Blogs from County Dublin, Ireland, Europe

I'm back home. I've been home for 2 days and finally able to function enough to make a to do list and start unpacking. Finishing this blog is top on my 'to do' list. If this last post doesn't get out today, it never will. I did start it at some point so here's what I got... The night we left Belfast I couldn't sleep trying to decide what to do in Dublin. One last night spent with Rick to make a plan for the next day and half.. We made it to Dublin from Belfast with only a quick rest stop along the way. Don was in his element here and gave us the grand tour of Dublin. He's very proud of this city. We went to Phoenix Park for a drive by of the ... read more

We started early this morning with a short walk back to the gardens at St Patrick’s Cathedral before breakfast. Bernie was keen to put the drone up to take a photo of the cathedral after starting it up yesterday and having it tell him that he COULD fly it in the area but needed to exercise caution. He chose not to fly it yesterday as there were too many people about but learnt last night that the gardens open at 7.30am. So, there we were at about 7.35am and the gates were not open. Damn! We walked down Bull Alley Street with Bernie planning to fly the drone over the fence to take a couple of photos. As he was unpacking it, I noticed that there were people inside the garden, and I offered to walk ... read more

This morning, we headed towards Dublin’s Georgian District in the south-eastern quadrant of the city. As we meandered in that direction, we passed St Werburgh’s Church and Dublin Castle. We will visit the castle another day but took the opportunity to venture into the courtyard this morning to take some photos before lots of tourists were about. As Dame Street merged into College Green we admired the Bank of Ireland building. It was challenging trying to take photos with end-to-end double decker busses motoring along the street! Perseverance paid off and photos of Ireland’s original Parliament Building were eventually taken. The bank has occupied the building since 1803 with Ireland’s Parliament being incorporated into the British Parliament in 1801. From the building that was once Parliament House we ventured around to Kildare Street where Leinster House ... read more

Because we chose to focus on museums for our last day, it meant we got a later start. Our breakfast crew went at 9am for our normal hotel buffet meal. Then after grabbing Alex, we walked to the National Ireland Museum area to check out our first museum of the day. First on the list was the Natural History Museum. We arrived a bit before opening which gave us time to catch our breath and observe the crowd. There was a dad taking photos of his son and daughter that you could tell were used to this treatment as they hugged and posed for the photo quick before jumping away to explore. A sign in front of the place explained the fact that this museum had been preserved as was developed in the past to help ... read more

Our Ireland travels begin a day earlier than our original plans. The direct flight from DFW had little odds of business class so we opted to fly the night before to CLT which put us as the top of the standby list enabled Alex to fit a couple meetings while we loitered in the Hilton hotel lobby before we left. At the airport, after a bit of walking back and forth due to gate changes, we found ourselves anxiously awaiting our seat assignments. Poor luck and totally clueless gate agents resulted in non-business and middle section aisle seats. I quickly hopped in line to get them to switch us to a window in hopes of some sleep for this redeye flight. Luckily, we ended up with a row ton ourselves. We stared diligently at the boarding ... read more