I AM NOT CERTAIN BUT I BELIEVE LAURE BECKER WAS HAVING A MARGARITA... IN IRELAND!
Soooo...I arrived at the beautiful Dublin airport to meet my daughter. It had not been a bad plane ride over once we got on a new (unbroken) airplane. On the trip over I was sitting with a very pleasant guy who lived in Dublin who as he was telling me about (it was 90% unintelligible to me because of his accent and because I am old) Dooblin just kept saying it like that and so… so did I. I originally was supposed to arrive an hour before my daughter who was meeting me there from Cambridge but with my flight delay I texted her and she said she would find me. I cleared customs quickly and easily and when I came out, she was not there. Moments like this are when I realize that my wife does everything and that I am (at best) a parasite that lives on her gifts for organization and planning. Conversely my daughter is half me. We were going to meet each other. How hard could that be, in a foreign airport… where your phones don’t work? My first temptation was to call my wife… she could sort it out from 5000 miles away...right? I turned on my phone hoping against hope for free WiFi and VIOLA! I texted her. She was in the wrong terminal at arrivals. She found me in 5 minutes.
We went to get our rent a car and ended up with a slightly used Renault. I had the sense to get an automatic transmission figuring driving on the wrong side of the road would be challenge enough (which, by the way I was correct about). My daughter had been responsible for making our accommodations (when it was clear i would not be) and she sensibly found us a room for about 100 bucks a night which I didn't think was too bad. What she had not realized was that it was as far from Dublin proper as say… Chesterfield is to downtown St. Louis. Oh well. We were staying in a place called Balbriggan which I quickly stopped trying to say, instead referring to it as Bilbobaggins. It was 20 minutes from the airport and I will once again defer to another time to describe driving there which for my jet lagged ass could best be described as…”horrific” and for my poor daughter…”more so”.
We finally screamed in Balbriggan with my mirror clipping the mirror of a parked car. I was of course pleased that the thump was not me hitting a warm body. We swung into the garage attached to the hotel and garages are a challenge just like the road because you must… keep to the left. But we parked and found our way into the hotel which was pleasant. Were able to check in quickly and I was able to grab an Irish Times and we retired to a reasonably comfortable adequately priced room. It would be a fine base of operations. We discussed the options for getting to Dublin and we were assured the train station was a 5 minute walk and so… we were off!
BILBRAGGIN BEACH
Walking to the train station we purchased tickets round trip without incident. One of the interesting things about Ireland is that unlike England they have adopted the Euro. I had the foresight before I left to go to US Bank in Clayton and get a couple of hundred dollars of the currency which is always worth more than a $1.50 but less than $2.00 in my limited experience. You can use most ATM cards to get dollars but there are fees involved and there is always something to be said for landing with walking around money. The train station in Bilbraggin is on high ground looking down on a huge beach which is kind of in a bay which leads to a little channel. Tide was out and there were a bunch of boats just sitting on the ground in the dry channel. In Europe, the trains run on time and ours showed up pretty quickly and we hopped on and headed south. The train tracks had a reasonable amount of time on the coast where I guess you overlook the “Sea of Man” which in retrospect seems rather pretentious or perhaps even ominous. In any case, a lovely train ride, 20-30 minutes landed us in Town Center. Both cities I was in identified the downtown area as “Town Center” and signs would direct you there which was helpful in each case. Laura had found us a map and since our phones didn't work she was our navigator.
I had forwarded to her the name of a well reviewed Celiac Friendly restaurant and we made towards to for a late lunch. The Millstone. It was excellent and I ate some delicious fish thing and then had piece of beef which was represented to me as a Hereford steak. Hereford Beef is very big and well advertised in Ireland but generally I would say their meat sucks. I might hate the idea of factory farming, antibiotics, Monsanto, and what not but we have unbelievable beef in our supermarkets and restaurants, well marbled, properly fatted and delicious. I did not find the same to be true in Ireland.
Then we walked. What a nice, beautiful, friendly, attractive interesting town. Once again speaking some semblance of English is awesome and we were able to ask stupid questions and get patient answers. Even though the iPhones did not work we could use free WiFi in abundance to look up and find our way to our next stop. Over the two days we visited a lot of places.
From my perspective they had great shopping. For me that generally means Cigar stores ( for Cubans) and cheese mongers (for all varieties of cheese). We did not want to do too much on the first day so we just bummed around. We walked by the Olympia Theater where I was unable to get tickets for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros on line. We walked in and the nice lady behind the window said “we just had a cancellation” and were able to grab two tickets. Better to be lucky than smart.
We made our way across town to the Jameson Distillery. It is a lovely, touristy place. Being tourists we looked in the gift shop and then we took the tour. Now I don’t know what experience you have with distilleries but as a veteran of the bourbon trail and having spent a few weekends in Lexington and Frankfort…. distilleries are all pretty much the same and even though there is some slightly more than
rudimentary physics involved all distilled beverages are made in pretty much the same way. Jamieson, we were quickly, and then repetitively told, was “triple distilled”. Every distillery has a wistful story about the product that is lost through evaporation when manufacturing their product and here is was “The Angels Portion”. In Kentucky that share belonged to the devil. We did a tasting which was a nice affair and did nothing to particularly enhance my love of Irish Whiskey. I did learn one thing and that is that Irish Whiskey and certainly Jamiesons the grain is heated with a smokeless source, formerly anthracite and now natural gas. Scotch, tastes like smoky scotch because they roast the grain with peat and that produces a lot of smoke. It was a fine way to kill and hour or so.
We called it a day and headed back ready for a full day the next day and we got up and had an Irish Breakfast (sausage, eggs, pudding, tea) at our hotel and headed back to town. Now I always like to look in bookstores wherever I go and so with the help of Google I had located a few of them. I believe that sooner or later they will all cease to exist so… I go and pay homage. Chapters bookstore did not disappoint. I like to collect foreign first editions of my favorite authors but alas, they were not in the offing here either in their new or used section. Still, it was a nice massive place with a great feel and my daughter milled around patiently more or less.
A BAR IN TEMPLE BAR
We got lost and turned around more than once but found a gluten free pizza place for lunch that was nice and then found a beer (also gluten free) for me in the Temple Bar area. Temple Bar is confusing because it is an area, a hotel, a bar, a hostel and so a lot of things are in “Temple Bar”. So we drank a little and I got speak at length to a bartendress who essentially convinced me that I needed to spend the second half of my trip in Galway.
That night we went to the Olympia see the concert. Despite it starting late due to a power outage it was a great show. The Olympia is just a gorgeous two balconied, intimate venue and it was a great end to the night… other than the fact that we got badly lost driving back to Balbriggan.
The next day we made the obligatory pilgrimage to Guinness. Now I cannot drink beer anymore and I still have a loyalty to St. Louis beers from when Anheuser Busch was still “our” beer and more recently to Schlafly which is now “our” beer. But everyone said we had to go, if nothing else for the view of Ireland from the 7 story tower shaped like…*deep annoyed sigh* a pint glass. We looked at the gift shop, heard the beginnings of the self guided tour and blew through 7 floors in about 20 minutes. The Anheuser Busch tour puts it to shame and even the Samuel Adams tour in Boston was far superior. Beer, like spirits is pretty much always made in the same way but like the “triple distilled” Jamiesons and the “beechwood aged” Budweiser, Guinness thing is that their barley is roasted. *yawn*. The tasting room up top though was awesome and the view spectacular. I sipped my water and gave my daughter my beer ticket so she could have two. I did have the blessing of watching an experienced server put their logo in the froth on top of a glass. You should go and skip the tour. Just take the elevator straight to the top. It is a no brainer.
FROM THE GUINNESS TOWER
THIS IS THE PATHETIC GUINNESS VERSION OF A CLYDESDALE!
We visited St. Patricks Cathedral and the Irish Gallery and the Irish Library. I could wax poetic but really we blew threw them as only Beckers can without paying a lot of attention but just trying to take it all in and check it off our list. That is a stupid way to visit such brilliant, ancient historical places but, we are what we are and in the end I was in Dublin, hanging out with my daughter and didn’t really give a shit about where I was at. It could've been Gary, but I was happy it was Dooblin
ST. PATRICKS CATHEDRAL
I was… not impressed with the location. It seems neither smart, nor particularly well thought out. I assume one of the partner’s mother must own the building. It is slightly omantic just because it is positively off beat but… that front porch is positively not up to code. 
