Day 1 Dublin

Okay, so I decided to do this damn blog again.  A trip to Ireland seemed like a good idea since we had been planning on going to a wedding in Edinburgh, Scotland on October 17. So we booked an Aer Lingus flight to Dublin from Dulles airport at a pretty good rate of $750. The plane left yesterday (Sunday) at 5:20  pm and overall it was a pretty good flight with not so good food, but the flight attendants were very nice and it wasn't crowded. We hoped to get a few hours sleep on the way over, but as usual that didn't work out. The plane landed ahead of schedule at 5 am local time and it was raining. This was going to be a long day. We grabbed a bus from the airport to city center Dublin and it left us off five or six blocks from the hotel which was no problem except that it was pouring rain, which was no problem either except that Sylvia was along. She toughed it out and hardly said a word...for a while. The hotel we booked was the Paramount Hotel and our room wasn't ready, but the receptionist was nice enough to give us a temporary room to store our wet stuff in and let us dry out a bit. Feeling pretty tired but not wanting to take a nap, we found a coffee shop and hung out until the rain let up. We walked around town trying to get a feel for the area and it didn't take long to realize that there's no shortage of pubs in Dublin.

Around noon we stopped in The Temple Bar pub and had a not so good sandwich with wine and beer, then ambled back to the hotel to swap rooms and get a bit settled. The room was smallish but okay except it only had one electric outlet and it was going to be a challenge to keep two phones, two tablets, and a laptop charged up. I can't even talk about the hair dryer issue.

Later in the afternoon we walked up to the Christ Church Cathedral for a brief tour and it was fairly interesting. Afterwards, feeling a bit parched, we stopped at the The Hairy Lemon pub and had a bit to drink, then up the block to J. Grogan's pub for another. Hairy Lemon's has a good looking menu and we'll probably go back there again sometime. J. Grogan's was a true pub and the only food they had was a cooler full of cheese sandwiches. We'll probably go back there again too. We then walked about a bit more and decided to eat a light dinner. Since we hadn't slept since we left home, we thought it a good idea to eat early. We decided to try out the Porterhouse pub up the street from the hotel. It was a good choice, I had a terrific seafood chowder and Sylvia had two smoked salmon and cod fishcakes that she really liked. I'd like to back there too. We got back to the hotel early and it didn't take long to fall asleep well before nine.

One thing of interest was the language. I've been to at least a dozen countries in Europe and language was never a problem, but it's amazing that here we're all speaking English and most of the time I can't understand a damn thing they're saying. Hopefully my ear will get tuned up to the Irish brogue. Meanwhile I'll continue to pretend to know what they said and just nod like an idiot.