On Friday, Mom and I headed off to Ireland! We planned it all out so when we landed back at Heathrow Mom would already be at the airport to fly back home. She also agreed to take my huge suitcase back with most of my stuff, which was 1) awesome and 2) kind of heavy (it was 21 kilograms which converted = 46.3 pounds!!!). I would personally like to thank who ever thought of the great idea to put wheels on suitcases- who knows how I would have gotten my stuff back home without wheels!We got to Ireland in the afternoon and waited for a little while for our shuttle. It finally came and then drove right by our hotel! We were confused but figured it out, then dropped everything off and decided to check out the city. Well, the hotel was kind of not near the city center... which meant we had to take a bus about 30 minutes to the main street, O'Connel. (Way to pick a great hotel, Amanda!) We mosedy around the Temple Bar area and got dinner at a little restaurant right next to the actual, famous Temple Bar. Mom and I both got something from the traditional Irish menu- Irish Stew for Mom and Beef Ireland for me. (Those Irish have some creative names for their food!)
Mom at Dublin Castle
The next day we decided to do the hop-on, hop-off bus tour which I liked a lot (Mom too!). We got on at stop #1 and stayed on the whole thing til it brought us back to the beginning. Our tour guide was a hoot- he kept introducing himself by a different name to the people getting on at each stop (like Patty, for instance). We went to Trinity College and saw the Book of Kells which is an illuminated manuscript. There was a whole exhibit before the actual book, which is from a long time ago (it's the gospels in Latin written by some monks with a lot of time to spare)We also saw Dublin Castle, which was pretty neat. We checked out St Patrick's Cathedral and walked around the Temple Bar area again. We rode by the Guinness factory twice but didn't go in since the line was around the block and we didn't feel like waiting! However, Mom decided that it was not right to visit Dublin and not have any of the local brew, so she bought a can and we tried it. We were told that it's an "acquired taste" and I will agree with that. Guinness is not my favorite drink; I prefer root beer.
We left on Sunday at, get ready for this, 4:15AM.... I was tired! Our flight was at 6:40, so basically we didn't have to leave that early. We got to the airport in plenty of time and eventually we got on and slept until we got back to London. Mom and I had a little bit of a tearful good-bye, then she got on her plane and I got on the train back to the city.
I got an email from Mom on Tuesday (her flight was Sunday) saying that she had missed her connecting flight back to NH from D.C. and it was a little bit of a fiasco. But, she's back home safely now with Adam and Petey (the pooch)!
Photos:
Trinity College (I took that sitting on the top
of the double decker of the hop-on bus)
The lamp posts were pretty cool- there were more varieties too!
