10 Questions About…

This weekend has been windy – very windy in Ireland. Rumor has it they took all of the boats out of the water on the West coast and they’d asked people to keep away from the coast. It’s not quite that bad in Dublin – but it is windy.

We had planned to go ice skating today but Kate decided that we shouldn’t because certainly we’d all break an arm. So we went to the Blackrock Market and to have lunch in Blackrock.

Blackrock isn’t very far from Cabinteely. We took a bus. The market wasn’t very busy – probably because of the wind and rain. The market has about 20 stalls and you can buy a wide range of items – from dream catchers, a red secondhand leather jacket that was only €15 (I add that in case Patrick is reading this and wondering what to get me for Christmas), books, records, candles and lot of other things.

Blackrock is on the bay so I took some pictures of Patrick and the kids – but as you’ll see the wind wasn’t too impressive here.

At night Patrick and I went to a pub called the Silver Tassie. Really we just went to any pub that was less than 3 bus stops away. It was pure luck that this pub has a singer with a drum machine and we could hear every female-sung song from 1982! Plus it was someone’s 60th birthday so there were tons of people dressed up.

On Friday night Patrick and I went to see Bad Manners. They were great! I’m pretty sure that the last time I saw them was in Dublin almost 15 years ago.

Bad Manners is a fun ska band. The lead singer is Buster Bloodvessel. They’re big songs include My Girl Lollypop and Lip Up Fatty. I’ve learned that some bands do not weather well – but that’s not the case with Bad Manners. They were as good now as they were years ago. I wish I had my camera at the show – I think I was the only person who wasn’t taking pictures or videos.

I staked out room right in front of the stage. Patrick spent more time in the moshpit. We left hot and sweaty – but that was good because it was very windy outside.

On Tuesday, Patrick and I went to the Project Arts Center to see any art exhibit – Blackboxing. It was a pretty modern exhibit – so I liked it and Patrick didn’t.

After the show we went to an Italian restaurant. It was good and not too expensive. One good sign was that we were one of the few tables in the place not speaking Italian.

After the show we stopped by the Porterhouse Pub where we ran into someone from Patrick’s class. So we had a fun time and a good Tuesday night.

Today we went with Fearghal to the Phoenix Park. We were in the Phoenix Park a couple of months ago to go to the zoo but we didn’t much time to walk around. This time we took time to climb up the Wellington Testimonial (not to the top). Then we took off to see the Papal Cross.

The Papal Cross marks the place where the Pope said mass in 1979. Both Patrick and Fearghal remembered waking up early to go to see the Pope. I think pretty much everyone in Ireland (certainly Dublin) at the time remembers going to see the Pope.

We didn’t see the Pope – but we did get to see the deer. There’s a herd of deer that apparently hang out at the park. The park is huge – almost 1800 acres. Anyways back to the deer – Aine nearly caught a deer. She was very, very sad that she didn’t catch one.

The weather was amazing. It was cold on Friday – but the weather bounced back for us over the rest of the weekend.

Here’s a map from Cabinteely to Phoenix Park. We rarely go to North Dublin, so I thought it might be interesting to see:

View Larger Map

We saw a very fun play tonight – Improbably Frequency. It was showing at the Pavilion Theater in Dun Laoghaire. The nice thing about Dun Laoghaire is that it’s much closer to the house than Dublin city center.

Here’s the advance trailer from YouTube:

For those who have seen any of Patrick’s plays, especially The Third Policeman, this play was much like his show.

After the show we went to the pub next door, which is very trendy, We got to see someone get kicked out, which is always fun. They we went to a Karaoke bar that wasn’t very trendy at all – but fun.

The great news is that we got a digital video camera (woo hoo) the bad news is that the upload broadband speeds at the house are so bad I can’t easily upload the videos. L The sadder news is that it took 25 minutes to upload the 3-minute video from the library too.

But here are the videos we took earlier this week.

Did we celebrate Thanksgiving? No. But we did go into town to see the Christmas lights on Grafton Street (as seen below). We also had dinner at Brewley’s. So it was a nice night – but no one got off school, off work or had stuffing.

OK I’m sorry that it has taken us so long to talk about Halloween. A few have asked about it – but really we weren’t sure what Halloween was going to be like until we lived it.

The girls got dressed up. And their cousins (Killian and Aidan from Australia and Mikey for NY) joined them for track or treating. We went around the block at their Irish Grandma’s house. Not everyone was prepared but most people were and we ran into a few other trick or treaters. The kids were not required to sing or dance to get a treat; their dad had warned them that they might have to do this.

People are not as worried about giving or receiving things like apples or homemade popcorn – so that was kind of different. Lots of people (though not us) get fireworks and set them off. We were able to see quite a few small displays from the park across the street from the house.

When Patrick was young there used to be a lot of bonfires too – but they are strongly discouraged now. In fact I think if you tried to light one, you would be stopped.

What’s the best thing about Halloween in Ireland? You get the week off from school.

Monday we all went to Sugar Loaf – well the O’Donnells hailing from Florida, Australia, and Minnesota climbed the Great Sugar Loaf. It was cold and windy – but we were very tough. The view from the top is amazing. (OK I didn’t quite get to the top as I waiting with Lily and a sleeping Aine near the top) but even what we could see was amazing.

Sugar Loaf is in Wicklow – about 10 miles from Cabinteely so about 20 miles from the City Centre. But from the top of Sugar Loaf you can see clear to Howth – which is the other side of the city.

The pictures kind of speak for themselves – but I thought I’d use the trip as an excuse to try to show some maps of County Dublin to give you guys an idea of our stomping ground:

Here’s a quick map of Dublin (http://www.countydublin.com/dublin_map.htm). We live inland from Killiney. We often go to Dun Laoghaire. Howth is where we saw the Seals. The Sugar Loaf is in Wicklow- which as you can see if sort of off the map. The Powerscourt Ritz Carleton overlooks the Sugar Loaf. (I’ll try to add a picture of the hotel from the mountain if it turned out.)

Here is a quick map of Wicklow (http://www.irishtourist.com/wicklow/maps/road_map/). I don’t find it to be as useful – but there you have it.