Dublin, Waterford, Blarney at Night

Slideshow of the morning in Dublin, our brief stop at the Waterford Crystal gift shop, and our arrival at Blarney village.

Walking Around Dublin (Slideshow)

One of the things we plan to do in pretty much every place we go to is "Walk Around". Seriously. G had that on our lists, and would say it whenever we started explaining our trip to people - "We're going to go to Dublin, walk around, then drive to Waterford, walk around, etc"

And that, my dear friends, is EXACTLY what we did. Walked around. Even ended up full circle back at the restaurant where we ate for dinner. Silly winding streets :)

Here's a slide show of ALL our pictures from the day... About 140, I didn't have time to just pick out the best stuff, so it's all there. I think if you click the colored logo in the bottom corner you'll be taken to a place where you can see them bigger.


I still have to go back and caption a bunch of these, but thought I'd get a jump on it. Who knows when we'll get internet again, so trying to keep on top of things.

I think I got sunburned. grrr. Thought it was late enough in the day I wouldn't need sunscreen - we didn't even go out until after 5pm, after a little hour long nap. On the one hand it was kind of good because all the tours and museums and such were closed, so in that sense we probably save ourselves some money, and we didn't have to try and decide or pick just one thing. We kind of just walked wherever we saw something cool, although we were also looking for a few restaurants I'd pegged from the map at the hotel as having vegetarian options. The first one "Govindas" (G thinks it was a Hari Krishna restaurant) was closed, so we ended up at an Italian place.

Then we just walked and walked and walked and saw a bunch of cool pubs, statues, buildings, and street performers. Really neat old city with lots of little surprises around corners and stuff.

I really wanted to go back to a pub called Panama after 9pm for some traditional Irish Folk music, but by then our feet were killing us, it was more like 10:30, and we'd picked up some souvenirs and bottles of water and were looking a bit haggard in general, so we decided to just go home, even though it sounded pretty good - if what they were piping through the speakers to the sidewalk was what was being played inside... I hope we'll be able to take in some music at one of the other towns along the way. It's nice that all the pubs are smoke free, I'm not sure if that's the case in other towns. A smokey place would severely limit my music enjoyment in it... sigh. On that topic, it's kind of funny, since people can't smoke inside, they congregate out on the sidewalk in front of the pubs, so you end up walking through a lot of smoke a lot of the time. And the ground is just littered with cigarette butts... I wonder if it was any different when you could smoke in the pubs. Anyway, I'm glad of it, gives someone like me a lot more options of where to go.

Other random noticings:
- Kelly green really is big here, I think it's probably ALWAYS in fashion to wear it, no matter the other colors of the season. They even had little green lights to illuminate the way on the bridges across the river.

- Overheard a lady at the restaurant say "dis and tat" for "this and that". Funny how you can take two words that in theory both start with "th" and work them out to have two different sounds instead. I wonder how you know when to use which?

- Several guys propped up against random doorways pretty much passed out/asleep/drunk to a stupor? Sad. One had an unlit cigarette in one hand and his other hand was half way in his pocket, like he'd reached for a lighter and couldn't finish the effort before passing out completely. I can't imagine they're comfortable, or that they won't have HUGE crinks in their necks when they wake up...

- The weather was gorgeous, although it cooled off right quick when the sun dipped down.

- Most of the girls are wearing long, dark denim. Lots of funky jackets and skinny scarves and more crazy hair than I'm used to seeing - chunky highlights, short on to long on bottom, dreds, etc.

Still can't figure out if I'm just amped on traveling or messed up from the time change, but I'm going to try to go to bed for reals now.

We Made It to Dublin

(pictures are being a bit wonky, so please excuse if they are either missing or show up twice!)

I'm feeling a bit dazed but not too tired really. I guess the Jet Lag pills worked or I'm functioning on adrenaline and sunlight. Or maybe all three. Surely the Starbucks has worn off by now. I think we're going to head out for some food and that should help quite a bit - walking and food for grounding. Should do some asanas but I forget how! Sun salutes at least.

Longest. Queue. EVER. at Heathrow. sheesh. wait in line, around several corners, down the stairs, take a bus, wait on the bus till the buses ahead have emptied out, wait for an escalator, swerve around little ropes like a theme park ride line, go through security, get through a passport check line. After that no line but the gate to our flight was FAR away through many strange tunnels all painted with ads for strange things (or perhaps normal things but I don't know the brand) and I smashed my left hand against a metal beam sticking out of a tunnel while I was trying to jog/run because the flight status board said the flight to Dublin was closing and the walk to get there was 15 minutes, but we must have been looking at the wrong Dublin flight because we got to our gate and it hadn't even opened yet. Phew.

Happy Smirk in Chicago


The whole time I'm pretty much happy as a clam because I'm not at work and I don't have a house full of "shoulds" staring me in the face all weekend. Wheee. Start to lose my cool on the flight to Dublin though, G and I were separated. Both in row 18, but each with a window seat on either side of the plane. I kept thinking I was going to ask the person who sat next to me to trade, but both people came and sat down at about the same time, and I was too wonked out to ask. Then it turns out the seat next to G was EMPTY, but by the time I figured it out the plane was ready to go. And then I had to pee like crazy, but I couldn't understand the thick Irish accent and I thought he might have said the lavatories were closed. May have just been for takeoff and landing but I wasn't sure, plus I would have had to ask TWO people to get out. They brought around drinks and I was pretty thirsty but you had to pay, I didn't have any Euros yet and I didn't want to add to my full bladder. Luckily the flight was only a little over an hour. and then of course we had to walk through miles of airport before finding a single restroom!

We missed the first double decker bus that came by, but were nearly first on the second, so we got to sit right in the front on top, yay! Good for pictures methinks.

Front of the Bus!


Then we started looking for our hotel and backtracked twice, once because we thought we were going the wrong way, and then again when we realized we WERE going the wrong way! By this time I am feeling really greasy and tired and a bit cranky and all I want is a shower. There are several "gypsy" looking ladies on the street wearing skirts, and also shawls over their heads. Each one has a baby, and each one holds out a cupped hand to ask for change. One is particularly young and pretty. I wonder what brought them to this life, and how many kids they have somewhere else? and do they like it? We have to walk by them several times while trying to find our street. We finally head down a side street and walk past a gated set of buildings with a huge sculpture of an upturned hand. I marvel at how it echoes the gesture of the women on the next street over and wonder if the gesture and the sculpture were meant to be in common, and if so which came first. Ironically the slightly older woman (is that really her baby or did she borrow it?) begging at the gates of this place is shaking not her hand but a paper cup.

Our room at the Days Inn has not one queen bed but four twin beds. huh. most importantly in the moment though, it has a shower!!!

Two of the 4 Beds (G has the wireless running already)


G discovers that our cell phone will not work in the UK at all. Now we have to decide if we should buy one that will or go without and waste the SIM card...

We started to suspect something was wrong on the bus...


I check my email and MySpace, something familiar in all this slightly strange old-newness that really isn't all that different.

Feeling like we should go take advantage of the time we have in the city. Didn't spend all this money to blog from a hotel room, although writing IS a good way for me to assimilate and process. There's a time and place for it all I suppose!