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Leprechaun
This man checked our passport in Dublin Airport. After a long but uneventful flight, Jay and I landed in Dublin Thursday morning on schedule. Neither of us slept much, so we were exhausted.
We took a bus from the airport to the city and wandered around for a couple hours looking for a hostel Jay stayed in several years ago. After asking directions and walking a few miles (don't ask how many kilometres that is because I don't know), we found it. The hostel, called the Avalon, is in a gorgeous old brownstone building on Auinger Street, about half a mile south of the River Liffey.
The area is decent, but it's really close to St. Stephen's Green, a large gated park with statues, trees, flowers and ponds with aggressive and angry geese. Doesn't sound too different from Boston Common come to think of it.
We've walked around the city a bit. It's old and littered, but construction is everywhere. New buildings are going up and new shops and upscale ethnic restaurants dot old alleys in a declaration of the country's new prosperity, giving old Dublin a new cosmopolitan feel. Immigrants are abound and help wanted signs hang in many windows.
On Thursday Jay and
Cork
This is Saint Fin Barre's cathedral in Cork Centre. I were exhausted, so we slept in our room -- the Avalon only had a two-bed room available Thursday night, which was more expensive, but a good place to hide out and get our shit together -- for a few hours before heading to the green. Afterward, we went to a pub called the Hairy Lemon -- named for its original propritor, who had yellow skin, a lemon-shaped head head and hair in odd places, according to the memo -- for Irish food. Jay had bangers and mash (Irish sausage and mashed potatoes) and I had cottage pie, which is shepherd's pie with beef instead of lamb.
Friday, neither of us had recovered from the flight and time adjustment and slept very little. We had to check out of our room by 10 a.m. and checked into another, cheaper one at 2. This room is a 20-bunk open dorm. We couldn't leave our bags in the room, like we did with the double, but it was less than half the price. We got out of the hostel by about 9 and took a bus to the Guinness brewery for a tour and a free pint. The tour ends on the building's seventh floor, which is a new pub built with glass windows that allows an amazing panoramic view of Dublin. On our way back to the hostel, we stopped at the Jameson's distillery for a tour and a free whiskey on the rocks.
Once we got back to the hostel, we slept for a few more hours and walked around the neighborhood again. By 11 p.m., Jay wanted to have a few in the pub across the street, so we stayed there until about 12:30.
Today we had planned to take a train to Rosslare, a small port south of Dublin, and catch a ferry to Wales. We were either going to stay in Cardiff for the night, or go straight to London. But after a couple hours of talking with others and thinking about our planned route, we decided to throw all that out and head to Spain and Portugal as soon as possible. Southern Europe will be wicked hot by July and August, so it made more sense to do that part first.
The practicality is the pain in the ass though. It took us a good chunk of the afternoon to find a reasonable flight that left in the next few days and for lodging in the meantime. So instead of heading to the UK today, we're instead going tomorrow to Cork, Ireland's second-largest city, south of Dublin, staying the night and returning to Dublin Monday evening. We were thinking of stopping in Limerick for a little while on the way to Cork, but we heard it's nickname -- Stab City -- and decided to give it a pass.
Early Tuesday we're flyng to Brussels and after a night there, we'll hop trains to Barcelona and Madrid. That's the plan for now, anyway.
Ireland, and Dublin in particular, has been fairly expensive relative to most other EU countries, so getting out of the city, and onto the Continent in a few days, will definitely help our finances. The things we haven't gotten to do in the last couple days -- visiting the James Joyce Centre, in particular -- we'll do when we come back in August to catch the return flight.
I haven't bought a camera yet, and Jay's batteries are dead so he hasn't taken any pictures, so I don't have any to attach. Those will be coming soon, provided the computers we can use will let us download pictures to post. I did figure out how to embed random photos from the Web, however. That's how you got our little friend above. His name is Paddy.
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Kevin
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Your Face has Left Dublin!
Glad to have another update! In case you haven't figured it out, I have subscribed to this little blog-a-liscious play-by-play. Again...living vicariously! Get your hands on a CAMERA SOON! I'm anxiously awaiting some sights to accompany the reads. Safe travels, BM! Keep us all posted as much as possible! Send my best to Jay's Face! ~Kevin