Our destination was Rome, but we stopped in Dublin for breakfast.

Well, we could say that.

After visiting family and friends back in the U.S.A. in late May and early June, we booked a flight from San Francisco to Europe that connected through Reykjavik, Iceland.

Although bound for Rome, to break up the long trip we planned an overnight stay in Dublin as an intermediate stop.  We were glad we did.  (Also, we got a great deal on the one-way flight from San Francisco to Dublin at only $257 each).

The views from the airplane as we crossed Ireland, from the northwest toward Dublin, were not only beautiful, but also familiar and comforting.

We felt so happy seeing Ireland again.

It was evening when we landed in Dublin airport.

We caught a shuttle bus from the terminal to nearby hotel that caters to travelers using the airport.

This was familiar ground to us, including the location of the shuttle bus stop.  We had stayed at this same hotel just one year ago, in June 2016, on the final night of our 3+-week tour of Ireland.

(Here, for the curious, are links to our four blog posts about last year’s tour of Ireland:  One….two….three…four.)

When we arrived, the kitchen in the hotel restaurant had just closed, and the only food available was a small pizza from the coffee shop, which we shared.  We ate in the bar.  Each of us had a pint of beer.  It was not much of a dinner.

We slept particularly well in the comfortable hotel bed, after the long journey from San Francisco.  In the morning, we awoke feeling refreshed and adventurous, and also a bit hungry after our modest meal the night before.

Our next flight, to Rome, was not scheduled to depart from Dublin until late afternoon.  We had a few hours to do as we pleased.

Although we briefly considered taking a taxi into central Dublin, we discarded the idea in favor of walking about three miles to a modest little restaurant we spotted on our cellphone map.

The walk would do us good, we figured, after the long hours cramped in narrow airplane seats the previous day, and before the upcoming flight to Rome.

It is pretty rural around Dublin airport.  Across from the hotel parking lot was a horse pasture.  But the road we followed soon took us into a pleasant little Irish town called Kilmore.

Kilmore was only a short distance, and yet a world apart, from the modern gleam and hustle of the big airport hotel, which might as well have been in Germany.  We felt that we were back, now, in Ireland proper.

We found the little café tucked away in a sort of industrial neighborhood.  It was situated on a narrow little back street, near an auto repair shop and a motorcycle dealer.  If not for our cellphone map, we would never have found the place, which was very nondescript from the outside.

Ah, but as soon as we stepped through the door, we knew we’d found gold.  The walls were decorated in a French theme, with color photographs of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.

We were greeted in friendly fashion by an shapely young Irishman about age 20 who made us swoon (until his girlfriend showed up).  Our waitress was warm, attentive and funny.

We ordered without hesitation, two full Irish breakfasts.  Brian had a latté and Frank had a pot of breakfast tea.

Never were two weary travelers better fed.

By the time we finished, it was too late to walk all the way back to the hotel, so we asked the waitress to call a taxi.  In a few moments, the driver pulled up in front and we hopped in.  He, too, was friendly and good-natured.

On the route back to the hotel, we described for the driver how much we had enjoyed our breakfast.

“Hunger is the best sauce,” he said with a grin.

Now, that’s an expression we will not forget!

A few short hours later, we took off on our next flight.

Having had breakfast in Dublin, we would arrive in Rome in time for dinner.