I still wanted a second box, but decided to have faith in the shop near the hostel. Lacking complete faith, if they failed me I could make do with one box. I headed out. Researching what to do today, I kept finding things in Dublin I didn’t want to do, and guided tours to castles in the surrounding area. Mapped out, the castles formed an arc around Dublin. I needed only to return to Dublin before the bike shops closed, both to make a final attempt at a box, and to have a bike shop remove the pedals (avoiding the panic situation – see June 10<\/a>). I planned a semi-circular route to permit a direct short return to Dublin early if time ran out.<\/p>\n I haven’t biked unloaded for a while – an invigorating change.\u00a0Ashford Castle sat in Phoenix Park in Dublin. Only available by guided tour, I caught the tour at 11:00 am as it started. Renovations on Ashford Castle only finished recently. They discovered the castle when knocking down an estate house built around it, and reconstructed it. They did a great job – simple.<\/p>\n I saw Dunsloughly Castle for the first time on my first visit to Ireland. It stands in a farmer’s field as a ruin. I wondered whether the castle might be more accessible many years later, and it sits between Ashford Castle and Swords Castle. Unfortunately, more restrictions exist on the castle than before; I could only get a few zoomed pictures at distance. <\/p>\n I could not remember whether I visited Swords Castle previously. The large sign out front proudly announced they opened the castle to visitors in June, 2015. Unfortunately I arrived just as the staff closed for lunch. I decided to wait until they re-opened, ate lunch, and wandered around Swords a bit. They have a long way to go on the castle renovations, so the site should continue to improve. <\/p>\n The staff (who also serve as Tourist Information) strongly recommended Malahide Castle, the next in the arc. They also gave me a brochure for Malahide Castle, a brochure for the nearby Ireland coast, and a map of the city of Howth, which also includes a castle. She also proceeded to explain in detail how to get to Malahide (even after I showed her the location on the GPS). Malahide served as a residence until the 1900s, so I knew the interior would be remodeled. The tour guide came from Spain; I found the accent for an Irish tour a bit distracting. <\/p>\n From Malahide, I had only a short ride to Howth Castle. Howth still serves as a private residence, so can only be viewed from the outside. Carefully checking the time, I headed to Howth, and still returned to the bike shop near the hostel by 5:45 pm. Just a good stretch of the legs.<\/p>\n The bike shop loosened my pedals, and indeed had a box. I returned to the hostel, box perched on my bike as I walked back. In comparing the two boxes, the second box paled in size to the first, about the same difference as the box from yesterday to the bike I originally brought to Istanbul. I settled in to pack. <\/p>\n Two hours later I finished packing. The smaller box forced me to remove the front racks and the front fender, and detach the front handlebars. I juggled equipment around between the box and panniers.\u00a0I arranged a taxi\/van for the morning. Everything all set, I wandered the streets listening to buskers and the music drifting out from the bars on my last night in Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I crashed early last night. The late night with Dominic caught up with me, and I fell asleep by 10:00 pm. I awoke early, and caught breakfast as the hostel started serving, at 7:00 am. I headed out to find an additional box, tape, and ideally a hardware store. The bike shop closest to the … Continue reading “150929”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-touring"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3892,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions\/3892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"image\"](\"http:\/\/www.irelandbybicycle.com\/rickpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/wpid-wp-1443557880979.jpeg\" "\\"wp-1443557880979\\"")
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