Off to Ireland: Day 1-Dublin

It’s been a long day. Yesterday, Thursday I think, Kay and I grabbed an Uber to the C&J bus and thence to Boston Logan. We got on the Aer Lingus Airbus for the 6-hour flight to Dublin. Given that it was a relatively short flight, we decided not to cough up for business class. Not a bad flight as these things go, but I think they have pushed the seats together as far as they can without causing a mutiny among the passengers. It’s no joke for a big husky gent like me with a certain amount of stiffness to spend an extended period with his knees up around his ears, no siree. At least there were no screaming infants, unlike our flight to Amsterdam a couple years ago, where there was a very unhappy toddler who caterwauled for a good 8 hours. Take it from me: if you haven’t purchased a good set of noise-canceling earphones and you fly somewhere in the company of a screaming tyke, I promise that you will wish you had. 

Jet lag is always a problem. Our flight left at about 9 PM US time and landed at 8 AM, but for me, it was 3 AM, and I didn’t sleep on the plane. You ever feel so tired that you feel like you are vibrating? It’s like extreme fatigue superimposed over way too much coffee. And of course, when you get to your hotel, it’s not like you can check in and catch a nap. We dropped our bags and set off to explore the city, with a mere 5 hours to kill. We found a well-reviewed cafe, and I had a full Irish breakfast and slugged down a few macchiatos. 

If you are unfamiliar with the full Irish (which has a great deal in common with the full English and full Scottish), here’s what you’ve been missing:

Although there are variations, it consists of fried eggs, Irish-style bacon (cut from the belly and leaner than what we are used to), hash browns, sausages, fried mushrooms, baked beans, and black pudding. A word about black pudding. It’s a kind of sausage made from oatmeal, beef suet, onions, and plenty of blood, usually cow or pig. I tried it a very long time ago, and once was enough, thank you very much; without going into detail, it tastes pretty much the way you would expect a “pudding” made of blood, fat, and oatmeal to taste. These days I get my full Irish or English sans black pudding. 

Thus fortified, we set out again to explore Dublin. It is an interesting place, not on the scale of London or some of the other capitals of Europe. We still had about 3 hours to kill, so we took a stroll through the Temple Bar area of town. Every travel book about Ireland you read says that the area is touristy but still fun to visit, and I think that’s accurate. There is a pub every 20 feet or so, so you’ll never want for a pint. The center of Temple Bar is a pub called (wait for it) The Temple Bar.

We made it back to our hotel and managed to grab a nap, then went out to Devitt’s pub for dinner.

This was a little bit more of what I had in mind. We sat in the upstairs bar, and I had the traditional Irish roast dinner. A traditional roast dinner consists of roast chicken, beef, or lamb cut in thick slices and served with potatoes, roasted seasonal vegetables, and a rich brown gravy. Mine was lamb, and it was a belly-packer.

Kay had the seafood chowder. It had salmon, shrimp, and cream, and as Tony Bourdain used to say, if God made anything better, he kept it for himself. However, the 2 pints of Harp I consumed hit me like a freight train, so we caught a cab and headed back to the hotel. I think I passed out around 10 PM and didn’t wake until about 7:30, which is the most I’ve slept in quite some time.

Today (actually the next day; it takes time to write these blog posts), we are headed back to the airport to pick up our rental car and my son and his wife, thence to Killarney, about 3 hours away. I’ll be driving on the left, so pray for me. Stay tuned for the further travels of the Samurai Shrink and his plucky spouse Kay as they wander the Emerald Isle, assuming our Golf Pogo hybrid isn’t crushed by a lorry.