So what I plan on doing here is posting the emails sent to friends and family from my Europe trip this past year. Some of the writings are from my mom, since we jointly wrote them, so I'll add any notes afterward if I can think of anything. Enjoy!
November 27-28, 2009
Ceile meile failte! Or at least that’s what we heard upon arriving in Ireland – one hundred thousand welcomes. So, Linda and Trev sit here after a very interesting first, oh, 30 hours. We both arrived in New Jersey with no problems, and then the fun began. Our plane for Dublin had “mechanical” problems – so after sitting for awhile on board, we were sent over to another plane, hopefully problem-free. And it was. But that’s not to speak of our flight crew. They were…interesting, to say the least. One of them decided Trev was going to be their new best “male” friend…uh…and he offered me a beer on the house. Terrific… He never got around to getting it to Trev, but the gesture sure was thoughtful…hahaha. Anyway, our plane was A) HOT, B) crowded, and C) late arriving to Dublin. Other than that…well, what do you expect? It’s Continental J
So, without really any meaningful sleep, we grabbed our luggage after landing (which included more “mechanical” problems on the baggage claim belt…”) and after maneuvering around pushy Germans to buy our bus tickets, headed to Dublin’s city center. The Ashfield House is a former church converted into a hostel…yes, Linda is staying in a hostel. We “freshened up” in the luggage room, and after storing our bags and eating the continental breakfast they provided, headed to Trinity College to take the Historical Walking Tour of Dublin.
3 hours later and much smarter we crashed! For 3 hours… then we showered and got ready to go eat a real Irish meal. Someone steered us to a great place, O’Shea’s, not touristy. We had the stew and soup and brown bread and oour first Guinness and Jamison. Then on to Long Stone pub, and it was really neat. Then the highlight! Oliver St. John Gogarty’s where we found traditional irish music, wher e people just jumped in to play, it was great, and Trevor got calledLinda’s husband and we got quite a few looks! And laughs amongst ourselves haha! We even liked their music enough to buy their CD, fully of all kinds of reels and jigs and Irish ballads…should be good.
After Linda decided her stomach was too full of alcohol and a little light on the sustenance factor, we hit the streets for our hostel and, well, here we are! Having a blast and the weather has even cooperated so far. We are a little concerned that the flooding in SW Ireland may change our plans a little because eof closed roads, etc, but no big deal, it will be fun in any case.
Tomorrow we plan to visit Trim Castle in Trim, the castle used in Braveheart’s Sterling Castle scenes. Lookning forward to it!
Notes: I can't remember the last time I was as tired as when we were doing the Historical Walking Tour. It was a pretty good tour, I'd recommend it, our guide was a life-long Dubliner and former Trinity student who told some good jokes, and even went longer than scheduled, but by the last hour I was just zoned out and can't say I really enjoyed everything as much as I would have liked. Dublin certainly doesn't have the big name sights that Paris, Rome, or London do - and we never even made it to the biggest of them all, the Guinness Storehouse! That's kind of like going to Paris and missing the Louvre! But it's ok, gives me something to see next time.
Also, luckily the floods never did affect us, other than a slight detour on the bus while driving from Limerick to Galway. But the pictures we saw in the news of some areas of the country were pretty bad, and a few towns had to be evacuated completely.
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