Dublin Ireland

Our Anniversary trip to Ireland was beyond belief! It started off a little iffy, due to the airline food, but it just got better day after day. I am going to have to divide the posts up because I took around 1700 photos, so check back often!

This post will contain photos from day one, travel and Dublin, June 16/17 2010.

On the 15th of June we drove to Wichita, KS to meet my father, who kept the kids for us. Our flight departed the next day at 4:55 PM from Omaha. It was pure luck that the airport there had one of our favorite brands of beer, Empyrean. We each had a Third Stone Brown to help us relax on the planes.

This plane totally freaked me out. It was TINY and we took it up to Chicago. There was one seat on the left and two seats on the right. I never want to fly this small of a plane again.

The flight from Chicago, IL to Dublin Ireland was decent. There was no screaming child nearby, which I was extremely thankful for, but neither Gregg, nor I, could sleep on the plane. The flight left Chicago 6/16/2010 around 7PM but didn't land in Dublin until 8:40AM 6/17/2010. So the fact we got no sleep on the plane was torturous.

Here's Gregg being silly at the Dublin Airport waiting for the shuttle to take us to our rental car.

Isn't our car cute?! It was SUPER tiny! And you wouldn't believe that we were thankful for this fact. We reserved the smallest car available for good reason, you will see why in later posts.

Our first night we stayed at the Clontarf Castle Hotel in Dublin, Ireland. It was beautiful.

Here we are out front upon arrival. We were just so happy to be there.

Side view of the Clontarf Castle Hotel.

We quickly made our way inside, the soft fluffy bed was calling our names...

This was the view from our room. Everything in Ireland was just so green! No wonder it's called the Emerald Isle!

Here's the inside of our room, pretty spacious for Dublin.

We set an alarm and took a 1 hour cat nap before leaving to check out the city.

Now here's where it gets good. We were starving after we woke, so we decided to go to a fish and chip shop we had read about in our travel book. We parked our car downtown in the shopping district and left directly to walk to our destination.

Leo Burdock's Fish & Chips. The tan board to the left of this photograph is a long list of famous people who have visited. I have to say that it was some of the best fish and chips I've had. Even better than in London.

This was the proprietor. According to the travel book, the fish and chips aren't fried in oil, but in "drippings", I'm sure that's the secret. But this Irishman was very nice and even straightened his eyebrows out for me to take a photo.

Behind him under the heat lamps is the fish, check out the size - WOW!

Here's Gregg's feast...

And mine. We also got some curry dipping sauce for our fries. We *LOVE* curry, so this was a no-brainer and WOW was it was good!

Leo Burdock's is a take out place, so you have to get your order to go and find someplace else to sit and eat. We were a block or two away from St. Patrick's Cathedral, so that was perfect.

Could you think of a better spot in Dublin to sit and eat? I most certainly couldn't.

After eating we intended on finding our car and heading to the Guinness brewery, but that didn't work out quite as planned. We couldn't find the car. We couldn't find the car for HOURS. We walked around for about an hour and a half, maybe two looking for the stupid car. We had even put a *dot* on the map where we thought we had parked, but the car was nowhere to be found. I was starting to believe that the car had been towed.

In the middle of looking for the car, our airplane food (lasagna) came back to haunt us with only what I can describe here as "incredible intestinal discomfort" for both Gregg and I. This first day in Dublin will be something neither Gregg, nor I forget. Nonetheless we found the car a few hours later and made our way to St. James Gate at Guinness.

I will post those photos in the next few days.