Greetings From Dublin - Day One

We have arrived! Yes, we are in Ireland....this picture is the alley to the side of our hotel. It is completely lined with beer kegs on both sides of the alley.....I just had to laugh. Our flight out of Buffalo was delayed but that gave us an opportunity to grab a bite to eat. Despite the fact that we were on a little prop plan, the flight went fairly well. However, I did keep smell someone passing gas. I realized that it was Madeline when one of the times she loudly exclaimed, "PU!” Since the flight out of Buffalo was delayed we were nervous that we would miss our connection in Newark. Luckily our flight from Newark to Dublin was delayed however it was delayed until 10:07. We boarded the plain and there we sat until take off at MIDNIGHT! Madeline was okay for the wait to take-off for the first hour of that wait. At that point she had a complete meltdown (luckily it only lasted about 10 minutes). Thankfully she then fell asleep and slept through until our arrival. It is next to impossible for me to sleep while sitting up so Madeline and I squeezed side by side on our two seats while Papa, who sits next to me and has no problem sleeping on a plane, had his lap function as either a headrest or foot rest for me. No wonder my back is killing me now.

We arrived in Dublin on Monday at 10am (6am EST). Between David, Madeline and I we have a ton of luggage. But, there is also one of David’s coworkers and her husband traveling with us as well and they had just as much luggage as we did. We decided that we wouldn’t all be able to fit into one taxi. Also, the other couple, Carolyn & Jeff, had to be back at the airport to catch a 3:30pm flight to Munich. So, we decided that it would be better to just rent a car. Problem #1, the steering wheels are on the wrong side of the car. Problem#2, they drive on the wrong side of the road. Next, we tried to plug the hotel’s address into the car’s GPS and it took us to some quaint back alley full of teeny houses. We then tried to enter something different into the GPS and that took us on the other side of the city. Finally, we stopped for directions and the guy at the gas station let us use his phone. Finally we got to the hotel but after our unplanned tour of Dublin, (which by the way is very pretty) we had just enough time to freshen up before leaving to take Carolyn & Jeff back to the airport.

After all the air travel to Dublin and car travel while in Dublin we had a tired, testy, cranky hungry baby on our hands. We went out for a bite to eat at an Irish Pub. I always assumed that the “Irish Pub” look in the States was sort of cliché and that most of them didn’t look like that….WRONG! You drive past one pub-style restaurant after another and they all look like that. I am soooo totally going to gross out my friends but I had a liver and bacon dish while David had a chicken stew. David and I washed everything down with some Guiness. I never tried it before, but had to while in Ireland. It is such a dark beer but not bad. Madeline had spaghetti that tasted a bit like Spaghetti-O’s

On the walk back to the hotel, we stopped at a Polish Deli (I guess there is a large Polish population here) and I was soooo excited to see the Mushroom Lays potato chips like what I had in Russia (other reason I will gross out my friends). Of course I had to get some – they make your breathe stinky but they are yummy! When we got back to the room we all sort of veggied out. We are all dragging after very little sleep last night coupled with jet lag. We are heading to bed now and will try to post more tomorrow.