Wednesday, April 7, 2010



Today we woke up pretty early and went walking over to the Dublin Bus headquarters for our tour of Northern Irelands coast and Malahide castle. The last person to live in the castle was in 1978, which was one of the members of the family who occupied the castle for the previous 800 years. She recently died one year ago at the age of 93. A jester by the name of Puck still haunts the castle every time something he does not like happens. The most recent event was when some of the original items from the family were auctioned off. He is four feet tall and has his own door (doggie door) in the dining room.






The tour then also took us through the coast of Ireland. It showed us the school were the band U2 met and formed.











The bus driver was hilarious and even let David behind the wheel (Now he can work the wheel chair lift on any bus ☺ ) We learned from the driver that the streets of Ireland aren’t really full of potholes. They drive in Braille.

After the tour we went over to this big Irish souvenir shop. They have absolutely everything in there.


We watched the Invention of Lying this afternoon. And now we are going to pack and check in for our flight tomorrow. We are going to have to get up at 445am here (930pm at home if you are Marianne. The real time is 9:45pm) ohhh boy….
Kristie, we got a picture of a funny looking European for you, and there is a ton of really cool Guinness merchandise. Rob you should really visit here and get what you want for yourself cuz we have no room in our bags… sorry ☹


Thursday.... (traveling to Ireland)

We woke up early (for real this time) and went down stairs to our not so good breakfast place, and headed out to the station. We took the overground out to catch the place where are train departed. They don’t post the platform number of where your train is leaving from until about ten minutes before it departs. So we quickly made our way down and boarded the train. The seats on the train were smaller than those on a plane and absolutely no leg room…. But Marianne still managed to fall asleep. After our almost 4 hour train ride to Hollyhead in Wales. We decided we were going to upgrade our tickets on the ferry.
We sat in the club cabin, which was really nice and had a bunch of tables, comfy couches and chairs. They also served complementary food and wine




So, we asked our waiter on the boat if we could have some “mustard” and he had no idea what we were saying. He came back a little later and goes… “Oh we have a different slang for it… we call it sauce”. Even though the package clearly has mustard written across it. We played a bunch of card games, and Marianne fell asleep (shocker) and we arrived in Dublin with absolutely no idea of how to get to the hotel 3 and ½ hours later.





We found a cab and took it from the port to our hotel. The cab driver was interesting… He tried to be a tour guide for us, and pointed out pretty much every bank from the port to the hotel. “Did you know this square half-mile has 480 banks???!!”


The first thing we noticed was public trash cans!!!!!!






Once we got to the hotel we went walking around the city down by the river and Temple Bar (the big area where all the nightlife is). We found a pub and had some drinks and AWESOME FOOD!

Then went back to the hotel and watched a really good movie. We then tried to call it a night but Marianne was scared from the non-horror film.

PS. Our hotel looks like the mad hatter designed it.. check it out