Day 2 of 21 "May the 4th be with you"

 Our first day in Dublin!  We landed at 5:30am local time, skipped the luggage carousel because we packed carry-on luggage only (practicing minimalism), went straight to customs (no paperwork needed here), then found a taxi ride to our hotel, Wren Urban Nest hoping for an early check-in time. No luck there, but we did store our luggage and walked the streets of Dublin before the city woke up, walking, walking walking until 8am when restaurants finally opened for coffee and breakfast. 

Trinity College is a few blocks away, and it didn't take long to learn that the campus is closed to the public. Students are protesting the war in Gaza, and only students and faculty are allowed in. We had hoped to visit "Book of Kells," an illuminated manuscript and Celtic Gospel in Latin containing the four Gospels in the New Testament. Patrick's dentist highly recommended we see this ancient text. The campus library was also high on our list of things to see today, but it will have to wait until we're back in Dublin at the end of our 3-week journey.

After breakfast, which was 4am to our weary body clocks, we went back to the hotel to sit and wait until our room was ready. After a few more hours, we checked into our tiny but highly efficient and comfortable room, took a 4-hour nap, then went back out to the streets of Dublin to find a Guinness and some good pub food, aka: seafood chowder and Dublin prawns.  There was a semi-final Rugby match last night, which brought in "more tourists than usual" the locals said.

Photos below are of the Temple Bar area where we listened to live Irish music, ate Murphy's ice cream Honeycomb flavor recommended by Anna-Marie, and drank more Guinness and Chardonnay. 

The Kentucky Derby start was 11:57pm local time, so we made sure to be back in our room to watch, What a close race and a fantastic finish to a very, very...very long day. 🏇




















A shout out to Kathleen for loaning us this electrical converter so we can plug in our tech.  
THANK YOU Kathleen!!


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