Ireland: Final Thoughts

So it's been a couple weeks since the Dublin trip was completed, and I feel like I should finish out the trip with some closing thoughts. Also, Eric was badgering me about not posting lately, so here you go.

My last post was after our last night there, and for completeness' sake, I'll tell you the trip home was rather uneventful. Customs coming back in the USA is 100% different than getting out of the USA. We weren't late for our flight, but the huge line caught us off guard and we certainly weren't much ahead of schedule. The flight was 8 hours or so, and really, it wasn't bad for me at all. The flight attendants seemed to be constantly heading up and down the aisles for something, which seemed to break up the trip. I watched a couple movies, played some PSP, finished reading a book I've been working on for about three years now. Actually it was relaxing to be forced into sitting in one spot for 8 hours entertaining myself. Okay, so "relaxing" is a stretch, especially with the baby in the seat ahead of us, whose mother was hoisting it high into the air constantly. Although to be fair, the baby was actually pretty reasonable, considering it was a baby on an airplane - it was no worse than sitting behind one for an hour at church, I'll say that.

Overall, it was an awesome trip, no doubt. Would I go back? Yes. If I was planning an overseas vacation for next year, would it be on the top of the list of places to go? No. I mean, we hit a lot of the stuff we wanted to see - I think we were 17 of 30, which considering our list, was plenty successful. There were definitely lots of sights that we didn't see that I would really like to, but for me I don't think what's left on the list would be cause for a return trip, at least immediately.

And no doubt, that opinion is heavily influenced by all the other places in the world that I'd like to go. I mean if we're really talking about an overseas destination, there are so many to choose from you know? And especially destinations with tropical climates! Don't get me wrong, I didn't particularly dislike the rainy Ireland climate. It was cool to see, and I'm totally cool with rain. The cold was pretty similar to here, which I also don't mind. But for as much as I complain about the hot weather, on vacation I'll survive it for the picturesque views that tropical climates often bring (see Molly & Katie's blog for examples).

I was really surprised by a number of things on the trip. It was my first vacation overseas, and it was also my longest vacation to date (in a destination anyway). I think what surprised me the most, was how out of place I felt by the end of the trip. Not to knock Dublin or any of its inhabitants, but at the end of the week, riding home on the train with rush hour traffic, I really felt like a tourist. And I'm sure that's going to be the case anytime you're vacationing in a big city - big cities are full of people that actually live and work there, obviously. In comparing this vacation to what has become a frequent vacation to me, Las Vegas, it's pretty much the exact opposite. Vegas (the Strip) isn't a real city at all, it's like the world's biggest outdoor shopping mall. Dublin is a legit big city, with businesses that aren't tourism. Which really, is good, because it was really cool to see such a thing!

Alright, in closing, Ireland was really cool. I may put together a "highlights" photo collection and post it on my gallery server - I have over 500 pictures (if you haven't seen them already), and putting all of them out there might be a bit unreasonable. There were a lot of cool things that we saw, and I've been asked a bunch of times what my favorite part was. I've given different answers as I've thought about the trip more, but I think my final answer on my favorite thing was just being there. I know, that's really the most cliche and lame answer possible. Okay, so maybe just being in Europe is a better answer. Having never traveled overseas, just going into a "Spar" and seeing a whole store full of stuff that I have no idea what it was, that's pretty awesome.

And I can say this now that I'm home alive, but driving was pretty sweet too. I guess not so much the driving itself, but having to pay attention to so many different customs of the road. I think I said this before, but it makes me realize how many things we take for granted driving here in the states. Not "better" necessarily, just more familiar to us.

One more thing, metric paper sizes are indeed awesome. My mouse is currently hooked elsewhere so I can't get the wikipedia link for you, but do yourself a favor and check out the article on metric paper sizes and how sweet A4 really is.

Greetings from the Dow

Live from Saginaw...

Classic drivers ed book

Just found a civ 2 tech tree poster. Nice!

Found in the break room at work...

Dublin...the last day

Well today was our last day here, and we spent it finishing up things
in Dublin. First we trekked over to the Dublin Zoo. That was looking
pretty shady at first, as it was expensive and raining pretty hard
outside. But it was too long of a walk to turn back, so we went in
anyway. Turns out it was pretty solid, and the rain slowed down
thankfully. Some of the glass panes you were supposed to see through
were fogged up, but we saw a lot of classc zoo animals. Tigers,
giraffes, rhinos, monkey of various sizes, penguins, etc. Pete is a
zoo conneseur, and thought it was good, so that's good enough for me.

We had a serviceable lunch at the zoo tea house, then made our way to
the Guinness storehouse. So to say Guinness is huge over here is an
understatement. Every pub has a Guinness sign out front, all of them.
Which is a lot.

The Guinness campus is pretty gigantic, and the tour goes up 5
stories. There was a guided audio tour that you were encouraged to do,
but we went on our own. So certainly we missed a lot of the finer
points of the tour, but there were lots of pretty pictures, and at
this point in the "holiday" I think all of our brains are collective
mush. The top (7th floor) is a glass walled round bar at which you got
a free pint of Guinness. Definitely worth the experience. I'm pretty
sure my pictures are rubbish (I'm getting the hang of this!)
unfortunately. We'll see.

Then we hoofed back to St Patricks cathedral, which wasn't free like I
hoped it would be. Huge, old, beautiful church. Really would have been
cool to see a service there, but oh well.

On the way back to the train, Brandon picke up some shoes that he'd
been searching for for a while now - it was quite the shady
transaction, though we all survived. We had a few minutes to spare on
the trip back to the hotel, and we attempted to see the history
museum. Sadly it was about to close, so that didn't work out. No big
deal.

For dinner...earlier in the day I ran across a dinner show called "The
Irish House Party" that featured live music and dancing, and it was
right down the road from our hotel. We sat at a 5 person table with 3
swedish people, which was fairly awkward until Pete broke the ice with
some small talk (good work sir). Actually, that really didn't make it
any less awkward, but was at least entertaining.

The dinner was solid, but not really spectacular I think. The Irish
music and dancing after though was quite awesome. The three of us
actually were featured in a little dance lesson with three older
women, which was pretty hilarious. Luckily, there's no proof of that
ever happening :) In fact, the whole crowd seemed to be right off the
Dublin tour bus for the elderly, with the excepion of one Canadian
couple that claimed to be from "North America" when asked, which was
weird.

Anyway it was a great way to end our week. Tomorrow, travel travel
travel. It's hard work being a tourist in a foreign country, and while
it's been a great experience, I've had enough with being a tourist.
I'm ready to go to Applebees, get a diet coke with ice, and drive
there on the right side of the road (well, maybe not Applebees
specifically, but you get the idea).

Ireland, it's been grand. America, I'm coming home!

Ireland...day 6? I think?

Another day outside Dublin today - first things, we went out to get
the car taken care of. Made it back to the car rental (or car hire, if
you will) place and got the car switched out relatively easily. They
didn't seem real concerned about it, which I guess I'm not terribly
surprised about. It's nice to have a car with legit brakes. Cruise
would have been nice, but I can't ask too much now.

Then we made our way to Newgrange, which is a really old tomb. Like,
5000 years old. We went inside the building, which is still in it's
original state inside as when it was originally built, which is
amazing. Waterproof too, for 5000 years, crazy. I wasn't sure what to
expect, and it was pretty sweet.

After that we took off towards the east coast and a town named Howth.
We had lunch there at a small bar. There we came to the realization
that unless you ask for some help, you probably won't get any. In the
states, you're stepped through every step of the eating process.
You're constantly at a certain point in the transaction. But here, if
you want the bill, you need to flag someone down and let them know.
Otherwise you will, like we have for a week, sit there for an hour
with nothing to do.

Originally we planned to hit up some gardens on the south of town, but
due to the aforementioned lunch, definitely we weren't making it there
before dark. So instead we tried going to the Bram Stoker castle. We
rushed there hoping to make it before they closed, only to find there
was no castle. There was an exhibit, but we were confused about it's
location. We asked someone who told us it closed after halloween. The
'castle' was actually just Bram Stoker's house, which we actually
never found either.

After that failure we made it back to Howth, and walked around towards
a lighthouse, and took a ton of in the dark photos that I'm skeptical
how (mine anyway) will turn out. We'll see.

We continued our circle of the Howth area - there is a giant island
that we tried attacking, but we missed the bridge that we wanted, and
the next bridge took us to some kind of golf club. So that didn't
really work out either.

Back to the hotel we went and again ate at the local eatery here.
There was some moderate confusion about the bill, but my dinner was
tasty, so it worked out.

All in all, another moderately successful day. Also successful was the
weather - another sunny day, a commendable job from mother nature.

Tomorrow is our last day! We have accomplished a lot on our trip so
far, although there are a few things that will certainly get missed.
We'll be staying in Dublin for our last day, one more chance to
stretch our legs before the journey home. I'm feeling relatively good,
but the whole lower half of my body is sore most of the time (so what
do I mean when I say I feel relatively good, I'm not sure). This is
another trip that towards the end, I think about how cool it would
have been to have a pedometer for the week. Ah well. That would have
been a great reason to get a Nike+ unit though...hmm....

Oh, I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but Ireland may be more
swine flu crazy than A-O is. There are sings everywhere about the
swine flu. Bananas!

Greetings from Blarney Castle!

Ireland...day 5

Today we went outside of Dublin for the first time, and we ventured
west to the Blarney Castle. That is about 3 or 3.5 hours west of
Dublin. So I got a good chance to practice my driving skills.
Yesterday I picked up some frosted mini wheats, so I ate a bunch of
those to tide me over until lunch in Blarney, Ireland.

First though, the trip there was moderately decent. We did see some
sheep and sheepdogs, that was sweet. Actually we saw a lot of sheep,
they were everywhere! Our GPS is pretty much the worst ever - we
thought it was just due to being in the city at first, but for like an
hour it was constantly confused about where we were. Lots of
recalculating.

Also this morning I thought it would be sunny...ha, not the case. It
started raining on our way west and continued all day. So we made it
to the castle, which was way awesome. It was legit castle, with all
kinds of castley things. The stairs up the castle were insanely small.
I tried taking a bunch of photos, I hope they can convey the
ridiculousness of these steps.

Brandon kissed the Blarney stone, Pete and I elected to fight the
swine flu and not kiss the stone. We also checked out the castle
grounds, which included a fern garden. Apparently ferns grow with a
massive trunk, which I never knew?

On the way back from the castle we stopped in Cork to check out the
shopping district. There was one of the scariest non- weather related
driving incidents ever. Due to the awesome GPS, we ended up taking the
tiniest street ever. It would have been wide enough for two cars,
barely, except for the cars parked on the street. I had to take
evasive action on the curb at one point. Insanity, absolute insanity.

The Cork shopping area was pretty cool, similar to the Dublin areas.
Brandon was looking for some shoes. Strangely enough, there were a ton
of shoe stores, but none for athletic shoes.

On the way back was a lot of driving in the dark, in the rain. I
realized that here, there a lot of things painted on the pavement.
Like directions, one way notifications, etc. Sadly, in the rain and
dark, that is impossible to see. So it was quite a challenge to tell
what was happening for a foreigner, but we made it.

Adding to the trouble, I noticed in the dark the brake trouble light
was lit on the dash. It wasn't quite that easy though, as the light is
hidden behind a sticker - so I only noticed it in the dark, and it
took some sluething to figure out what light it actually was. The
brakes are pretty bad too - not quite as bad as that one time in the
Alero, but getting there. I believe the brake light caused some random
beeping, also annoying.

So tomorrow, I've got to get in contact with the car people. Not
positive how that will happen, but it probably will be an expensive
call. Other than that, sounds like we'll be doing some other random
touring tomorrow, I'm not positive of what quite yet...

Mark D

Dublin...day 4

Day 4 in Dublin was rather successful. Got up on time, and attempted
to make it out to St. Partricks cathedral. We did make it there, but
not in time for mass, as it was rather unclear what time mass was.
Actually first, we stopped for breakfast at a restaraunt/bar thing. It
was pretty good, although we were the only people in the place by the
time we were done. They had tables with Guinness taps in them, which
was pretty awesome (in theory anyway).

Okay, so we didn't make it to mass. Then we trekked east to St
Stephens Green, which is a giant park in the city, complete with
fountains and a duck pond.

Then we made our way through the Grafton street shopping district, a
cool outdoor mall sort of area, complete with a visit to the Statue of
Molly Malone, which I hear is called "The tart with the cart".

This was in route to Trinity College, which is mega old and houses the
Book of Kells, a mega old book of the gospels. We took the tour, that
was nifty, although I learned a lot about this college that really
isn't mega important to me. The way old books though were sweet.

So then we went back west to Dublin Castle, a castle in downtown. That
was a little surprising - it was like touring a state Capitol or a
mansion. Huge, ornate rooms used for government stuff. Entertaining,
but not like I expected. Also a lot more history than we planned.

We hoped at this point to hit up the Guinnes brewery, but in the
interest of time we instead went to a prison which I'm not even trying
to spell. Also really old, also really historical. Turns out some
hugely important revolutionaries were executed here. Again, way more
historical than I really was prepared for, but sweet and old and creepy.

Finally we went back east to the Temple Bar area and had some much
needed dinner. We confirmed a couple of things that we had learned,
which I'll get to in a second. After dinner we wandered around some
more and achieved some groceries for snacks. The grocery store was
crazy busy, FYI.

Things we learned today. ( I may have repeated some of these, I don't
remember...)

* When eating, normally people are not in a hurry. Service is pretty
lacking - waiters just don't come check on you. Also getting your bill
does not happen in a timely fashion, ever. I think you're supposed to
hang out and drink tea. We were the only people in the place for
breakfast, literally, and we still sat there for 30 minutes.
* the food here...yeah, it hasn't been awesome. Maybe I'm being
tainted by the miserable exchange rate, I don't know. I mean the food
has been good, but so far nothing has been like wow better than the
USA. I did have some amazing cheesecake today though.
* Stuff closes down way early! After about 5pm, it's pretty much game
over.
* Irish accents are pretty cool.
* There are 9 pages of O' names in the phonebook.
* Our hotel doesn't have an alarm clock, or a bathroom fan, or towels
currently, all of which I totally don't understand.

Tomorrow were planning on leaving Dublin and rocking the blarney
castle. I'm excited about that - Dublin is really cool, however it's a
big city, like many other cities. I'm ready to see some sheep.

Mark D

Sundae

Caramel sundaes are still tasty in europe.

Jameson

I got this cardboard tube as proof of my volunteering. It now holds my
certificate of master whiskey tasting!

Candy

Tasted like sour patch kids, just not bear shaped.

Dublin day 2

So day 2 was a lot shorter than day 1, mostly because we all slept
until 2pm. Quite a shock that was. Other than that we were rather
successful. We had a late lunch at a bus station that was pretty
tasty, certainly our best non dinner yet. We headed towards the
Guinness storehouse, but realize we would never make it there in time.
Instead we stopped at the Jameson distillery.

That was a good time - Jameson has been made for forever! I learned
the difference between whiskey, Irish whiskey, and scotch. Scotch is
made from barley that is smoked, so it has a lot smokier flavor than
whiskey. I tend to think it tastes like vomit, personally, but
whatever. I volunteered to be a whiskey tester, so I got a couple
extra drinks and a sweet certificate that is totally going up in my
cube. I also learned that people drink whiskey with apple juice
somewhere? I've never heard of that, but I'm interested in trying it
out.

So after that we went to a local movie theatre to see Jennifers Body
(yes, the American movie). The movie was alright. I feel it was really
only made because Megan Fox is way hot. The theatre was huge, four
stories tall. They had assigned seats, which was interesting. Also
expensive, which is unsurprising. They do have a 20 euro a month
unlimited pass, a totally great idea that I'd like to see in the states.

Following that, we had dinner in the area, that was solid. Not
amazing, but solid. We tackled another local train service that was
odd because there was nothing to verify your ticket. Nothing stopping
you from just walking on. Weird.

Stuff I learned today-
* there is a lot of American music here, especially from the 80s and
90s. Our hotel is particularly fond of Motown, which is pretty cool.
* streets are named, but often not marked what the name is. That's
annoying.
* addresses here often don't have street numbers. Not sure why. It's
annoying though, because just knowing the street is not enough. Ever.

Lots more to do tomorrow. Going to try getting to st patricks
cathedral, for something that may or may not be mass...

Mark D

Dublin...48 hours of Day 1

So we have survived Dublin so far. A brief recap...

Yesterday we ended up at DTW way too early. We've all heard, show up 2 1/2 hours early for international flights, right? I'm not positive why that is, because boarding the flight was exactly the same as any other flight I've been on. But no big deal, we hung out in the D, boarded the flight, rock and roll. Made it to JFK way earlier than expected, I think because I was looking at the wrong flight itenerary.

JFK, really not one of my favorite airports. There was no indication as to what terminal we needed to be at for our flight, so after asking some Delta people (well, first asking some non-Delta people, who weren't helpful at all) they directed us to the proper gate. We ate some dinner at the local food court, but just barely. Nobody seemed terribly interested in serving us there. Boarded the plane, which was the first time I've been on a plane the size of the 767. The plane was pretty awesome, as far as airplanes go. This flight was also shorter than expected, although we never did figure out why. We expected 8 hours, and it was like 5 1/2 (in the air), which was a plus.

So this was an overnight flight, and despite my best attempts, I (nor my travel-mates) didn't get a lot of sleep. Customs was not exciting at all, which was great. No big thing. We picked up the rental car at the airport at about 9am, and after some confusion about the price, and the car size, we were on our way.

Driving was a little sketchy. Definitely driving on the wrong side of the road was way strange at first. But what I think has been more of a challenge is all the differences in signage and intersections. Roundabouts are one thing, but all the signs are different, and the intersections are never just straightforward stoplights. Yeah, and the stoplights, there's a lot of things you take for granted about stoplights that don't work the same way in other countries. It's gotten better with practice for sure.

So we first headed to Dublin Castle, which is in downtown Dublin. Easier said than done. We learned that driving in downtown Dublin is like driving in any other big city - generally, not the most efficient use of time or energy. Anyway we briefly checked out the castle, and ended up attempting to eat breakfast at this tiny cafe at Dublin Castle. Really didn't work out, for a variety of reasons - food wasn't great, payment was a disaster, lots of confusion.

After some more getting lost, we finally located the hotel. Which was actually like a 2 hour adventure, since this hotel doesn't have a street number. So when you just have a street name, things aren't as easy to find as you'd like. The hotel is quite amazing though, for sure. Glad we found it.

Then attempted to eat a late lunch at the hotel. More confusion, more sub-standard and expensive food. Finally we set out via public transportation back into Dublin, where we walked around the Temple Bar district. It reminded me of Bourbon Street, except not seedy at all. Lots of cool little pubs and restaurants, people everywhere. Ate dinner, which although was expensive, was actually quite tasty this time.

So it's currently 10pm Dublin time, and I'm way tired after getting a very minimal amount of sleep yesterday. Time for bed, I think. But to recap, here's what I have learned:

* Europe is expensive. Everything is priced the same in Euros as I would expect it to be in Dollars...except the dollar is worth about 60% of the Euro. So yeah, this is not going to be a cheap adventure.
* Parking cars is expensive in Dublin, just like it is in Detroit. We're currently paying a fortune for parking two cars in two different continents!
* I might be the most overweight person in Ireland. Seriously.
* Driving on the wrong side of the road is weird, but doable. I think all the Mille Bornes playing has helped me with the road signs.
* There are a lot of cobblestone streets here
* Unlike home, where everybody that is legit (i.e. everywhere not the B&I Bar) takes credit cards, that is far from the case here. So for I'd say it's about 50/50 on people taking plastic. Luckily we found an ATM so I have a stock of usable currency on hand.

That's all. This is way longer than I wanted it to be, so I wouldn't expect this treatment every day...

This plane is serious

Ireland

Going to Ireland tomorrow. Sweet!

Meatless fail