Today we 3 girls got up in the early afternoon, hopefully caught up from jet lag now. I was last downstairs, where I found the others having breakfast (or whatever...) and joined them. Aside from the usual tea, I had soda bread and Shreddies cereal, which is like Chex. Shrek was on the front of the box, and inside I found a plastic Puss in Boots head, which is on a string and I think is an ornament. LOL. Ruth said she didn't want it, so I kept it!
Now we girls are getting ready to take a bus into Dublin. Ha ha, Ruth just asked Janis if she needs to borrow her "bum bag" (i.e. fanny pack). Fanny is a bad word here, but ass isn't.
Gotta go.
bus into Dublin
Well, we're back from our big adventure in downtown Dublin. And what a time we had!!
We hopped the 7 bus, and it took a while for us to find the correct change for fare, so the driver said to just get on and find the money as we drove along. He seemed like a very nice and jolly fellow. [Edit: Thinking back now, he reminds me of Gary Oldman a bit, in looks and demeanor.] A few minutes after we got on, he reached back his hand and said, "Okay, my American friends, show me the money." LOL. So we handed it to him, and he didn't even count it before putting it in the box. We talked to him a little, asking him where would be the best place to get off in Dublin, and so he told us and said that he would let us know when we were stopped there.
We got off after a 40-50 minute ride, somewhere downtown - we weren't sure where, but Ruth got out a map and told us when we got back - and now I've forgotten the street name again. We were north of the River Liffey. [Edit: I checked back, and we got off at Henry St.] We spent about an hour shopping in this one store called Carroll's, which is a big Irish touristy souvenir shop. I think I spent over 70 euros in there on stuff for myself and others - yikes. I will have to be very careful in future. Actually, the other two girls spent about 90 and 100 themselves, so I don't feel quite as bad. But I really have to save money for London!!
After Carroll's, we wandered the streets in that little area. It was drizzling, and we had umbrellas, but our paper shopping bags got soaked a bit and started to rip (especially the other girls'). We stopped in a Penney's department store and were able to get fresh bags to put them in, but those were still paper (we couldn't get plastic) and so the new ones eventually got quite wet themselves. Another thing I learned about Ireland today is that plastic bags cost a little money, so you should ask for a paper bag when shopping if you don't want to pay for plastic. (Yesterday I learned that the Irish also have to pay to have their trash [rubbish] collected.)
We wandered from Penney's down to a mall called Jervis or Jarvis, which was not separate from other buildings but packed right into the row of other shops. It had the typical mall kind of stores and kiosks, and it went up 4 floors. We poked around a tiny bit but didn't see much of interest or buy anything.
After that was when we meandered south past Trinity College, which houses the Book of Kells - an ancient, elaborate copy of the Bible scribed by Irish monks around the 6th(?) century. [Edit: I think they actually said it was between the seventh and eleventh.] I really hope I can go see that book sometime during this trip! It sounds totally awesome....
We crossed the River Liffey and walked along Grafton Street, and we saw a few more Carroll's stores. [Edit: We actually crossed the river, from north to south, before we got to Trinity, which is on the south side.] Ruth thinks that store is silly, and she kind of snorted a bit when we told her we had gone there.
By that time it was getting on into the evening, and we were getting very hungry and also a bit chilly (because we were soaking). We began to look around for a good place to eat. We passed a bunch of pubs and seemed to walk on for a long time - I was pretty much just following the other girls and not speaking a whole lot then, because I was feeling pretty worn out. I wondered if Janice had forgotten that we needed to stop and eat. (She was sort of the leader because she's been to Dublin and the camp before.) I don't know how long it took before we finally chose a place. Shortly before we did go in a restaurant, we saw a pub called Davy Byrne's, which I just had to get a picture of! [Edit: That's my uncle's name.] We were thinking of going in there, but all we saw on the outside menu was wine and seafood. Plus there were a bunch of people in suits inside, like it was a dressier kind of place - and we were looking quite bedraggled by that time! Soaked jeans and tennis shoes and hoodie jackets and all. We walked from that place down to a men's clothing store nearby (oddly enough) and went in and asked the men working there to recommend us a good place to eat. They said the next street over was full of places that were good, so we headed over there.
We finally chose an Italian place called Spaco's Ristorante. Darn - I wanted to see the inside of a pub and have some pub grub. But I did end up liking that restaurant. It was neat-looking and modern-looking. We went up a narrow set of iron stairs to the second floor to eat. It seems all the downtown shops and such are taller than they are wide. They are all crammed together so close.
The food was delicious but rather pricy. For 10.95 euro (one of the cheaper items) I had some kind of long-named pasta in a creamy white wine sauce with chicken and mushrooms. And we all ordered tea, which was brought in nice little kettles for us to pour. (Had milk in it again.) I must say, Ruth makes better tea than that stuff, though.
We headed back into the chilly and blustery streets, where we didn't spend too much more time wandering around. We searched for the bus stop where our nice driver of earlier had told us to catch the bus back to Dun Laoghaire. We had to wait a tired and shivery ten minutes for the bus, which comes every ten to fifteen. So I guess we'd just missed the previous one. We had our money ready this time and climbed aboard among a crowd of other people. We sat at the very front again but didn't talk to this driver. Janice told me to watch out my side of the bus, when we got into Dun Laoghaire, for this beautiful park we would turn next to, shortly before we had to get off. She and Janis would then spot a church on their side that was one stop away from ours. We found both the park and the church all right, but then we ran into some trouble. (Oh, before I talk about that, I have to mention that I saw a jewelry store in downtown Dun Laoghaire called Gollum's Precious!! Awesome!!!!)