Dublin

(7/29 - 7/31) Our first day in Dublin was slow because we'd spent the night on an airplane.  After checking in to our hotel and getting situated, we headed out to do some exploring and get some lunch.  Our first stop was Trinity College, also known as The University of Dublin.  We strolled around the 400+ year old campus, which is probably best known for the Book of Kells, a 9th century gospel manuscript that is on display in the Old Library. We were hungry, so we skipped the Old Library and set out in search for a place to have lunch.  We ended up in a pub where the food was less than great, but the Dite boys had their first Guinness together in Ireland.

After lunch, we hopped on a double-decker sightseeing bus called the hop-on-hop-off bus.  We really should have these in Chicago!  Anyway, the bus took us on an hour and a half long tour around Dublin.  Of course, we didn't have to stay on the bus for the entire 90 minutes, hence the hop-on-hop-off, but we decided to do it just to get our bearings of the city and figure out exactly what we wanted to see in more detail the next day.  It may have also had something to do with the fact that we all were exhausted.  At one point, Tim dozed off standing up.  Yes, that tired!  For dinner, we ended up in a 300 year old pub where we stuffed ourselves on tasty Irish food (I had pork, mashed taters & gravy and carrots and a cider) and eventually headed back to the hotel for some rest.

We woke up on our first official full day in Dublin to find out that Brendan had gone to the clinic due to an ear infection and Tim was looking for a dentist because he was having severe pain in one of his teeth.  Ouch! Not the way these guys wanted to start out their trip.  After we got them taken care of, we hopped back on the bus and hopped off at the Guinness Storehouse. 

We spent the remainder of our day exploring the brewery and, of course, drinking Guinness.  The brewery is definitely a cool place to visit if you're going to be in Dublin.  You wind your way through several floors where the brewing process is explained, then several more floors that showcase Guinness advertising and historical information about the impact that Guinness Brewery and Arthur Guinness have had on the city of Dublin.  Then you finish your tour with a stop in the Gravity Bar at the top of the brewery where you get to enjoy a free pint of Guinness while being able to view all of Dublin.  The bar is 360 degrees of windows so you really do get to see all of Dublin.  It was a great way to finish the tour.

After the tour, we decided to head back closer to the hotel and do a little more exploring.  Rather than getting on the bus, we decided to take a horse-drawn carriage ride.  It was awesome! This poor horse had to pull the 7 of us in a carriage.  I felt bad for the horse.  He was probably thinking "who invited these tubby, beer drinking Americans into my carriage?"  The ride was short, but a ton of fun and one of my favorite moments of the trip so far.

Now, the brothers are out enjoying a night in the pubs without their ladies.  Mr. and Mrs. Dite went to bed and Elise headed to bed too.  I'm just hanging out in the room waiting to get tired.  I suppose I should try to sleep.  We are leaving Dublin tomorrow morning and heading up to Northern Ireland for a couple of days.





Always Late

(7/28-7/29) Before dating Brian, I was on time or early everywhere I went, but over the past 6 years that's definitely changed.  I've given up rushing to be on time because, no matter how hard I try, we are always late.  The start of our Ireland trip was no different.
We were supposed to be at the Dite's house by 2, but we didn't leave our house until 10 minutes til 2.  Clearly we were going to be late.  I felt terrible about being late because this wasn't the way I wanted to start out the trip.  However, when we got to his parent's house, they weren't ready anyway.  I wonder where he gets it. :)  We finally got on the road and then got stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on 294.  Bumper-to-bumper on a Saturday afternoon?!  Chicago roads are the worst!
We made it to the airport, only to find out that the tram from parking lot E was malfunctioning and hadn't been running for at least 20 minutes.  I began to wonder if someone was trying to keep us in Chicago.  Is this a weird omen or what?  Finally the tram came and we piled in with a ton of other people.  Just before we got to terminal 5, the tram stopped and the conductor came on to tell us there was another delay and we'd have to wait several minutes.  Thankfully the lack of movement of the tram inspired the guy whose smelly armpit was far too close to my nose to release the handle he was using to steady himself and give my nose a break.
Eventually we got to the terminal, checked in after a short fight with the check-in kiosk, got through security and to the gate without too much trouble.  And we still had time to grab a quick lunch and make a pit stop before we were due to start boarding.  But . . . the plane was delayed coming in.  Of course!  Once we were in the air, the pilot came on to tell us that we'd be arriving at Washington-Dulles 10 minutes before our connecting flight was expected to take off.  Super!  United only flies to Dublin once a day, so we had to make that flight. 

We raced through Dulles from one end of the D gates to the other end of the C gates, got into our seats . . . and then waited 50 minutes before the plane took off because the flight attendant was trying to rearrange seats to a mom and her young son could sit together.  By this point, I wasn't surprised.  I was just happy to be on the way to Dublin.