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It was full daylight by 5:30am and I couldn’t keep sleeping. It is cloudy, windy, rainy and cold again today. Too bad. Breakfast is at 7:30am. We both had full Irish. It was one egg, 2 Irish bacons, 2 sausages, 1 black pudding, 1 white pudding, a broiled tomato and toast. It was heavy. Neither of us really cared for the puddings. We were told that the HP brown sauce makes the sausages lovely. I tried it and I think that explains the beans. We declined the offered beans and mushrooms. If a breakfast like that is included every morning, we’ll have to eat yogurt or something. It was a grease festival. Now we’ve had it though so we know the Irish breakfast experience.
It was full daylight by 5:30am and I couldn’t keep sleeping. It is cloudy, windy, rainy and cold again today. Too bad. Breakfast is at 7:30am. We both had full Irish. It was one egg, 2 Irish bacons, 2 sausages, 1 black pudding, 1 white pudding, a broiled tomato and toast. It was heavy. Neither of us really cared for the puddings. We were told that the HP brown sauce makes the sausages lovely. I tried it and I think that explains the beans. We declined the offered beans and mushrooms. If a breakfast like that is included every morning, we’ll have to eat yogurt or something. It was a grease festival. Now we’ve had it though so we know the Irish breakfast experience.
We think we’ll check out early and go ahead and walk our
luggage over to the Conrad Hotel where we’ll meet up with CIE Tours and check
in there later this afternoon when we go to meet our included city tour at 2pm.
We are tarrying though not wanting to be out in the weather longer than
necessary. This will let us walk past the National Library again to check their
hours too, since that is all we have planned for the day otherwise.
We walked to the Conrad by St. Stephen’s Green which was
about 6 blocks. We got there before 10am but they had room 500 ready for us and
we checked right in and left our bags. There was a check-in letter for us from
CIE and Conrad but nothing about where or when to meet our guide for the 2pm
city tour that is included today. The woman at the desk pointed out the spot
where there is usually a CIE message board and told us to look there later.
The Conrad has large rooms and large bathrooms and a large
closet. They have large towels and a large number of them. They have 2 trash
cans, one in the room and one in the bathroom. They have a box of tissues. They
charge extra for Internet. We have 2 double sized beds set about 4 inches
apart. We each slept in our own fluffy bed with 2 big fluffy pillows and a
fluffy duvet. They had an electric kettle as well as a Nespresso machine. There
was a scale in the bathroom. The shower
was over the tub which was large as well. You might be noticing a theme here. It
has a mini-bar and a TV. Clay said we wouldn’t have picked anything this
expensive ourselves and he’s right, we didn’t, hence the differences.
We went out to the National Library and walked through the
W. B. Yeats exhibit. Then we walked on up Kildare St and around the corner and
2 blocks down to see Oscar Wilde’s childhood home from the outside and the
memorial with his statue in the park across the street. It was very popular. I
think Oscar would have liked it.
It was very cold and windy and rainy today and it was pretty
miserable out and that was even when the sun was shining. We had walked past
the National Gallery of Ireland earlier so we walked back and went through the
European Masters section with pleasure. It was small but special. They had a
Vermeer and a Caravaggio among others. We got back to the room around 12:30pm
and ate snacks in the room for lunch. Around 1pm we went back downstairs to
look for our guide and to find out what is happening today.
The message board was up and it said our guide is Tommy
O’Reilly. Our bags are to be out at 7am tomorrow and breakfast is downstairs at
7am tomorrow. The bus leaves at 8:15am and we spend tomorrow night in Belfast.
We saw a man sitting at a table over by the hotel entrance
with a bunch of badges spread out and we walked over and introduced ourselves.
We picked out our names from the badges and he said about 1:30pm he was going
to start collecting the group. We just sat down near him and waited. We were
the first ones sent out to the bus and got to sit in the front row. Tomorrow we
are assigned the back of the bus so I guess we’ll see if we ever work our way
back up front.
We have 33 people in our group and about half are American.
There are 10 from Singapore and 8 from Australia. Many of our group are CIE Tours
repeaters. I guess that is a good thing.
We drove around for about an hour and then since Dublin Castle is closed to the public now for the Irish EU Presidency, we went to
Kilmainham Gaol (that’s an old prison) and toured for an hour. Several movies
have been filmed in Kilmainham. It is important for being a place where Irish Separatists
were jailed and/or executed. Over the course of this 12 day trip we’ll learn a
lot about the troubles between the English and the Irish and the Protestants
and the Catholics. I have to say in hindsight, I still just don’t get the animosity.
They were still fighting over things that happened in the 1600 to 1700’s. The
Irish consider Bill Clinton a hero for the 1998 Good Friday peace accord. They love him. Honestly,
I think this is the first time I ever heard anything about that. How strange is
that? What was I doing in 1998 that I didn't get that news. We drove by the Halfpenny Bridge over the River Liffey several times. It
is a symbol of Dublin. We got back to the Conrad at 5pm for our complimentary
welcome drinks. Clay had a Guinness and I had a Pinot Grigio. Tommy had said he
would give us some kind of talk or orientation during the meeting in the Conrad bar, but he didn’t. We left a little
after 6pm to go find dinner.
Clay had picked out a steakhouse that was about 1.2
kilometers away. The name was Darwin. He
had wanted to go to another F. X. Buckley chain restaurant like Bull &
Castle last night so he could get a steak tonight because mine was so good last
night. But, Conrad is not in the City Center and that made it just a little too
far to walk to one tonight. Darwin was good but not as good as Bull &
Castle was. It was €19.95 again
for 2 courses without after dinner drinks. Clay had a strip loin steak that was
tough. I had a rib eye off the bone and was again warned about ordering well
done. Mine was tastier and not tough at all. It was cooked thoroughly. Clay had raspberry fool for dessert and I had
chocolate brownie with ice cream. Clay finished both of my dishes because they
were better than his. Oh, he had a red Irish O’Hara beer. We walked back and
now it is bedtime.
More tomorrow from Northern Ireland, a part of the UK, and
uses the pound. Dublin is the capital of the Republic of Ireland and they use
the Euro.
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