The Greystones building boom...

So you may have noticed that I wrote a post about 11 years ago about doing the Bray to Greystones hike in Co. Wicklow, and then complaining about the monstrosity being built in Greystones harbour.  That must have been foreshadowing, because in 2011 we moved to Greystones.  We rented for a while, and then bit the bullet to buy before my age really made it impossible to secure a mortgage.

Now Greystones has a bit of a problem.  It is a lovely place, and everyone knows it.  For years it was probably too far out from Dublin to commute, but then they extended the DART to the village and improved some of the access roads.  Now everyone (us included) wants to live in Greystones (apparently voted the World's Most Livable Community at some ceremony or other).  It really does have a lot going for it....on the beach, nice main street, friendly people (for the most part), but not enough pubs if I'm honest.

As the 'Great Recession' drew to a close, developers who had lots of land around the town started building massive housing estates.  Fair enough, loads of people want to live here so who am I to complain when we did the same thing (we bought an old cottage, not in the new estates).  But, it really does seem to be losing some of its allure that brought us here in the first place.  Lots more traffic, and buses and trains are packed.  Schools are oversubscribed, but that's a whole other story for another day.  It's still a lovely place, but the harbour development is still not finished, and quite frankly is a bit crap.  Oh yeah, house prices are daylight robbery as well.  My long-held disgust with Irish estate agents keeps getting worse.... Cowboys, Ted, Cowboys.

Photo stolen from Wikipedia apparently taken by someone called moptoptv.

and....10 years later

So I started blogging here way back in 2009 when I was newly arrived in Ireland.  We're still here, loving it, bought a house a while back, and now have an almost 10 year old Irish boy.

I'm not sure why I stopped blogging, it's not like I ran out of things to say.  I probably lost the password, got too busy with a small child and pressures at work.  Anyways, figured out the password, kid now occupies himself with an XBOX 360, and yesterday was the first day in 2 months that I ventured into the office.

This whole Covid-19 thing has got me with some spare time on my hands and a few new things to talk about, so the plan is to continue to blog here about my not-so-newly adopted home of Ireland.  In the 12 years that we've been here lots has changed....the recession sort of ended only to be restarted abruptly, politics are still only moderately ridiculous (but now I'm used to it), and the country really does now feel like home.  Yes, still have a huge part of my heart in Canada, but feeling more and more like the Irish everyday.  My good friend Caroline said a while back, ' a sure, you're one of us now'.  Best compliment I've had in quite a while.