10 Questions About…

We went to Dun Laoghaire today – shocker. We seem to do that most Sundays. But we had a nice day. We walked down the West (aka other) Pier. Lily and I saw a seal – it seemed to look right at us. It was a pretty cold day but seeing the seal made the cold walk worth it.

After our walk we had lunch at one of our favorite Dun Laoghaire restaurants – Oliveto. I had Ox Cheeks and Thyme Risotto. It was really, really good and that’s not just the Chianti talking! We walked through the People’s Park Market and bought some fudge on the way to get to the bus .

On the way home we stopped and watched half of a rugby match. We had run into one of my walking friends (which just means someone I see and sometimes talk to on my walks around the park) and he had told us that it was a big match. The good news is that Seapoint won – which meant they won the league. The rugby fields are just across the street. Patrick and I watched the match. The girls played in the playground. (Which might make you think they’d be tired – but no one is asleep at 9:30 on a Sunday night. I think we’re still getting used to Irish time.)

I tried to use pictures today that captured everyone’s mood. (Kate is still not feeling 100 percent.)

What do I love more than scavenger hunts? Not much. So I was super thrilled to see the there was a scavenger hunt at the Kick Start festival in Dun Laoghaire today.

The Kick Start festival is supposed to celebrate the darkest Sunday of the year. There are bouncy castles, face painters and crafts along with the usual market – and a scavenger hunt.

The scavenger hunt involved a trek around the pier and half of Dun Laoghaire – but that was OK we had planned a hike anyways. So we answered all of the questions. We had a wonderful lunch at Olivetti’s. The pizza chef gave the kids some dough to play with and make their own mini pizzas. That was a good idea and kept everyone happy.

We got our scavenger results in just in time to be eligible for the prize drawing. We won free passes to the local gym. The best news is you have to be over 16 – so I won a bunch of free passes. The sad news is that it’s at least a 30 minute walk to the gym.

Speaking of which – Kate asked if we could just rent a car for her birthday but at least she’s moved off the idea of us flying her home for the weekend!

OK I’m already falling behind but I will try to catch up today. Last Sunday we We went to Dun Laoghaire with the Jordans. Patrick went to school with Paul Jordan. The Jordan kids are just a little bit younger than ours. We have visited with them in Dromahair.

We had a great walk down the pier and a fun lunch at Café MAO. The nice aspect of a busy restaurant was that the kids sat at a different table, which was about the only way they were going to start talking – without parental prodding. But as you can see from the one picture taken in the restaurant – it worked.

After lunch we went to the Balckrock Market. I was up for walking but some of the wimpier members of the crew insisted on the bus. I ended up getting two dresses. Lily got an old penny from 1900. Also I know have plans to come back to get old pictures of Dublin for the house back home. The big debate is big or little pictures.

We saw a great pantomime at the Children’s Theater in Minneapolis this year – but we just couldn’t pass up another one while we were here – especially since we needed a good indoor activity with the cold.

Last week went to Dun Laoghaire. We had a great lunch at the Purple Ocean. Regular readers will know that we very often have a nice lunch on Sundays with Irish Grandma. Once thing we’ve noticed is that the nice dinners are not as expensive as they used to be; nor are the restaurants as full. So we had a great-tasting reasonably prices lunch on the pier.

I was disappointed at how cold it was. I love walking down the pier – but it was just too yucky. I’ve had funny conversations with people here about the difference between the damp 20 degrees (F) here and -20 (f) back home. First I have to say that -20 is way colder than anything Ireland has ever seen. But 20 degrees in the rain and wind can seem a lot colder than a sunny 30 degrees. Last week was 30 degrees, rainy and miserable.

Anyways it was a perfect day for the panto – Scrooged. The quality of the production was probably not as high as back home; but it was fun. One thing that works much better here is the accent; you can say so much about a character with an accent. Even kids will pick up a ton about a character depending on their accent. Also kids here know how to interact; so there’s a lot more “oh no you won’t” type interaction.

Lily took some pictures of Aine on the stage and pictures of Dun Laoghaire…

On Tuesday night Aine got to have a sleepover with the big girls – but she got dropped off early the next morning. So I got to spend the day with Aine. Mostly we hung around Dun Laoghaire. We walked to the end of the East Pier. We didn’t see anything too exciting but it was fun. It never rained on us, which was a plus. We went to McDonald’s – which was a concession of sorts. We stopped in to see my friend Karina at Hughes & Hughes. I had plans to meet her later that night, which was fun. We visited the gallery at the Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council building.

We ended our day by meeting Patrick in the library.

We took 2 pictures especially for Grandma – one without a hat, one by a boat called Puffin!

This weekend is the Dun f us (O’Donnell’s from Cabinteely, Minnesota, Florida and Canberra) headed out to Dun Laoghaire. We walked down the pier – which I always love doing. It wasn’t sunny but it was pretty clear and fairly warm. You could easily see Howth in the background. We could see a ton of sailboats and our timing was perfect – they were all sort of heading out for a 3:00 start. Well that’s what we thought. We hung around at the end of the pier for about 20 minutes – and it was getting a little cold.

I thought a regatta was a race – but there never really was a start. At one point a navy-looking ship set off and we thought that would mean a grand beginning but not really.

But that was OK. It was a great walk, a nice day and we went for a nice Italian meal after seeing the boats.

Monday the girls and I went to Dun Laoghaire. We had a nice walk down the other pier, we did some shopping and we had a tasty dinner at Café Mao.

We thought we might see some Bloomsday characters – but if there were any around Dun Laoghaire, I figure they were probably there in the morning as any remotely Dun Laoghaire scenes in Ulysses happen early on in the book. I took a couple of snaps…

We went to 2 interesting lectures this week. And I’m using the royal we here. On Monday night, Kate and Patrick went to school/church to see John the gangster from London talk about how he found God.

Apparently the place was hopping. Patrick thought it was a good night. Kate thought it was strange. I thought it was a little strange too.

On Thursday Patrick and I went to hear Ruth Padel, the keynote speaker for the International Poetry Festival in Dun Laoghaire. (OK, yes I mostly went to have dinner beforehand.)

She talked about reading a poem for sound and about how the vowels move the poem from one line to another. She had a few interesting stories about, for example, the great vowel shift in English that apparently happened between the 12th and 18th centuries. It was the shift that moved us from Middle to Modern English, when English speakers stopped pronouncing vowels like the rest of Europe and started pronouncing them as we do now – closer towards the teeth.

I actually did find this interesting – but the connection between it and reading a poem was a little lost on me