Filed under: Dublin
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.
Filed under: Dublin
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.
Filed under: Dublin
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.
Filed under: Dublin
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:
Filed under: Dublin
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.
Filed under: Dublin
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.
Filed under: Dublin
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.
We had another wonderful breakfast in Donegal. (We stayed at The Arches by the way, which we highly recommend.)
We wanted to take a boat tour of Donegal Bay but sadly the water was out so the tour was happening in the afternoon and we couldn’t wait. So we took off for Bundoran – a really nice seaside town. The weather was perfect. We walked along the beach. The girls found a ton of cool shells and the boys kicked the soccer ball a lot.
We saw some surfers – yup people surf off the coast in Ireland. In fact it’s pretty popular.
After a while we started on our way back to Dublin. We drove straight through the country rather than the long route we took to get to Donegal. We planned to have lunch in Cavan but we didn’t see a restaurant so we headed to Virgina. We had a really nice lunch there at a hotel on Lake Erne.
We finally got into town about 4:30 – just in time to have a little rest and get ready for a big family dinner at a fancy restaurant in town at night. All of us (6 kids, 8 adults) ate at a restaurant called 66. The food was great and everyone had a very nice time. The restaurant was very patient as the first of our party arrived at 6:30 and the last closer to 8:00.
Filed under: Donegal
Friday I woke, got out my computer and it didn’t work. It wouldn’t start at all. Maybe it was the 7-up that Patrick opened on it yesterday.
We sat down to a very yummy breakfast – including great Irish bacon. Then I started off towards Donegal Town to get my computer fixed. It’s 3-5 miles from the Bed & Breakfast. Patrick did not feel bad at all about breaking my computer so I left him at home.
Luckily I was able to find a computer fixit place and they were able to fix the computer for me. I found a WIFI network and was able to catch up with work. Then I realized that I had to idea where everyone might be – but I figured O’Donnell Castle in Donegal would be a good guess. SO I met up with them there.
We walked around the town a bit. It’s a nice town. We saw an art exhibit by Edel Gallagher. Then we drove off to Killybegs, a fishing town not too far from Donegal Town. The funny thing was that it was very hard to find fresh fish for lunch in the fishing town. Both of the hotels in town seemed to feature meat. We ended up at Fish & Chip type place but it was good.
Then we headed off on another drive. Neither Patrick nor Michael was very specific about where we were going. So we ended up in the car for about 2 hours until it got dark and started to rain – then we found ourselves in Burtonport, where apparently their great grandmother (or someone) is from. The best this about this side excursion is that I will never have to go to Burtonport again. (When we got home Patrick’s mom’s first question is whether we visited someone she knew at the pub there. Of course e hadn’t – that visit might have picked up the trip considerably!)
We headed back to Donegal. Unfortunately we ran into the same problem as the night before – restaurants were started to close despite it meaning 7:00 on a Friday night. We did find a great place – a casual café sort of thing that actually had a computer with WIFI – so the kids all took a turn going online.
Finally we ended the night in the pub. Where the grownups had exactly one pint each because the kids were complaining the whole time.
Filed under: Donegal
We got up super early today. I had my shower before 6:30. We squeezed 8 people into a 7-seat van and set off for the endless road trip. Michael (Patrick’s brother) rented the van and we were traveling with him, Killian and Aidan.
Our first stop was Nenah in County Tipperary, not too far from Thurles. We saw the former chief friary of Ireland; it’s pretty much in ruins. We had lunch at a place called Roots – which I highly recommend. It was 10:30 in the morning and the owner/chef came out to tell us what kind of fruit she had (for a special order) and said that if Aine really wanted spaghetti, she could make it. (Luckily the fruit sounded good too.)
At about 12:30 we started off for Ennis – a 45 minute drive. At 2:30 we finally arrived in Ennis. The purpose of this trip was to visit Patrick’s Aunt Sister Celine. We met Patrick’s mom, brother Shay, brother Eamonn and wife (Erin) and son (Mikey) in Ennis. They had wisely taken the train. They arrived on time at 1:30.
The other purpose of the trip was to go to Donegal – a plan that Patrick pushed heavily by saying that Donegal is a straight shot from Ennis. Straight does not mean short. After 3+ hours of driving in the morning, we got into the car at 5:00 for 4 more hours of driving.
We drove past Galway and had dinner in Sligo. We drove by tons of historical and literary markers – Sligo is WB Yeats territory – but it was dark so we didn’t see much. We arrived at 9:00 for dinner. Sadly most of the restaurants seem to close at about 9:00.
So we ended up – all 8 of us at an Indian restaurant. Actually it was very good and we all liked it – but it was a little slower and fancier than we needed.
Right before midnight we cruised into the Bed & Breakfast.
Here’s a if you want to track our travels. We went from Dublin to Clare to Sligo to Donegal.
(You may notice that Patrick spilled on his shirt. He opened a 7 up that exploded. Unfortunately he opened it up right over my laptop! This info may seem gratuitous today – but it comes into play tomorrow.)
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