Dublin for dummies

Backtracking for a second: We walked around Dublin to just see the lay of the land the day before finding The Rest of The Group. We walked over the River Liffey and saw the Temple Bar area. We found an Indian restaurant and each ordered something different so that we could all share. It was fabulous.

After finding everyone, in Dublin, some went walking around more and others napped. It was a kickin'-back day.

The following day was the full one. We bought the "hop-on-hoop-off" bus ticket and rode the circuit around dublin to get an idea of where the thing went and to listen to the tour guide tell us about all the touristy sites in Dublin. Interesting but a bit long. Probably an hour or more.

We then walked around the Temple Bar area near the River Liffey, walked all over town seeing all the major areas.

The next day we planned to hop on that bus again and see the Guinness Brewery, the Jameson Distillery, Kilmainham Gaol and the Book of Kells at Trinity College. Time ticked away faster than we expected, so we never got to Trinity College at all. :( Nine people really does slow things down a LOT. Also, the tour at Jameson was kind of lame, but was a time-consumer. Guinness, while more interesting, was still just lots of museum-style displays and stuff, but no actual brewery touring happening. The day was exhausting. Some went to bed early. Tonight we found a great brew-pub that served great burgers. Fantastic. We want to go back tomorrow for breakfast. We tried to, that is, but they were closed as early as we wanted breakfast. I guess Dubliners eat breakfast late.

The next morning it was taxi cab off to the car rental place where we all spend a bunch of time waiting around for very slow service. Finally in cars, we move on down the road following the taxi driver's instructions for how to get out of town. Driving on the left is a very interesting and exciting challenge. Very challenging. Very. After my one full day in London, I have it (kind of) down. Tony is the 'new guy' now.

A few minutes out of town and we have our first near-fatal accident. Well, I guess you can't say it was near fatal. It was just scary. Scary for me to watch happen in the rear-view mirror, and scarier for the people in the car I'm sure. :)

That lesson learned, we were On Down The Road toward Doolin.

The GPS gave us a bunch of shit on the way. It didn't realize that some roads were in the process of being replaced by larger freeways. This made it difficult to find the correct road. "Recalculating" was the GPS word-of-the-day. Many ridiculously tiny roads. So ridiculous that you would not believe me if I described them to you. See our pictures to find out more. A long while later, we emerged from those tiny little roads and what seemed like endless winding about into the town of Doolin.

Dara the B&B owner at Seaview House was the best. Super nice and helpful and a beautiful house with great rooms and a great view RIGHT near the pub. The house where Tony, Casey and Jimmy stayed was just as beautiful, but didn't quite have the view. The owner there was Josephone, Dara's mother. She was the first B&B owner in Doolin over 40 years ago. She's a B&B nazi. She tried to be helpful, but in her controlling way, was kind of a bitch.

We settled in and walked down to the pub to get some great pub food and listen to/watch live music. Fantastic.

Next day came our trip to the Aran Islands. Therese, Nick, Kriss, John, Jake and Kyle were to meet the others (Tony, Casey and Jimmy) at the dock at 9:30am. Boat leaves at 9:35. We arrive at 9:30 promptly (after a bit of a rushed breakfast), but no Tony, Casey or Jimmy. The boat driver assures us that we MUST get on NOW and that the others will have to make the next boat. Turns out that they didn't realize they should DRIVE to the dock (Josephine the B&B nazi was not specific about that with them, she just said it was "2 minutes down the road". A half-hour-walk later, they arrived at the dock. Not knowing where we went, they went to a different island than we did. We spent a few hours on Inisheer while they went to Inishmoor.

About 40-minutes into the 55-minute trip over turbulent swells (10feet?) on the open Atlantic, Jake turned to me and meekly said "I can't do it any more". I thought he was making some king of joke which I didn't understand, but as soon as the vomit began spewing over his hand, I understood what was happening. That sight, of course, sent Kyle a-vomiting as well. Oh, the humanity. I had to stabilize myself by hanging on to the benches in the cabin (80 people-sized boat) to get to the Barf-bag department and retrieve a couple of them. Now Kriss is asking me to find tissues or something. I don't know where to look or what to do to find them. Then THE MIRACLE happened. The woman directly in front of me, a witness to the whole ordeal and fellow parent, unzipped her backpack and produced a brand-new roll of fresh paper towels (cue choirs singing and rays of sunlight coming through the clouds). A true miracle. Some wiping followed and some unhappy kids, but when land arrived all was well again...