This morning we said good-bye to Dublin. What a great city, so much to do and see - it would take weeks to take it all in. But alas, we have to move on. But first, I must tell you about our Pub Crawl last night....
All in all I think we hit about 7 pubs total yesterday -- two midday, and then 5 more last night. In the evening we started out at the Long Haul - nice pub, probably typical fairly quiet Dublin locals place. Next was the No Name Bar -- you don't get to this place unless someone takes you there or tells you about it because it has really no name sign outside, just a large seashell looking wooden sign hanging over a dark stairwell. We weren't quite sure if it was what we were looking for but braved our way up the stairs to find a very modern, cosmopolitan pub/bar frequented by Dublin's collegiate and professional 20-30s crowd. Next was the Castle Bar/Grogan's, named for its proximity to Dublin Castle. There we met Neil, whom we had seen earlier at the Long Haul and he asked if we were following him!! Very nice man and helpful especially around 9:30 pm when I became quite hungry after not eating for 7+ hours and nothing but brew in my belly. He steered us to Sheehans, just few doors down where we had a "lovely" meal of Smoked Salmon & Caper Salad and Chips, served up by Stephano from Milan, Italy. (This was the first pub we had encountered that had non-Irish bartenders.) We thought we were about done after this, but wandered by Duxelles where we were enticed by the live music emanating from this fairly traditional appearing pub. We had to go in, especially when we heard them playing Beatles music. This pub was packed with mostly all local Irish, hardly any tourists, and the music that they were going crazy for included songs by Billy Joel, Huey Lewis and the News, Eagles, Don Henley, and Stevie Wonder. We would've stayed longer than two beers, but ran out of cash and they were cash only, so reluctantly made our way back to the hotel well after midnight. Good thing too, because we had to be up early the next day to get packed and on our way to Kilkenny.
BUT, before we left Dublin, we toured the Guiness Storehouse - great tour and you get a pint of Guiness for your troubles.
Then we took a taxi to Hertz and picked up our car, a bright red Mini Cooper. Rick is having too much fun driving that manual transmission car on the opposite side of the road, and the roads out to the Irish countryside are quite narrow.
Arrived at the Bungalow Farmhouse Bed & Breakfast just about 15 minutes after my friends from Susanville, Joe and Lisa, had gotten there. This was a major surprise for Lisa -- she didn't know we were coming. Joe had kept his secret well.
Dinner out tonight in the small town of Urlingsford, just a few clicks away from the Farmhouse.
Tomorrow -- Kilkenny and who knows?
No comments:
Post a Comment