the water to know how many jellyfish were out there! The poor creatures get stranded all over the beach when the tide goes out.

And then we got ice cream for dinner, :) and went back to the hotel to hang out and read in our kind of haunted-feeling hotel before bed-time. We'll see how Llandudno, Wales feels tomorrow!