We’ll start with pics this time:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9547617@N02/sets/72157608088017785/
Hi all from Dublin. We have finally made it. Our first few hours in Dublin were imposing, full of walking in the wrong direction in both the City Center and in Dun Laoghaire (prounounce Dun Leary, I don’t know why). And when it feels like you are carrying a large dog on your back when you are walking with our bags it is really NOT fun at all to walk in the wrong direction. Jill is a champ and helped me stay positive and we eventually found the tourist center, got to the DART train, got to Dun Laoghaire, and got to our B&B, which is fantastic by the way.
Once we were settled in and we met the extremely nice owners, we set out to get some food. We went to this restaurant called The Gastro Pub Company and it was a very satisfying meal and it marked the ceremonial first Guiness of the trip. We had been waiting the whole time to drink a Guiness but wouldn’t do so until we hit Ireland. We are going to the Guiness brewery today most likely and I can’t wait! After we ate we went and saw a movie, How to Alienate People and Lose Friends, or something like that. It was really funny minus a few weird moments that had some graphic/crass humor. We were pretty worn out from the wrong directions and travel so we called it a night early and watched the Tele and did some reading.
The next morning we were treated/bombarded with our first experience of having a true Irish breakfast. This breakfast was MASSSSSIVVVEEE and awesome. It had every kind of breakfast meat you could expect and a few Jill and I had never seen, two types of egg, dense bread, white toast, a ton of varieties of cheese, coffee, orange juice, water, jam, apples, bananas, yogurt, fairy dust, cereal and probably a bunch of other stuff I didn’t realize because I was stuck in a food coma halfway through the meal. After we ate I fell asleep again for about an hour while Jill got ready and then we were off on our day.
We jumped on the DART after getting a morning brew (coffee) and headed into the city. I am coming to realize that Dublin turns me around, why, I have no idea. The first chance we had to make a decision on which way to go we walked in the exact wrong direction. It is truly remarkable. I partly blame the horrendous lack of street signs and that there seems to be no real order in how the streets are shaped, no circles or blocks, just a knot of streets that change name every five blocks. But, we finally made it Grafton St. It is closed to car traffic and is filled with shops and what not. We headed to Bewley’s Cafe, where it is said that James Joyce went, or else they just named the 3rd story after him to get the Yanks and other tourists in the door. It was a cool place and we sat on the 3rd floor and had French press coffee and pastries.
After Bewley’s we went the wrong direction and ended up in St. Stephen’s green park, which ended up being a really cool wrong turn. It is a beautiful park where there is a mixture of pigeons, ducks, sea gulls and swans everywhere. Now we are headed off to the Writer’s museum and the Jaymes Joyce museum, and then if time permits, the Guiness Brewery!!!
As a special request from Puff Daddy I will comment on the people here. So far we have been very well received. We are clearly American whenever we talk and for the most part people don’t seem that much different. There are small details in how things are done but for the most part life has the same patterns in the UK and Ireland as it does in the states. In London, it felt very much like any of the other big cities I have been to and I think people were used to running into people of all nationalities. But when we went to Blair Atholl it is much more remote and when we bought food at the stores when we first talked I felt like people would sort of double take. I think it was a little more rare to hear an American accent that far north in that remote of a town. The people in Blair Atholl were incredibly nice and charming. We had a lot of random hellos when we walked. In Edinburgh it was super nice to talk to the owner of the B&B that we stayed at and a fellow guest. We got to talk about the differences of our homelands and they gave us interesting perspectives on their own country that we would have not got if we hadn’t talked to a local, for example, the Scottish people hate the word Scotch. It’s not ever used by itself, it is an adjective of sorts, you say Scotch whisky or Scotch wool, those are really the only two uses. So if you go into a bar, ask for Scotch whisky, not Scotch. In Ireland, we have run into the nicest bunch of people yet. While we were wandering aimlessly we were approached twice and asked if we needed help, we haven’t got that yet. And when we were in a coffee shop, the barista gave me another guy’s change and I looked at him and said “I think this is your’s”, and my accent gave away that I was an American. He immediately asked who I was voting for, Obama of course. He smiled and said “That would be great wouldn’t it”. I have been surprised at the coverage of our elections as well. It is really a big deal to the rest of the world. An interesting stat that we heard while we were in London is that if the world could vote, 85% would vote for Obama, but it is now going to come down to about 8% of the undecided Americans, it’s amazing how much impact we have on the rest of the world, I guess I never really understood that. Anyway, the people have been really nice to us and we have really enjoyed seeing how everyone else does life.
Ok, that’s it for now, we are off to learn about the writers of Ireland.
<3 Joey and Jill