Day 1-2

Our supper done, and early bedtime complete and rest less complete than we would prefer, we meet for breakfast to plan the day.  No-one has slept particularly well, but John has been up and out, looking around and hoping to find out NCAA scores from Saturday’s basketball game.  Oddly enough, no locals seem to be aware of the game results, neither at hotels nor at newsstands.  He found a copy of USA Today, but it’s Saturday’s edition, and lacks the important information, and Sky News seems to have ignored the event.  After breakfast, we are able to confirm a score, and University of Wisconsin has beaten University of Kentucky and is headed for the final.  

Sunday will be a hop-on, hop-off tour, and we have two objectives – Kilmainham Gaol and Jameson Old Distillery.  We  get our two-day tickets, with the intent of doing a general ride, but with two stops, with more selected stops the following day.  Easter Weekend, however, is a four day weekend, and those two stops are among the most popular holiday attractions.  By the time our bus gets to the prison, we are promised a two hour wait.  We stay on with intentions for Jameson on the theory that it won’t be quite so much a family destination.  Along the way is the Phoenix Park and the Dublin Zoo, which attract large crowds on a nice day, and traffic in and out of the park is slow.  When we get to the distillery, the tours are booked for the next couple of hours too, and none of us are interested in waiting that long, so we sit and have one of their bar  concoctions.  Then we head back to the bus for the final leg of the bus tour.

O’Connell Street is closed to vehicle traffic in respect of the 99th aniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising, so the bus has to truncate it’s tour and goes directly to the start point.  Paula and I elect to head back to the hotel on the next bus, while John and Lynn elect a transfer to the Docklands Tour bus.  

We make our way to Trinity College to the gift shop to see if there is anything we need.  Last time we were here, I scored a very nice and colorful Celtic knotwork tie, but the stock and patterns have not changed or expanded, and there aren’t any other needed items, so we move on to a World of Irelend shop, which has some very nice ladie’s scarves, unfortunately at much too high a price, and in the shop are John and Lynn with an unenthusiastic review of the Docklands tour.

Next stop, nap and then dinner.  Paula and I have enthused over an Italian restaurant discovered on our last trip over on the north quay along the Liffey, but it turns out to be closed due to the Holiday, so we elect another restaurant close by. This turns out to be part of the family of restaurants that operates the first choice, with more of an emphasis on salads, starters, and desserts.  Oh, well… and we dive in without hesitation.