Another great day in Dublin
...View Day Three photos...
PS: I (MJ) hate it that I haven't been able to spend time playing with the color on these photos. But, we have many many photos to work with. If you can believe it, these hardly touch the amount we have downloaded!
Today was a great one! I'm going to try to not go as into it as I have the past two days. We're tired tonight.
We started the day with a tour of the 1916 Rising. Again, this is the battle that allowed Ireland to separate from Britain. MJ's great-grandfather, Robert Monteith, was one of two men who sailed with Sir Roger Casement to bring thousands of arms over on a U-boat from Berlin the day prior to the 1916 Rising. Anyways, the tour was absolutely great. We would HIGHLY recommend it to anyone looking into the history of Ireland's independent state. There were only 4 of us on the tour and the leader is a young guy who is passionate about this stuff. He was funny and very cool. I told him that the reason why we wanted to take the tour was because my great-grandfather was one of the two men who was with Sir Casement. He was amazed to find out that I was related to Capt. Robert Monteith (well, technically he's my step-great-grandfather). He shook my hand and said that he had meet many family members of people involved in the Rising, but never a relative of Monteith. It was so cool. I told him that we're going to go to Banna Strand, on the west coast, to visit where they landed. He suggested that we go to the local newspaper there and tell them that I'm related to Capt. Monteith and they would be very interested to hear that we came there to visit the site. Pretty cool. We may try to do it. Stay posted. So, all in all, we'd really suggest to take this tour. It's not a popular one, but everyone seems to know this guy and anyone who's done the tour says it was wonderful. We bought his book to learn even more about what happened.
From there, we went to a stamp/coin shop to pick up some Euros and Pounds to bring home for MJ's brother-in-law. Cool stuff. Then we made our way to the Guinness Brewery. My gosh it was a long walk. We stopped at a pub (pronounced "poob") for a much needed lunch. It was in a new area where we hadn't been. We're definitely getting off the beaten path (told ya we would, Mike)! Finally, we found Guinness. It was very cool. A nice, well done tour. The cool thing is that they have a circular viewing room at the top where you get a free pint. **YUCK** The view was great, but neither of us are really beer fans. MJ's especially not a Guinness fan. But I tried it (again, I promised my big brother, Mike).
After the tour, we hopped a bus to Temple Bar (like Beale Street) for the Musical Pub Crawl. Mighty cool tour again. Only about 10 of us on it with 2 musicians leading it...another little known tour. They took us to 3 very old established pubs and played for us (guitar and fiddle). They gave us some great history about jigs, reels and ballads. Very interesting. Again, a young lad and lass who were funny, knowledgeable and cool. We really enjoyed it, so much so that we took their recommendation to go to another pub to listen to a trio of musicians (accordion, fiddle, guitar). It's was a great place for a night cap.
Now we're back to our hotel. It's been nice to be able to come back to the same place for three nights in a row. We know our way around Dublin pretty well now (at least the very downtown part of it). We pick up the rental car tomorrow and the adventure continues! We're headed to Shannon and Galway, we think. We'll see how it evolves. We're not sure what the Internet access will be like in the B&B we'll find. So, this may or may not be the last post for a while.
We thought we'd start something new on our last day in Dublin. Each post will end with a HUH? As in "How Unbelievably Hysterical." It could be funny, or just an odd thing done in Ireland. Today's would be the fact that the bathroom stalls are tiny. They are practically individual rooms. Besides the fact that the flusher is on the right (when facing it), the space between the toilet and stall door is very tight. Don't worry, I'm (MJ) not going to go into great details. Except for the fact that in order to get out of the bathroom stall, I had to open the door halfway, lean against the wall on the left (ewww), then pick my right leg up and over the toilet in order to open the door to exit. Strange. I didn't take a picture of that. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe a video. Nah. Our moms are viewing. We wouldn't want to embarrass them.
Thanks again for your prayers for safety as well as your interest in our trip. We're enjoying it!
Much love.
PS: I (MJ) hate it that I haven't been able to spend time playing with the color on these photos. But, we have many many photos to work with. If you can believe it, these hardly touch the amount we have downloaded!
Today was a great one! I'm going to try to not go as into it as I have the past two days. We're tired tonight.
We started the day with a tour of the 1916 Rising. Again, this is the battle that allowed Ireland to separate from Britain. MJ's great-grandfather, Robert Monteith, was one of two men who sailed with Sir Roger Casement to bring thousands of arms over on a U-boat from Berlin the day prior to the 1916 Rising. Anyways, the tour was absolutely great. We would HIGHLY recommend it to anyone looking into the history of Ireland's independent state. There were only 4 of us on the tour and the leader is a young guy who is passionate about this stuff. He was funny and very cool. I told him that the reason why we wanted to take the tour was because my great-grandfather was one of the two men who was with Sir Casement. He was amazed to find out that I was related to Capt. Robert Monteith (well, technically he's my step-great-grandfather). He shook my hand and said that he had meet many family members of people involved in the Rising, but never a relative of Monteith. It was so cool. I told him that we're going to go to Banna Strand, on the west coast, to visit where they landed. He suggested that we go to the local newspaper there and tell them that I'm related to Capt. Monteith and they would be very interested to hear that we came there to visit the site. Pretty cool. We may try to do it. Stay posted. So, all in all, we'd really suggest to take this tour. It's not a popular one, but everyone seems to know this guy and anyone who's done the tour says it was wonderful. We bought his book to learn even more about what happened.
From there, we went to a stamp/coin shop to pick up some Euros and Pounds to bring home for MJ's brother-in-law. Cool stuff. Then we made our way to the Guinness Brewery. My gosh it was a long walk. We stopped at a pub (pronounced "poob") for a much needed lunch. It was in a new area where we hadn't been. We're definitely getting off the beaten path (told ya we would, Mike)! Finally, we found Guinness. It was very cool. A nice, well done tour. The cool thing is that they have a circular viewing room at the top where you get a free pint. **YUCK** The view was great, but neither of us are really beer fans. MJ's especially not a Guinness fan. But I tried it (again, I promised my big brother, Mike).
After the tour, we hopped a bus to Temple Bar (like Beale Street) for the Musical Pub Crawl. Mighty cool tour again. Only about 10 of us on it with 2 musicians leading it...another little known tour. They took us to 3 very old established pubs and played for us (guitar and fiddle). They gave us some great history about jigs, reels and ballads. Very interesting. Again, a young lad and lass who were funny, knowledgeable and cool. We really enjoyed it, so much so that we took their recommendation to go to another pub to listen to a trio of musicians (accordion, fiddle, guitar). It's was a great place for a night cap.
Now we're back to our hotel. It's been nice to be able to come back to the same place for three nights in a row. We know our way around Dublin pretty well now (at least the very downtown part of it). We pick up the rental car tomorrow and the adventure continues! We're headed to Shannon and Galway, we think. We'll see how it evolves. We're not sure what the Internet access will be like in the B&B we'll find. So, this may or may not be the last post for a while.
We thought we'd start something new on our last day in Dublin. Each post will end with a HUH? As in "How Unbelievably Hysterical." It could be funny, or just an odd thing done in Ireland. Today's would be the fact that the bathroom stalls are tiny. They are practically individual rooms. Besides the fact that the flusher is on the right (when facing it), the space between the toilet and stall door is very tight. Don't worry, I'm (MJ) not going to go into great details. Except for the fact that in order to get out of the bathroom stall, I had to open the door halfway, lean against the wall on the left (ewww), then pick my right leg up and over the toilet in order to open the door to exit. Strange. I didn't take a picture of that. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe a video. Nah. Our moms are viewing. We wouldn't want to embarrass them.
Thanks again for your prayers for safety as well as your interest in our trip. We're enjoying it!
Much love.
posted by greens at
5:40 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home