Dublin!

St. Andrews was our last day in Scotland.  We drove David and Teri to the train station as they're continuing their vacation down in England.  Wendy, Mona, and I then drove to the airport to return the van and catch our flight to Dublin where we will spend the last three nights of our vacation.

Other than leaving a little late, this flight was uneventful.  The first good sign upon our arrival -- all of our luggage made it with us.  The second good sign -- the sun was shining!!  We didn't have a lot of sunny weather while in Scotland, and while the rain didn't keep us from doing all of the items we planned to do, it did put a damper (pun!!) on things at times.  We caught the bus to Parnell Square to The Charles Stewart B&B hotel that is our home for the next three nights.

The Charles Stewart is in an older building (1800s) in the heart of Georgian Dublin on the upper end of O'Connell Street at Parnell Square.  There is no lift and our room is on the fourth floor.  Let's just say there was a little labored breathing after toting up all of our luggage and leave it at that.  No A/C either, but with the cool temps, leaving the window open will solve that problem

With the afternoon flight, we didn't arrive until a little after 5:00pm so no real activities except for dinner and hitting the Temple Bar area for the pubs and traditional Irish music.  Mona and I have been to Dublin once before back in 2004, but this is Wendy's first time.  We decided to give Oliver St. John Gogarty's pub a try as we had great success there our previous trip and knew they would have music on.   You never know who's going to be there playing music.  We ended up with three guys -- one guitar, one banjo, and one mandolin -- and they were great.  Although we had no fiddle or pipes, they still played a lot of the traditional jigs and sang about Molly Malone.  We all sang along and had a fabulous time.  A great start to our Dublin visit.