Saturday, April 16, The Road to Dublin
The road to Dublin goes through Cork, well for us it did. We were on a mission to find the burial place of Kelly's great-grandfather, Gerald Walsh.
Unfortunately we never found Gerald but we found plenty of others Walshes. We don't know if any of them were related to Gerald but we , Greg & I, were not taking any chances. We had a bottle of single-malt Irish Whiskey with which we toasted most of the Walshes we came across, just to be safe. We gave the remainder of the bottle to the caretaker of the cemetery who really hustled trying to find the correct Walsh. There wasn't a whole lot left.
The road to Dublin turned out to be a nice limited access toll road, so we got there in good time.
We turned the car in, took a cab to our B&B and then, guess what?!! We needed our Guinness fix so we walked around the corner to O'Brien's.
We grabbed a bite to eat and then went looking for some music, and maybe some more Guinness.
We found both at O'Donoghue's, not far from where we were staying. This is the famous bar where the Dubliners got their start.
The music was great and we stayed quite a while.
They had a collection of various bills on the wall behind the bar so I gave them one of my million dollar "stimulus" bills with Obama on the front and Fantasy Land on the back.
We reluctantly left O'D's and headed up Grafton Street, a nice pedestrian thoroughfare lined with high-end shops and restaurants.
We stopped to say hello to Molly Malone who wheels her wheel barrow through streets broad and narrow... actually she doesn't get around much anymore.
Ha' Penny Inn, Ha' Penny Bridge...
We worked (drank) our way to the Temple Bar area and the Temple Bar itself where we
it looks like we opted for gin & tonic and wine. What, no Guinness?
Moving on, we passed the Why Go Bald animated sign (video coming soon)
and made our way to Stag's Head
where we found some good music and returned to our staple, Guinness.
Sunday, April 17, Dublin
Another beautiful day! We walked through St. Stephen's Green on our way to Trinity College.
Grafton Street again where we were entertained by the big bubbly guy and
the marionette guy, who was very good. The little guy was very cute, almost like a comic mime.
We were too early to see the Book of Kells, so we just sort of walked around.
Next we walked by Dublin Castle and Christ Church Cathedral, eventually ending up at...
Guinness!
We had a date to meet Lorri's long lost Irish cousin back at O'Donoghue's, where some of the same musicians were playing again today! Ciarin turned out to be a really nice guy, though slightly hung-over from a late Saturday night.
He was a good sport though and offered to drive us to Leo Burdock's for famous fish & chips which were really good and which we ate bellied up to a low wall across the street.
Next, he taxied us to the Jamieson Distillery which would have been too far to walk. We sampled some product, then headed back to town.
We had dinner at Sussex, which is the restaurant upstairs from O'Brien's where we had beers the day before. Dublin was great, Ireland was great, London was great and Greg & Kelly were great. But tomorrow we would part ways, G&K going back to London and then home, while Lorri and I would fly to Paris for a week in the City of Light!
Ireland, New Market and Dingle
Paris, Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday