Sunday, October 9, 2011

Dublin recap finale




On Thursdays near the hotel a bunch of vendors set up shop and I had a chicken tikka wrap ... mmmm ..... and cupcakes for dessert. More mmmmm.












Thursday nights the shops are open late so everyone went to get their gifts for the back-homes. This is a whole lot of parking space right in the shopping area taken up by bike racks. I sure do love this city!








Friday we got out early (4pm!) so a couple of us ran to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells exhibit, which closes at 5pm. When you arrive 15 minutes before closing time, you only pay half - and the exhibit is small enough that 15 minutes was perfect. I closed my week of culinary delights with Thai takeout and packing, as I had to be up at 3am-ish for our 4am taxi.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Dublin re-cap Part II

Wednesday I actually woke early enough to go for a run. Here's the park right by our hotel (OK fine, it wasn't open during my run so I ran around it but I walked through on a different day. It doesn't make it any less pretty.)



Wednesday was also our "official" group outing to the middle of nowhere to Johnnie Fox's to hear Irish music and see Irish dancing. Yes, those are chamber pots on the ceiling. I think.


If I find where my husband hid the poor quality videos of Irish dancing, I'll post them later! I am sad to say I think I know where he hid them ...

Dublin long-overdue recap part I

The last week of August I was in Dublin for training. It was serious stuff, and I learned a lot, made good connections, blah blah. One of the main responsibilities of my job is event planning, so when you put together 20+ of us, the odds are good that someone's going to come up with a plan.

Our first night after training we went to the Guinness Storehouse tour - the tour went until 7pm until the end of August so we had until Wednesday. I forgot my camera that night so I don't have much to show about it, but it was really well done for a self-guided tour. And the "learn to pour" schtick was fun as was the beer tasting.

Monday night the fire alarm went off in the hotel. The story at the time was it was "electrical" but the next morning's tale indicated it might have been more like "user error". All I know is when someone pounded on my door at 2am all I thought of was stupid drunks so when I opened my door to yell at them, and they turned out to be hotel staff in bright orange vests and I could smell smoke, I impressed myself with the coolness and speed with which I figured out the most important things to bring with me, changed into jeans, grabbed my coat and got outside. The fire alarms didn't work everywhere in the building (hence the personal wakeup calls). Aren't we glad it wasn't worse? One of the women in the training was right by the fire site and the hotel dry cleaned ALL her clothes and, obviously, changed her room. We got back to bed some time after 4am.

I skipped Tuesday night's Jameson's Whiskey tour and studied Russian like a good girl at a Malaysian restaurant. Mmmm.

Here are some pretty things near the hotel. I love the bright colored doors in the somber brick or stone homes.


Here's the canal that stood between us and the heart of the city.