Day 1 & 2 - Travel and Dublin

Monday we traveled. We got up early and were ready....but our flight was at 9PM.  It made for a bit of a slow day, but we eventually drove to the Allen's where we all got in the Kitchin's new truck and drove to Newburgh, NY for our direct flight to Dublin. It was relatively uneventful.

We flew Norwegian Air, a low cost airline, but to our surprise we somehow got booked in the premium seating section, lots of rum and reclining seats...awesome.

I especially liked the tail of our Boeing 787-9, it was a very new plane.









We arrived in Dublin about 8M Tuesday, customs was a breeze. We found a Taxi and it took about an hour and 50 Euros to get to the Ashling Hotel. Our rooms were not ready, but they stored our bags. The Hotel is quite nice. It was 3AM to us, with not much sleep on the plane, we all needed a coffee and then we were off on our selfguided walking tour.

Our first stop was The National Museum of Ireland. It is a good overall history of Ireland, including a bit about the Irish participation in the US wars including the Civil war, they fought on both sides.









You will have to ask Jean and Ed to give you the entire Irish history, one of the museum employees who was extremely proud of his Irish history gave them a personal tour of much of the museum.

Within the museum they have preserved a gun running sail ship from the early 1900s, the Asgard.

From the museum we made our way to the oldest pub in Dublin, the Brazen Head. It was established in 1198.

It was a very quaint and welcoming place.

Donna was clearly enjoying herself.

















It was a lot of walking and we had been up a long time, so we headed back to the hotel. Lucky for us our rooms were ready and we all got a bit of a nap.

After my nap, I set out to find a phone store to buy a Irish SIM for my old Samsung, or 'Burner' as Ed calls it. During my walk I got caught in a hail storm, no kidding...I left this crap in VT!

Eventually it was pouring, I ducked into a shop and paid 20 Euros for the ugliest Irish cap you have ever seen.

I also came by this during my walk.











My walk was successful, I was able to buy a SIM card for 20 Euro that gives me unlimited data, "all you can eat", on my cell for 30 days.  I am doing this blog on the bus right now using it...works fine.

After nap time we had a group dinner/meeting for our tour group.  We met others on our tour and had a nice time. There are about 25 souls on our tour.

After dinner we met up with an old friend of mine from my IBM days. Adrian O'Connor is now CEO of a company here in Ireland, Benetel, a wireless company.  It was great catching up with Adrian over a pint of Guinness.

We really should have gone to bed at this point, but we knew there were pubs withing a few mins walk of the hotel, and we were in Ireland.

We walked to P. Duggan's, the place was perfect. The blue hue in the picture is due to the police running a checkpoint right in front of the pub.  The bartender found it entertaining.

We had a really nice time in the pub, the bartender was a stereo typical friendly Irishman, he even showed the girls how to properly pour a Guinness.

It was a very nice time, we hated to leave but it was getting late.












It was a long day and a half but we sure had a good time.

Wednesday we start the real tour.