Flight and Dublin

On the plane...with surprise breakfast!

6-17-09

The flight to Dublin was great. Great temperature, we got TWO meals, and no turbulence. We were next to a lovely old man who had dual citizenship between Ireland and the USA. He spends half his time in Connecticut and then the other half on his farm in Ireland.

We got into Dublin at 6:45 AM. It was 59 degrees and rainy so we got a wee bit wet walking to our hostel. We are staying at Patty's Palace hostel which has been great thus far. We couldn't check in until 12 so we decided to go tour the Guinness factory. Fun fact: Albert Guinness signed a 9000 year lease for 45 pounds a year!

Peace Corps update: We got an email from the person who will be in charge of all the new recruits in Belize and she is going to have a teleconference with us at the end of June. Thank goodness we have Skype! She said it would be about an hour and hopefully we'll get an even better picture of what we'll be doing and what staging/training will be like!

Hostel Life:

We made friends with a Canadian couple and a German girl at dinner in the hostel kitchen. We chatted for some time over coffee and tea about different things we thought the other should see. The German girl helped me understand why new years in Berlin was so crazy (I was telling her about when I went with Kaylyssa and we got hit numerous times by fireworks). She said that you're not allowed to touch fireworks until you're 18 and that once they're legal age they all just go crazy and shoot them at each other. She also said any crowd (20+ people) is crazy and a bad idea in Germany :) Greg took a shower before bed and he said it is like the sinks in airports, as in, you press the push valve and you get rewarded with 8-10 seconds of water. I bet that conserves a TON of water at a hostel. Ireland is just so GREEN! :) (You know you like that play on words!)

Potato Famine sculptures

Greg with the 'Linesman' sculpture

So it's 1AM Dublin time and we're sitting outside out sold out hostel room (8 bed mixed dorm) wide awake. It was funny when I woke up at around 12 something it was to a girl talking in her sleep in Swedish. We're going to go try to sleep until breakfast opens at 6. Yay free breakfast!!

Me yawning for the thousandth time in our dorm, and Greg's fortune from his farewell lunch with the tugboat crew.

6/18/09

We walked for 5 hours straight! We had so much fun today (we couldn't help but dance, as seen above). For the most part the rain stayed away so we had some great weather. We went to the National Museum at Collins Barracks (established in 1704) and learned about Ireland's bloody past and the IRA (Irish Republic Army). There was a fifteen year old volunteer (he started volunteering at 6) who died taking messages back and forth on the front lines, his last words were said to be 'god bless the volunteers.'

We then had a lovely time walking all over the city and stumbled upon a beautiful park called St. Stephen's Green. There were people laying all over the neon green grass and swans and ponds too! Dublin in general seemed to be in a wonderful mood. We walked around in the Temple Bar area and took almost an hour to find the Street Performance World Championships 2009 in Merrion Square. We watched three acts, the American break-dancers being by far the best! The Australian contortionist wasn't too bad either.

While we were walking around we were hunting for a travel alarm clock. We went into around 10 stores and NO one had one. Finally we found an outdoor company which was awesome!!! We played in there for almost 45 minutes and came out with a travel alarm AND two breathable, packable raincoats which we needed for Belize anyway!

So we just arranged for our 4 o'clock taxi to go off to Berlin. Gotta go shower and pack and then perhaps we'll sleep?

Kaylyssa this last picture is for you. This was a preschool group, in uniforms, walking by twos...remind you of anything??