It was early evening and raining when we arrived back in Dublin. We were becoming old pros at taking taxis by this point. Our driver a little standoffish though polite. We learned he was from Kenya and had been in Ireland for several years and that he had a family and that was pretty much all the information he gave us. I got the impression that he had probably been through some hard things in his life and he didn't really want people to know much about him (understandable) so the ride to our hotel for the evening was pretty quiet. I took a couple of photos out the rain blurred taxi windows and we were at our destination in no time.
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| Gardiner Street in the rain from the taxi. |
The desk clerk was an animated and somewhat flamboyant eastern European guy who demanded I give him a smile before he checked us into our room. He asked us if we thought he was Russian and we told him that no he didn't sound Russian. He told us he was from Croatia and that he hated it when people assumed he was Russian because of his accent. We told him where we are from: New York, Florida and Utah. He told us about working on a cruise ship and how he thought the couples from Utah were so funny. Then he made some comment about polygamists and Anne told him that we hate it when people assume we are polygamists because we're from Utah. He seemed to think that was hilarious and said, "Score one for you!"
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| Our room (via). |
Our room had three beds (you can't see the one perpendicular to these two against the opposite wall) and an enourmous window with a very rickety little balcony outside the window which I was forbidden from trying out by my mom. We dropped our stuff and Anne and I decided we needed to go out and pick up a couple of things at a convenience store so we left Mom watching TV and headed out for a walk in the rain.
We found a little store and picked up a couple of things and chatted with the cashier. I am an introvert but I love people. One of my favorite parts of the trip was getting to visit with the locals. He was friendly and pointed us toward a grocery store so we could pick up some food for the next morning's breakfast.
After grabbing some Liberté yogurt, bananas, milk and maple pecan sweet rolls for breakfast we noticed that we were pretty close to the city center and the rain was letting up and there were crowds of tourists in the streets so we felt very safe and decided to go exploring.
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Ireland is full of Cassidys (my maiden name) so it was really fun to see our family name
emblazoned on the storefronts of various businesses we saw on our trip. |
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| Clerys Department Store, O'Connell Street |
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Daniel O'Connell (Irish political leader also known as "The Emancipator)
with the Irish people under his feet and a seagull on his head. |
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| Looking down O'Connell Street |
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| View of the Dublin River |
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| Another Cassidy's establishment--a bar this time. |
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| Alternate view of the Dublin River--I think the green copper domed building is the Parliament Building. |
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| Dublin's Post Office |
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| I had to stop and have a chat about Dubliners with James Joyce on the way back to the hotel. |
By the time we had walked around a bit we noticed that it was 9:00pm and the crowds were starting to thin out considerably so we both felt like we should go back to Amberley House so we could be indoors before it was dark.
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| This neat school was located to the rear of our hotel. |
As we headed up the stairs, Mom was coming down the stairs to look for us, all dressed, umbrella in hand. She thought we had been kidnapped by terrorists or something and was coming to find us.
She doesn't have a cell phone and mine didn't have service all the way across the Atlantic. Anne had left hers in the room because when we went out we thought it would be best to bring as little with us as possible. Poor Mom! She couldn't understand why our shopping was taking so long. We told her we wouldn't have stayed out if we hadn't felt safe, but I understand her worry. I know what it's like to be stressed when you don't know where your children are. I guess some things never change no matter if your child is 12 or 45.
Mom forgave us easily and we all went to bed early. The next morning we had to be at the airport fairly early to catch our flight to Birmingham for the Great Britain portion of our trip.
To Be Continued. . .
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