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.