Good news from Ireland - at least for me. Finally I located a card reader which works just fine. Actually this entire trip has been good news for both of us! Much fun!! Now that I have the reader the only problem will be to catch up with pics. I'll start with the first day.
In 2001 we flew over on St. Brigid (sp?) and you will be pleased to know (I think) that she is still in service flying the NY-Dublin route. We flew St. Ciaran (we think) as the stewardess spoke so quickly that I'm still not certain what she said. I intended to look on the fuselage for the name when we landed but completely forgot. We'll check on the return flight. Below is the tail section as I couldn't find an angle for the front. I had hoped to have a full pic as in 2001.
Sheila was ready!
We weren't certain we would do anything after landing as neither one of us had slept much on the flight but the lure of Dublin was too much. As you already know, we hit the pubs under the guise of the Literary Pub Crawl. This was after collecting our car (2008 Peugeot Diesel) and taking a 3 hour nap at the hotel. We had been concerned that we would wait in the hotel parking lot (maybe napping in the car) until check-in but were pleased when they provided a room right away. They were most gracious. We even had time for breakfast. I should note that I had hinted to the car rental agent that we might be interested in an upgrade to an automatic transmission. That possibility was quickly dismissed when he indicated it would cost almost as much as our rental plan with a standard "stick;" a staggering $256. As a result we have only one driver.
No trouble, at least worthy of mention, in driving to Dublin in time for the "crawl." Two actors performed throughout the "crawl" and they were most entertaining. We began at The Duke, a pub just off Grafton Street.
We travelled next to the grounds of Trinity College (no drinking) and then on to
O'Neill's Pub where there was some refreshment.
In earlier notes I had made mention of Brendan Behan. He was a patron of most of the 700 Dublin pubs (there are now 900) as we were told but O'Neill's was one of his favorites. The pic below is from inside O'Neill's and shows the "snug room" (to the left) of which I earlier made mention. It seems that the Catholic Church did not believe women belonged in a bar and would be too great a distraction for the men. As a result a small room was created for women off the main bar where women could assemble leaving the bar to the men. Behan, when learning of this, took great exception and commented that the presence of women in a bar would make no difference to an Irish man as he knew of no Irishman who would not climb over 20 naked ladies to get to his pint.
The next stop was at The Old Stand, a pub frequented by Michael Collins and others associated with the IRA during the late 19teens. That info doesn't have much to do with literary significance but for some of you (hello Aaron) it will be interesting. The owner of the pub now is from Roscommon although we did not converse. The truth was we couldn't reach the bar and we'd already split our 1/2 pint for the night. Although the Irish economy is in the tank it appears the pubs are still doing well notwithstanding our having limited ourselves.
For those not inclined to the pub life, directly across the street from The Old Stand is Butler's Chocolate Cafe. The crawl was a great first step for our travels and there is a companion historical crawl (the Michael Collins tidbit) which we will most certainly take on the next trip.
It's been a great 2 days since last sharing the travel log and you'll have to wait to hear about Clonmacnoise, Galway, and now Sligo through pics and more stories later.
Til tomorrow ...
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