Seeing Green

August 12th—Our first full day in Dublin was a slow day. We took our first green double decker bus into town. The bus dropped us off right in front of Carroll’s Souvenir store. It was amazing the amount of green and Irish stuff that was in this shop. It is by far the biggest souvenir store we’ve encountered so far. From here, we walked down the pedestrian shopping street, Grafton. We ate lunch on a side street at a Pub and had great Irish food. The kids had chicken pot pie, Mike had Shepard’s pie and I had the traditional all Irish breakfast with white and black pudding. After lunch, we continued to wander the streets going into several stores along with bookstores. We were looking for some future travel books that we successfully found. After shopping, we walked across the street into Trinity College where we went in to view the Book of Kells. The Book of Kells is an illuminated manuscript in Latin, containing the four gospels of the New Testament. It is from around 800AD and contains some amazing illustrations and calligraphy. Looking at it, you would swear it was done by machine, not by hand. After touring the Book of Kells, we walked to St. Stephen’s Green. It is a large park that has a children's playground. The kids played at the playground for a couple of hours and really enjoyed being able to communicate with the other kids in English. From the park, we took the bus back to our apartment for dinner and bedtime. Still no computer though…However, it has been nice to have English TV. We've been able to watch old comedy shows like Friends and other BBC shows. It's nice to be able to watch something besides CNN International.
August 13th—One of the first thing Mike did this morning was call to check on our computer. He was told that they were working on it and to come by about closing time which is 6:00 p.m. So, we decided to head out for our day in Dublin. We took the bus back into town where we visited the Tourist Information Office and picked up a bunch of information on the area. Then, we walked to the Temple Bar area of Dublin. This is a very colorful area with a pedestrian street and many local pubs. There is an actual Temple Bar with a Temple Bar Trading Company store next door. We went inside the shop to check out what items they had in there, but didn’t purchase anything. From here, we went to eat lunch at the Hard Rock Café which is right in the heart of the Temple Bar area. After a great lunch, we walked to Christ Church Cathedral and then St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The kids were such good troopers through the churches that we took them back to St. Stephen’s Green to play for a while. We had to cut their play time short though so that we could get the computer. We all took the bus back to the apartment, but Mike and Austin immediately went with Naomi to pick up the computer. Abby and I stayed back at the apartment watching some TV. About 30 minutes after the boys left, there was a knock on the door. I answered it and it was Naomi with Austin. Naomi told me that the computer was going to take about 30 more minutes so she brought Austin home and Mike would take a taxi back. This was at 5:30 and Mike didn’t arrive back to the apartment until 8:30. Mike said the guys were good, but very disorganized. They were having problems getting the data back on the computer and kept getting distracted by other issues. So, 30 minutes turned into 3 hours, but the computer is fixed. Mike had to spend the rest of the evening getting our computer back to “normal”.
August 14th—We headed out this morning to go back to Carroll’s, the souvenir store. We had strict instructions from Lisa to get her all set-up for St. Patty’s Day. So, we did some shopping before lunch. We also walked back to Temple Bar Trading Company to make a purchase so we ate at a local pub in the Temple Bar area. After lunch, we walked about 20 plus minutes to the Guinness Storehouse. It was well after 2:00 by the time we arrived here. We spent a couple of hours touring the brewery before enjoying our free drink at the end. We left here about 5:00 to get to Hertz before they closed at 5:30. Well, we arrived on time, but the downtown Hertz didn’t have any cars to rent. So, we hopped into another taxi that took us about 45 minutes out to the airport to rent a car. It was probably about 6:30 by the time we got in our Ireland car….steering wheel on right. Luckily for Mike everything else is pretty much the same in the car except you also have to shift with your left hand. So, we pulled out of the parking lot having to continuously remind ourselves to DRIVE ON LEFT. It was definitely not what I would call a relaxing drive home, but we made it home safely. Actually, Mike dropped me off to pick up fish and chips for dinner while he took the kids home. I got dinner and walked back to the apartment. We ate dinner, watched a movie and off to bed so we could get up early for our road trip tomorrow.