Flying to Ireland, over 11 hours in a plane… when will I learn, business class is actually worth the money.  The flight over wasn’t so bad, it was long and cramped, but overall a good flight.  We met one of our adventure guides, Sarah, in the airport.  This trip we arrived fairly early in the morning, 8:30am.  So we actually had a bunch of time to kill before the welcome dinner that evening.  So we spent about 6 hours walking around Dublin, had lunch in a pub, and found just a ton of neat stuff within about half an hours walk of the hotel.  We had our welcome dinner and met some of our fellow adventurers.  Tried oysters on the half shell for the first time, bleck, how does anyone eat those?

September 18, Cead Mile Failte—“Wish you 100,000 welcomes”

We arrive in Ireland!  The plane ride’s a bit tiring—twelve hours in very close quarters is never easy.  When we arrived at the Westin Dublin, our rooms weren’t ready yet (big tour departing ahead of us) so we did some walking around Dublin.  We found Old Town Dublin, and managed to get just a bit lost.  Fortunately, David never gets very lost, and we had fun finding our way “home” again.  We walked by Dublin Castle and peeked in at Dublinia.  I wanted to go in and see both, but we’ll be seeing both of these tomorrow.

David’s leather Indiana Jones hat is a huge hit.  One Irish guy smiled at us and said something (we think) flattering about the hat.  We could barely understand a word of his thick accent!  We fear the inhabitants of this town don’t actually speak English…though we’ve been told they do!

We went to a nice Irish Pub for lunch.  David had roast pork, and I had Irish stew and parsnips.  Later that night at the Welcome Reception Dinner we both tried the oysters, and have decided they’re awful.  We also tried a dish of mussels and cockles (not alive alive-O) and decided they were good. 

We were a bit disappointed—this tour is a fairly large one, 38 people in total.  Our last two trips were smaller, which made it easier to get to know everyone.  However, many of the men have repeating names—David, Matthew, and Jason.  We have several of each!  Our guides have a cute little sheep purse called Sheepie that they keep our adventures by Disney pins in—he’s the mascot of our Ireland adventure.