The plane was 3 rows across (2, 4 and 2). Of course The-Person-Who-I-Am-Travelling-With and I were in the 4 in the middle. Stranger danger for me! As we are getting ready to take off a child starts screaming bloody murder at the top of his lungs, and as a result his parents were getting several death stares, which amused me and The-Person-Who-I-Am-Traveling-With. The plane was really neat as it had a TV in the back of the seat in front of us which allowed us to watch movies, TV shows, play games, listen to music or just see where our plane was en route. It was pretty cool. We each watched two movies. I watched Green Hornet and a Elizabeth Taylor biography. So because we were so distracted we didn't sleep. Not a wink. And those neck pillows we bought were not compatible with the built in pillow slider of the chair.
We made it to Dublin and there was pretty much no one there. We breezed through customs and the baggage claim started unloading bags pretty quickly. Unfortunately, The-Person-I-Am-Traveling-With's bags were the last ones to come off. As it was there was no Disney greeter at the baggage claim, so I was nervous for both of those things. Thankfully when we walked out of the baggage claim area we say one of our adventure guides Frankie holding a sign and a huge smile. We were picked up and escorted to our hotel, the Westin.
So, at this point, it's about 6:30 and the group is getting together at 9:15 to start the activities. I thought I was going to take a shower and just kill time before we had to leave. Unfortunately that bed was too soft and we decided a brief two hour nap was what we needed. Well that didn't pan out either. By the time the alarm went off we had only been conked out for about 45 minutes. So at this point we knew we were in for a LOOONNNNGGGG day.
The tour began on an amphibious-vehicle viking tour. We donned viking hats and took about an hour and a half tour learning about Dublin. It was difficult to understand our guide at times. He spoke pretty fast and words were often slurred together. He threw in a couple jokes that were entertaining. He also threw in a couple of oldies like "they used to tie a pork chop around his neck, so the dog would play with him" and the like. The tour ended with us unboarding at Dublin Castle.
Our group (which is about 40+ people) was given a tour of the Castle. It was stunning. We learned that Ireland has had a female president for the past 21 years and that when the Queen visited in May she spoke Irish for possibly the first time ever. Also strange, the guide referred to "the people in the north" which are the Northern Irelanders. I found that a pretty strange way of referring to them, but whatever. At the close of this tour we were headed for Guinness Storehouse and LUNCH.
We had our own private room for lunch and had a buffet style with Guinness stew, fish and chips, potatoes, veggies and an assortment of desserts. We met some of the other people travelling with us. It feels as if we are the minority. The woman at lunch asked if we were newly weds and then later asked if we were in love. It was an interesting lunch to say the least. Following the lunch we were shown on a pretty boring tour of the Guinness Storehouse. Our guide for this tour was pretty boring and since I don't really care about Guinness, what he was talking about was pretty boring too. We then had about 45 minutes of free time in which we traded in our drink vouchers and ran through the gift shop.
This was the end of the day with Disney. They offered an optional tour of the Book of Kells, but as I've seen something similar in England, I wasn't too interested. We also missed doing a lot of things yesterday, so we decided to strike out on our own. We were too late to go to St. Michan's Church and for The-Person-I-Am-Travelling-With to touch the dead people, so we went to Jameson's Distillery. Jameson's is his favorite whiskey. This tour was more exciting, but after walking all over town and being awake at this point for 26 hours minus a 45 minute nap, I nearly nodded off during a short movie. The-Person-I-Am-Travelling-With was thrilled as he got to participate in a whiskey tasting. I had the pleasure of watching. I was actually encouraged to try Johnny Walker Black Label, it was revolting.
After this we walked all over Dublin again trying to find some place to eat. We eventually settled on Gourmet Burger Kitchen because Jenny had recommended it to me. It was pretty good. I burned my tongue on the fries, but they were yummy. Now I am rushing to finish this because it is bed time! Until tomorrow!
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