Travel Yayas: Our day in Dublin! The perfect Irish day... July 5th 2013

We slept pretty well on the overnight ferry, some of us better than others – Patti and I in one room, Dana and Britt in another, and Thomas and Lauren in the third. We get the “wake up call” – a knock on the door as he passes the door quickly, while saying “wake up call”… we’re not going to shower on the boat because we know that we can check in early at the Dublin apt, so it’s pretty easy. We all brought a little carry-on bag so that we wouldn’t have to mess with luggage, and we just put the clothes that we wore the day before back on, because it’s 4:15 and we’re still counting this as the day before, right? Dana comes over to check on us, and we’re up and about, but I know that we don’t dock until 5:15 – so we’re not sure what we’re doing for an hour. Dana heads back – and I ask her to knock on the kids door as she goes back -- About a 4:45 they announce that we’re supposed to head down to the deck and I go by to check on the kids again, and Thomas is still in bed and Lauren is just up.. they didn’t hear the first wake up call, they just heard Dana and that was just a few minutes ago. While I’m standing there talking to them we hear another announcement that all the passenger vehicle guests need to return to the lounge area. They don’t take long at all to get ready – but I have a little guilt for them having to rush so much because I should have checked on them when we got the first wake up call.

That's Ireland at 4:15am...

BREAKFAST

We get down to the lounge area and we see IRELAND! It’s way early, but we’re doing pretty well. The kids change their money and we get a little breakfast – just a little toast, croissants and fruit – and we head into the lounge. There is a vibe.. no WAVES of a vibe coming off of Brittany. She is MAD and she’s not even joking about it. She slept SO well on the boat, just rocked her right to sleep – the best sleep she’s ever had and then she had to get up at 4:15. And then we have to just sit here? She could be back up in her boat bed, sleeping… like a BABY…like a big BABY. We laugh, mostly because Brittany isn’t. She is grumpy grumpy grumpy. We get occasional announcements, but they’re like Charlie Brown’s teacher, but in a thick Italian accent, so we’re just relying on the movement of the other passengers to figure out what we’re doing and when we can go back to the car. The news is on, and I’m behind – we’ve been hearing about the trouble in Egypt and it was just debated heavily on the talk radio we were listening to the day before – and now the President is ousted. I’m a little sad just because I’m a fan of democracy and I wanted it to work out for them. Being unhappy with a President is just part of it – you wait and you elect a new guy.

She's not playin... this is the face she had until we had naps.

We’re playing with Brittany a little, but it’s just so easy because she’s so grumpy. Somehow we were talking about our text and email noises – Patti says that “a bottle cap tells me when I get a text”. But Britt wasn’t really listening – and she’s confused. What? How does a bottle cap tell you that you have a text? Patti clarifies that it’s the sound of a bottle cap being opened that is her text alert. Oh. Britt: “You need to clarify more. Currently.” - Huh Britt? We have fun repeating it. This is how tired we are. We think this is really funny (but again, mostly because Brittany is still just sitting there with her arms crossed and her super angry/pouty face. “Clarify more. Pause. Currently.”

We get to the car, and getting off the boat is much less stressful. We just pull straight out because we backed in so beautifully the night before. It’s early in Dublin so there is very little traffic and I’m grateful for that. New city, new country.. nice to have the roads to ourselves. We have to pick up the key from one place which is manned 24 hours, and then go to the apt. The guy says that I still owe the majority of the fee for the apt, but I’m really sure that I’ve already paid that. I’ll worry about it later – we need the key and some beds right now. I left everyone else outside in kind of a makeshift parking spot, so I’m the only one inside to hear the directions. He has an accent, and it’s not Irish – you go down to the end of the street and it’s the blue door, number 95. We think we’ve found it, but the key won’t work – did I mention that we’re tired and not really functioning at a high level? We try it a few more times and then just stand there for a second. Patti and I walk down to the office where I got the key and get new directions (I took a picture of the door and show it to him, wrong place). He said, no no, the END of the street.. and then it’s right there…. What really helps is that he gives us the actual address. We thought about just walking there with our bags, but thought that who knows how far down it is, so we walk back to where the others are, walk back to the car, pack it up and then put the address in Tim. We learn that Dublin has a LOT of one way roads – makes it a bit of a challenge to get to the place you want to go, feels like we’re going the long way around. We finally get back to where we were before, facing the right direction, and the house was maybe a block from where we were parked originally. Oh well. We get the bags in – and the place is cute! Two bedrooms each with a full bed and a twin, so Britt and Dana take one room and Patti, me and Lauren take another room. We offered Thomas a twin bed, but he just wants to sleep on the couch. The apt has really high ceilings that echo, and a huge bathroom.. it also has a washer, but no dryer, so we get some clothes in the machine so that we can hang them up to dry. Everyone is doing laundry, so we have clothes laying all over the apt drying.

Our first bidet of the trip...

Thomas' bedroom...

Napping already

That lump is Lauren...

We want a nap and we want it NOW – but we have to move the car first. Only Patti, Lauren and I are still up, and I’m freaking (just a little) because I can’t find the car key. I have hands that think on their own, they just set things down and don’t bother to tell my brain what they did with them. I pull things out of every bag that I might have touched… look on every flat surface.. finally Patti and I just go down to the car, maybe I put them down in the car. Oh yah. They’re in the ignition. Great place for them. Tired, remember? Brain not functioning? Which also makes the fact that they’re in the car really funny. Ok – on to find Parking. We have to follow the big “P” signs for parking. The guy that rented the apt to us told us that they had a parking garage for only 10 Euro a night, but we saw another place closer that had the same price, so we just figure maybe that’s the going rate. We follow the P – turn right, turn right, turn right (yes, that’s a complete circle)… turn right. So it’s actually in a garage right across the street, but because of all the one way streets we had to take the long way round. We find the P, and it’s only 6 Euro/day (in the large print).. in the small print it’s also 13.50 during the day.. whatever, we’re already in it now.

Back the apt! Naps! Showers! Laundry! And we are new people. It’s now about lunch time and we review of the map head out to seek Food (!!!) Ireland is trying to be as different from the UK as possible so they use Euros instead of Pounds and they use kilometers instead of miles. Just to prove a point, I’m sure. So we get Euros from the ATM in a little local grocery store, and there is a woman waiting in line for the ATM also - Dana is really proud of the fact that she told the lady that she wasn't “in the queue”. She’s super nice and tells us to be sure to watch our bags in Dublin, there are a lot of pickpockets in the city. We have our “safe pack” bags that lock, but we’ll be extra vigilant here.

We stop in one of the first pubs that we find and I’m thrilled to find a full “Irish breakfast” – complete with the black and white pudding!! (it’s like a sausage made from pigs blood – but you can’t think about what’s in it.. it’s just good). Other order food with “chips”, and the waitress giggles at us, she says that it’s funny to hear Americans say chips. Lauren and Patti get the chicken and garlic melt - Britt gets the “traditional BLT” (we wonder if this means that there is no butter on it, because they say it comes with mayo – the butter on a BLT is weird), Dana has a chicken club sandwich. And Thomas gets a burger...

The black and white "pudding"

After we eat we find the “Hopper” bus (red hop-on-hop-off bus) – it’s the best way to be introduced to a city, get an overview, save your feet and get transportation to all the places that you want to see. We get on at one of their last stops (which we learn later wasn’t really a stop for the bus we got on, it was a stop for the competing bus, and this guy just stopped to scoop us up) – but because we’re on one of the last stops, we have to sit forever at their stop #1 while the bus empties and reloads. And while we’re waiting there is a lot of commotion on the street – this woman is SCREAMING – like she’s screaming like you would scream if you had just seen someone you loved get killed in front of you (that’s the image I had in my head based on her behavior). She’s screaming “What have I DONE?!?!?!” – there are other people around her, some are trying to calm her, others are in her corner and looking for a fight. She seems to be gesturing to her arm. Lauren asks us if we know what happened, and Dana jokes that a bird pooped on her. We look to our bus driver to see what he thinks of this, and he just shrugs his shoulders and rolls his eyes. Just another crazy person in Dublin.

The bus finally gets moving and we get off at Trinity college – we really wanted to see the library there, and they also have an exhibit on the Book of Kells. We see a line, but we’re not sure if we can just go in or if there is an admission price – we ask the person that is controlling the line if we need tickets for the library and he says yes, but they’re all the way around this other way… we start walking off and he was just having a go at us. Our first taste of the Irish humor – I tell them that we’re gullible, don’t do that, we’ll believe that all day. I didn’t know much about the Book of Kells before we saw – lots of beautiful work in those books (look it up). We then head up to the library (“the long room”) and it’s stunning. Luckily they let us take pictures without flash in there.

We find a couple of things in the gift shop and decide to look for a little shopping area that we had looked up before we get back on the bus. It’s supposed to be some local crafters selling their stuff – I love getting that kind of thing over just your generic “I went to Ireland and bought this T-shirt” kind of thing. We wind around a bit – but we find it! And it was worth it – found some really cute things. And Brittany found a cupcake shop. She loves a cupcake.

The crafty market

We find the bus stop and decide to just ride the rest of the way around and do the Guinness tour tmw – but we also want to head to Wicklow, and I figure that’s best to have all day to do that. It’s about 5:00 by this point and we get to the brewery; the last bus comes by at 7:20 – and they say to allow about 90 minutes for the tour. I think we can make it and we make a last minute decision to just go ahead and do Guinness now. It’s a nice tour, they let us taste some on one level and then at the end of the tour you have a ticket that you exchange for the perfect pint of Guinness. Drinking age is 18 in the UK, so Thomas and Lauren are both of age and try some at the tasting stage. Lauren got carded – and she didn’t even have to show fake ID.

There was just about swig in this one - just a "taste"

One of the few pics that I didn't have to force Thomas to take :)

The girl that gave us the taste asked us what we were doing while we were in town and we said that tonight we were looking for a place that would play some Irish music and sit around and have a pint. She suggested the Arlington Hotel, they had great food – but no music. I file it away, but we were really hoping for some Irish music tonight.

We get up to the top floor (great views of the city!) and get our pint. Thomas gets a coke, the taste was enough – and Brittany talks the guy into giving us two half pints for one ticket and then bring able to get two diet cokes with the other ticket. Lauren gets a half pint too… we were told by our bartender that the foam is the bitter part, so when we drink it you have to take a big drink to break the foam, or you’re just sipping on bitter foam. So Britt makes an effort to take a big gulp – and her face says it all! She got a big swig of bitter foam. When we go back for the sodas the girl doesn’t want to give us two cokes for one ticket, but Brittany says that’s what the guy promised and we get it. C’mon, it’s a diet coke.

We’re doing good on time and we’ll definitely be able to catch a bus back and still have plenty of time to look through the gift shop. We find all kinds of things there – shirts, bottle openers, and Thomas get a metal bar sign for the house that he’s sharing with his college buddies. We get outside and get a few pics with the big Guinness gates. Lauren takes a picture for a man that’s by himself, and he has the thickest stereotypical Irish accent you can think of, and he recognizes our accents as American and tries to do his best American accent.   It sounds like the worst put on southern accent that you can imagine – we find that most English and Irish people think that is how Americans sound. I wonder what my British accent sounds like to them…

That guy is still trying to talk to us, and our bus pulls up! Gotta go! We start to job over and the bus driver tells us, “Don't run - don't lose that Guinness!”…   We finish the bus route and talk about where we want to eat. I tell the others about the Arlington Hotel and we decide to check it out - I get a little bit of wi-fi while we’re on the bus and find that it’s right near one of the stops. I’m following my Siri gps and sometimes she puts the blue dot in the wrong place, so we know we’re really close, but don’t know exactly where. Lucky for us there is an Ireland tourism office right there so we go in and I tell him we’re looking for the Arlington. He gets that look in his eye (you know the one where you know that someone is messing with you) – and he says, “Oh well, you can’t get there from here, not without a bus or a boat, or a swim… “ I tell him that I know that look and that he’s playing with me – it’s close, we just don’t know where. He laughs, yah it’s 5 doors down. Can’t miss it (he doesn’t know us). But sure enough we find it!

The host explains that it’s “dinner and a show” – it’s a 3 course meal with a set menu (3 options for each course) and the show will be about 2 hours long. We’re in! We get seated and at first the “show” seems to be some piped in Irish music and movie clips of the sights of Dublin… I’m a little worried, but we’re all in for the experience. We ask for water – actually we ask for jugs of water everywhere we go. We are so used to drinking a lot of water, we drink what we have but we’re always craving more. We could drink a jug of water each by the time we get to a place, so the first jug always goes fast and then we have to flag them down to get more. But this place says that they’re short on pitchers, so we have to flag them down for refills. The menu looks pretty interesting – but I am worried about what Thomas is going to eat - there are no burgers – but he’s great with it, trying stuff (he tried a terrine! – a kind of a pressed meat loaf). And the “show” improves dramatically too! A band comes out, and it’s clear that these guys are going to be fun. They’re chatting us up and warn us that they will be playing some “rude songs”… lots of funny traditional Irish songs, great guys, and even some Irish dancing. The name of the band is Puca – and they’re there 7 nights a week. After we started posting we heard from others that went to the same show – totally a must if you ever find yourself in Dublin. There was even a couple that got engaged that night. They had been to the show before and he wanted to propose to her there. There are interesting moments with other patron as well – some fun drunk girls get a little loud, we have a “hen party” at another table (what they call a bachelorette party), and there is some weird lady dancing and clapping to the band hanging out right behind Patti and Brittany. I’ll be looking up some of the songs – especially the full 7 verses of “Seven Drunken Nights” (he said that verses 6 and 7 were banned by the Pope)…    FUN night, and after the show Brittany got a picture with the group!   We’ve had a perfect day/night in Dublin. Naps, libraries, Guinness, and Irish songs… ready for BED!