Day 2 Dublin

The day started off with breakfast at the hotel. I ordered what they call a Full Irish Breakfast, a traditional breakfast that consists of eggs, sausage, bacon (actually more like ham), mushrooms, roasted tomato, potatoes, beans, and toast. Whew! I ate it, but I won't do that again. Sylvia's a bit more sensible and went much lighter. I finished it all and waddled back up to the room for a bit before heading across town to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. It wasn't crowded so we walked right in and did the audio tour - it was interesting and well worth seeing, especially since it only took an hour. What I thought was really cool was the library. It's a huge old, tall wooden structure with vaulted ceilings containing over 200,000 very old and ancient books. It looked like something out of a Harry Potter movie.

Fish Pie

Matt the Thresher

Still feeling stuffed from breakfast, a big walk seemed in order so we walked over to St Stephen's Green and wandered around. It's a beautiful 22 acre park in the middle of town with not much in the way of flowers for this time of year, but you could imagine how pretty it must look in summer. After an hour of walking it was getting time for lunch and I wasn't a bit hungry, but duty called, so we found a restaurant recommend to us by Randy and Noreen called Matt The Thresher (crazy name huh?).  This restaurant is somewhat noted for the time Michelle Obama, Natasha and Malia went there and ate lunch.  The menu looked pretty good so we gave it a try anyhow. We ordered a wine with a grape that I wasn't familiar with called Piquepoul. It's a white wine that goes well with seafood and ended up working perfectly with what we ordered. I had Seafood Chowder and Fish Pie - like Shepard's Pie only with fish and a cream sauce. Sylvia had a Yellow Beet and Apple soup, and a Smoked Hake Fishcake. Everything was excellent and the restaurant was well worth going too. I'd go back, no problem.

Waddling again, we walked back to the Grafton St. shopping area and just

looked around at all the shops...and pubs. When we couldn't waddle much longer, we stopped in O'Neill's Pub, an famous old traditional Irish pub with a lot of little nooks and crannies scattered about. The main bar has 45 beers on tap and since we were there, I ordered one. Although I couldn't eat another thing, the food served cafeteria style looked great. After that we headed back to the hotel for a bit. Around 6 o'clock we decided to skip dinner and walk across the river to another part of town. After an hour of walking it started to drizzle, and amazingly we just happened to walk by a place called the Gin Palace - what a find! It a busy gin joint that keeps about 150 gins around. They have lots of beer too but gin is their thing. After chatting with Derek our bartender, he made us a drink with Dingle gin on the rocks with an orange slice and a cinnamon stick. It was really good, even Sylvia liked it and she hates gin. That one was so good that I had to try something else so Derek made me a drink with Bertha's Revenge gin and cucumber. Bertha's Revenge gin is made from milk and Bertha was the oldest cow ever. She lived to be 48 and gave birth to 39 calves. The Gin Palace is a great place and yes I would go back again...maybe tomorrow.


Today was a Hallmark Day. Today was the first time in the gazillion years that I've known Sylvia that she's asked ME how to spell something. She asked me how to spell Guinness. It's just one more thing that proving that the "Golden Years" are bullshit. BTW, I actually didn't spell it, I just said it had two n's...I thought.