Daily Archives: July 5, 2009

Today we said goodbye to Dublin. After a long sleepless night – Dublin likes to party until all hours on a Saturday – we managed our first hot showers, picked up the rental car and headed north to Newgrange.

Of course as soon as we pulled out of the city, the rain started. We arrived in the Boyne valley at the 5000 year-old burial site. It was absolutely fascinating to see how it was constructed and to ponder the why’s and wherefores. While waiting for out turn inside the tomb, a neighboring field full of cows started some angry mooing and milling about. It was as if they were saying “Bloody moo already!”

The rain held off while we were visiting but as soon as we hit the road for Kilkenny, the rain started again and we had 2 hours of windshield wipers. We arrived at the B&B and got checked in then wandered around the town. It was much more like what I expected of Ireland – but still looks like a dozen Scottish villages I know. I was amazed though at how many stores were open on a Sunday. It used to be that there was really nothing to do on a Sunday (in Scotland at least).

So we had a lovely meal, watched the end of the Federer-Roddick match (wow!) and headed back to the guest house. Then I carried on with my Sunday night ritual: bath night! The bath tub here is long enough and deep enough that I can soak from chin to toes completely covered in water and bubbles – hot water too! Aaaaahhhh!

/san/
Pedometer: 16,021 or about 7.5 miles. We spent too much time in the car I guess.

The plan for today was actually to minimize walking because the weather forecast is calling for rain all day. So we begin with cereal, GF porridge and cold showers (water heater still isn’t behaving) then we venture out to St. Patrick’s Cathedral – after the uberconsumer teenagers ravage several charity shops, of course! The cathedral is lovely and possibly my favorite place in Dublin. Jonathan Swift was Dean of the cathedral and is buried there. The stained glass windows were lovely. At 11 am, there was a short prayer service so we counted that as our church for the week! (Note: I find it funny that a cathedral in Dublin named after the patron saint of Ireland is an Anglican church!)

Of course when it came time to leave, the skies opened up and the rain came pouring down. Luckily Christchurch was only a few minutes away. Another lovely Anglican church, it’s the burial place of Strongbow, the resting place for a saint’s heart (ugh!) and has a magnificent crypt with a mummified cat and mouse! There was another short prayer service while we were there and we exchanged the sign of peace with the priest and considered ourselves doubly churched! The only downside was that there was a display of Russian icons all over the church which really took away from the building itself.

Then off to lunch and some wanderings around Temple Bar before touring Dublin Castle. While definitely old enough to warrant respect, it’s an odd castle because no royal court was ever in residence there. Monarchs visited from time to time to keep an eye on the feisty Irish subjects but otherwise it was the home of the English viceroy and is now a working government building.

After all that culture, we had to make a beeline back to Henry Street for Duncan to return something. Then we grabbed dinner at an Indian restaurant in the Temple Bar (which was lovely but apparently not quite GF as became apparent later!) Frank and I dumped the kids off at the flat and headed around the corner to the Brazen Head, Ireland’s oldest pub (circa 1198) for a pint.

Then the crisis began – in preparation for leaving Dublin tomorrow, we fired up the GPS unit to find that we could navigate to anywhere outside the US and Canada when we bought it specifically because it was supposed to have European maps. So I did not take this news well as I would then be stuck navigating with inadequate road maps (see Belgium, 2007 to understand my angst). We badgered the front desk to let us use their internet since ours never did work (Yup – typing this on the BB again!) After an hour of unsuccessful attempts to download maps including several international phone calls to support numbers) Frank was banished to find a road map. After much time (and arguing), we sat down with the map book he had walked halfway across Dublin for and noticed that the GPS was prompting us: you seem to be outside the US, would you like to change maps. ARGH!! It took so long to pick up the GPS signal, we had figured it *couldn’t* find us!

So we are now the proud owners of an ordinance survey map of Ireland map and have had our first falling out of the trip. But then we got to make up… 😉

/san/
Pedometer: 23,017 or just over 11 miles not including Frank’s noturnal map hunt!