Panes of Glass

At last, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the end of my story of the trip! Hooray! Go grab some popcorn and a Dr. Pepper… this might take a little while. So we left off yesterday after the end of our day trip to Avoca and Glendalough. Since we had originally planned to use that Wednesday to just relax and read, we switched that to Thursday and headed into Dublin once more to find a warm coffee shop. We found a place called Barnie’s just off of Temple Bar on the way to Trinity College. We spent the next several hours drinking chocolate and tea, reading, writing, and generally relaxing upstairs next to a cozy fire. As the weather had cooled off and grown cloudy again, it was the perfect way to spend the day. The rest of the details between reading and going to the literary pub crawl are a little hazy. I know we ate at a place off of Temple Bar that we both enjoyed, but I don’t remember exactly where.

Well, that night, we headed up to The Duke to join the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl. We weren’t sure what exactly to expect from this, but it turned out to be absolutely splendid! The pub crawl consisted of two actors who quoted plays and bits of various works by various Irish (primarily Dubliner) authors as we went from pub to pub. We visited The Duke, Trinity College, The Old Stand, O’Neill’s and Davy Byrne’s Pub, which was one of the settings for James Joyce’s Ulysses. We met several interesting people on the crawl with us, including a woman who worked in London as an art consultant and a woman with her family from Adelaide, Australia, where I had spent half the summer of 2003. The latter asked Julie and I to join them for dinner after the pub crawl, which was very nice, but it was quite late and there was only one more bus we could catch back to Emeka and Wemi’s flat. We also spoke with some of the local Dubliners. In The Old Stand, Julie kept stepping back to let people by and the couple seated at the table next to her invited her to sit down and join them. Another guy at the bar, once Julie had received her at-first-rejected-hot-chocolate, started chatting away. Dublin is supposed to be famed for its friendliness. I think we’d both agree.

Friday we went into Dublin once more to see Dublin Castle and Christ Church Cathedral. However, it was lightly misting just enough to get us wet. We kept trying to catch a bus, but they kept passing by our stop, so we just walked down to Carroll’s to buy gifts for each other and family back home. Then we went to O’Donohue’s Pub to get a drink to warm up and wait for our planned lunch at O’Neill’s. (O’Neill’s was so good that we had lunch there twice!) Julie and I had started talking about all my hobbies and interests, etc. at some point on the way to the pub, and we continued our conversation in there. It wasn’t fun, but it was so good in the end. It really made me think about a lot of things, and I have been a lot more clear and focused since that conversation. I’m still working out details, and I may post further details on the outcome of the conversation, but it is really a digression from the story, as has been this sentence.

So after that tough discussion, we went to O’Neill’s to celebrate. And once again, the food was superb! The rain stopped while we were inside, and Dublin Castle was not far off, so we walked down and did the tour. It was fantastic inside. So much detail that I could never possibly remember. I think Julie might, but again, this is my blog, not hers, so you’re not going to get much. Needless to say, we both enjoyed it a lot. By the time the tour was over, the weather looked threatening again, so we walked back to the bus stop, stopping along the way to pick up some hot chocolate, groceries to make dinner. We had a great time with Wemi and Emeka that night, chatting, playing games, etc. They are such a fun couple!

The next day we left Dublin and thanked Wemi and Emeka for a great time. They drove us to the airport and we caught our flight back to London. When we arrived in London, we caught a train to Woking meet up with Dovie Keprta, another friend from First Baptist. We decided against going back into London and instead had tea and McVitie’s biscuits. We then went for a drive into the nearby town to have a great noodle dinner. (I can’t remember the names of anything anymore!) Dovie was kind enough to let us stay with her even though she’d just hosted several ladies just the weekend before, and she’s been working like a mad woman! We sure appreciated it, though!

Sunday morning, we got up and left for the train station, fully planning to catch all the right trains and be at the airport in plenty of time… except that both Julie and I forgot how to read the train station signs. We stood on the wrong platform as our train pulled in, stopped, and then left. We had to catch another train and then get a connecting train, which got us to Gatwick airport over an hour later than we had planned and ten minutes later than we had to be there. Julie asked on of the Continental Airlines attendants if they could help us, and they got us on the plane. Thank you Traci and Imren! So we caught our flight and got back home safe and sound.

We had a great trip, and Julie is such a great travel partner. If you are interested in the photos, the gallery is posted here.