A very damp Ireland!

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Well, we arrived safely in Dublin yesterday morning (our time, this morning your time), after an easy but sleepless flight over. I think both Kirk and I might have dozed off for an hour total, but that's about it. I had intended to take some Dramamine which normally knocks me out, but somehow it had gotten misplaced in the packing, and the JFK airport was completely sold out, of course. So after a bus ride to our hotel, we thought we would grab a few hours nap and then get up and go see the city. Well, our room wasn't ready so we wandered downtown for a bit, had some lunch and then came back to the hotel because we were so wiped, that we were almost falling into our plates at lunch. Room still wasn't quite ready so we sat down in a little lounge/parlor area and actually dozed off in there while we were waiting. About 1:30, we got into our room and then crashed for a good three hours. Woke up to still more rain, but braved it and went down to the Temple Bar area of Dublin and had a nice dinner and wandered around down there for a bit, got back and went to bed at what felt like pretty normal time, around 11:00 pm here.



Dublin is.....outside of being very rainy right now, a very neat old, old town. Lots of recognizable businesses.....Starbucks, Papa Johns...that one surprised me, Hard Rock Cafe, Penny's, to name a few. Intermingled with these, are your typical souvenir shops, restaurants, bars, etc., but you can tell many of these buildings have been standing for a very long time. There are hanging flowers baskets and window boxes everywhere, the seagulls are flying and crying overhead as you're walking through town, and the people are just as friendly and fun as any place I've ever been and friendlier than many! The chiminey stacks around here remind you very much of Mary Poppins and just make you smile when you see them. It takes me a minute or two to follow a conversation, just because i have to decipher it a little in my head with the accent, but all in all, relatively easy to understand, except for one of the girl's at lunch today. Her brogue was so heavy, all I got out of what she said, was bangers and mash, which is what I ordered. kirk translated and she had told us that the cook had come in late that day, but that it should be ready shortly. lol It's a charming, wonderfully old city, that i would love to visit when it's not raining, but that doesn't look like we'll have that opportunity. The forecast here is for heavy rain throughout the weekend, so it is what it is, and we'll make the most of it. 😊



This morning, we're up at about 5:30 a.m. and getting ready to head out to a tour that includes some castles and the Cliffs of Moher along the Ireland coast so i'm pretty psyched to see it all and hoping that we have some glimpses of sunshine or at the very least, no rain for a bit today. The internet is a little finicky here, so I'm not sure how picture uploads will be, and I'm not sure when i'll get a chance to upload some, but it might be a few days. I'll try to catch up with some visuals as soon as I can.

In the meantime, we're here safe and sound, soggy and tired at first, and now just soggy, but excited to see what the day holds! 😊

Back to you when I can!

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