Second day sunshine!

It doesn’t always rain in Ireland. After 12 hours of sleep, we woke to a few clouds but plenty of blue sky and started the adventure of making breakfast. I didn’t think much of it as we had picked up bacon, eggs and bread at the Spar last night but we forgot one small thing – butter. So I fried the bacon dry and tried to use the little bit of fat to fry the eggs before serving it all with slices of dry toast. The yogurt was good!

It took forever to get through the morning routines as there was only enough hot water for two showers at a time so there was much waiting … But finally we headed out to the Killmainham Jail. I didn’t realize I was so dumb about Irish history until I got there. It’s pretty impressive and the tour was quite good – I did recognize the west wing from “In the Name of the Father” so I didn’t feel completely dumb.

Then we wandered through the Phoenix park on the way to the Jameson distillery. We found a nice cafe advertising gluten free soups so we had a bit of lunch. We wandered to the distillery but Frank decided that 30 euros was a bit steep for Irish whiskey so we gave it a miss and decided to head across town to Trinity College. We braved the tram and ran into our first nun – yes, they are still stalking me!

We wandered around the college in the brilliant sunshine and headed into see the Book if Kells and the Long Room -very impressive! Today’s interesting fact: there is no J used in Latin. Don’t say you didn’t learn anything here!

Now that we got culture, it was time to be consumers. We wandered up and down O’Connell street and the surrounding shopping district where Duncan and Gillian decided to test the limits of their pre-paid Mastercards! (Ask Duncan to show you his shoes from Schuh!) We had a shopping break to have a pint – love that Bulmer’s cider – then wandered off to find something for our evening meal.

And today’s reason to love Dublin? A chip shop on O’Connell Street that does gluten free fish and chips – that’s right a GF fish supper!! I had steeled myself for this first trip without a meal at a a chippy and here was one where I could eat! Joy!! I don’t think I’ve ever finished an entire fish supper on my own before tonight. (Downside? They only had malt vinegar – the one vinegar that isn’t GF. I enjoyed it anyway!)

As we wandered back to the hotel, it became obvious that it was a Friday night. The obnoxious drunken people were spilling out of most doorways which cemented out resolve to have a night in. Another interesting observation (or maybe I missed this in my imaginary Irish history lesson): people openly smoking weed! Is cannabis legal in Erie? It wasn’t Amsterdam by any stretch but on multiple occasions during the last two days, the air has been redolant with that sickly sweet smell – and not just in the dodgy areas either but even in the shopping areas! Most unexpected.

So our first full day comes to an end with tea and biscuits and the latest episode of “Top Gear”. Now it feels like we’re on holiday!

/san/
who had to type this on the Blackberry again due. Sigh…

Pedometer reading: 23,063 and I’ll do the math properly later but I think it’s just over 11 miles.