Dublin

This will most likely be our last post before flying home, hopefully, on Thursday. We arrived in Dublin on Monday afternoon about 12:30, and by 2:00, we were sipping a pint of Guinness at the Guinness Brewery Gravity Bar at the top of the brewery building. A nice way to put our misfortune in Cape Town out of our minds. We had an early dinner at the Guinness restaurant, then returned to the hotel and crashed, after 26 hours without much, if any, sleep.

Today we decided to take an all day tour into the countryside to visit an area about an hour out of Dublin called Glendalough, an old Monastic settlement dating back to the late 600’s. Many of the old stone structures are still intact, including the 120 foot round tower, most likely used for grain storage. The settlement is situated in a beautiful glen, at the base of two lakes. In the 1600’s, the abandoned settlement started to be used as a cemetery, and continues to be so used today, as long as one’s family already has a grave site there.

Along the way to Glendalough, we passed through some beautiful countryside, including several areas used by film studios for such movies as Brave Heart and the cable TV series The Tudors. In fact, we learned that Mary, our guide, is actually the costume designer for The Tudors, and her name appears in the credits. She told an interesting story about meeting with Peter O’Toole, who plays the Pope in the series.

This evening we walked down to the famous Temple Bar area of Dublin, where we listened to some great Irish folk music, and enjoyed some authentic Irish food.

Tomorrow, our friends Ian and Diane from England are planning to meet us for the day. They have spent the last three days in Iceland, and have just informed us that their flight from Iceland has been delayed for four hours. Hopefully they will be able to get out and join us tomorrow.

Dublin is an old but very lively, exciting and interesting city, and one of our favorite stops on our trip. We learned today that almost 43% of the population of Dublin is under 30 years of age, and that women outnumber men 4 to 1. Sound like a great place for a young guy to be!

Our flight is scheduled to depart at 10:30am tomorrow, and if all goes well, we’ll be touching down in Sacramento about 8:00pm. We know that there have been a lot of delays due to the volcanic ash, but we’re hoping for the best. We’re looking forward to getting home and being with our family and friends. Thanks to you all for following us on this journey. It’s been great fun sharing our experiences with you all. See you soon!