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Howth (In Irish: Binn Éadair, meaning: "Éadar's peak")


I had received a lot of suggestions on places to visit since being in Dublin, but on the top of everybody’s lists was a place called Howth. I did not know much about it except that it was a village on the outer suburb of Dublin bay and that it was beautiful and I had to go see it. So I took the trip on the Dublin Area Rapid Transit (Dart) with the three other Drexel students that are here and a french girl that we met a week ago.

We got off the Dart and the first thing on everybody’s mind was finding a bathroom. Coincidently, the nearest bathroom was located in a cute market just a block away. The market had an assortment of booths with various foods and crafts to buy. So while one of us went, the others would take a small loop around the marketplace. We decided that we were going to eat after our hike but I could not resist getting a small container of assorted olives.

We knew that people had recommended Howth because there was a beautiful hike that was supposed to lead to a summit with a pub at the top. Leave it to the Irish to put a pub at the end of a hike. The shoreline was just another street away, so we figured that that was where our hike was supposed to start. We found an information booth which outlined four different hikes we could take. A one and half hour hike, a two hour hike, a three hour hike, and a four hour hike. It was around 4:30pm in the afternoon at this point so we decided that we would start on the two hour one and see how we felt later. All the paths started on the same route.

We walked up and along a road shared by people and cars. We were still in a residential area with houses to the right of us and small glimpses of the Irish Sea to our left. The houses that blocked the view of the Ocean side were built right on the edge of these cliffs with these great green lawns of grass enclosed around a castle-like fence. On the other side of the fence was a direct drop into the ocean. How much money would I have to have to own a weekend home here? I kept thinking to myself. It took us quite a while to get to the actual hiking part of the trail because we kept coming across these paths that would go from the road to the sea side that we felt we needed to explore.

Before we knew it the road and the residential area had transformed into a path along the edge of a cliff without any safety rail. We had to walk in a single file line and, being in the front, I couldn’t help but wistle the “March of the lost boys” tune from Peter Pan. Around every five minutes or so somebody from our group would exhale a word of amazement and we would all stop and look up to see yet another amazing view. A little ways further we came across a meadow and without any discussion we all decided that we just had to lay there for 15 minutes. The meadow was softer than the mattress I was sleeping on back at my flat. I had never been on such soft ground before. After a sufficient amount of time had passed, we skipped and bounced down the meadow back to the cliff path.

We soon reached the summit and realized that the four different hikes that we could decide to take started at this point. We had spent an hour and half just getting to the starting point. With the pub in sight we laughed at ourselves and decided that we would eat dinner at the summit pub and take the bus back down to the Dart station.

We sat outside with the warmth of the sun on our faces and a slight breeze whiping our hair every so often. After a chicken salad, some prosciutto, and a nice Guinness, we caught the bus back down the cliff. While I did feel some regret for not completing the four hour hike, it was still a lovely afternoon and I knew that I had time left in Dublin to come back and do it again.

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