Meemaw and Da Visit- Dublin Day 3

On this day, we had more planned than we had time to do, and we fell back into our trap of not booking ahead.

The things we missed out on were a Viking land and river tour, the Book of Kells at Trinity College, and visiting a cathedral. We still had a full and exciting day, beginning with breakfast at KC Peaches, which was just across the street from the apartment we stayed in. The food was good, and the baked goods looked delicious.

The kids ran around a bit while waiting for a taxi.

Matt is a big fan of James Joyce, so our first stop of the day was to see his statue.

The statue was just across the street from the Spire of Dublin, so we checked that out too before doing a little souvenir shopping.

We made our way to the National Leprechaun Museum, and bought tickets for the next tour. We had a little time to kill, so we walked over to the River Liffey.

The leprechaun museum tour was pretty interesting, and the kids liked it even though it wasn't really aimed at young people. The tour guide took us through several rooms, telling stories all the while. It was all very dark, so it was hard to get pictures. One of the favorite rooms was the giant's room.

We lingered in the gift shop after, and the kids asked for a photo with the leprechaun.

Upon leaving the museum, we crossed Ha'penny Bridge and wandered a bit.

My dad wanted to see the Phil Lynott statue, so we made our way there. The kids always wanted pictures with every statue we stopped at.

Then it was time for lunch. We wanted something quickish, so we stopped at Costa, which is a coffee chain like Starbucks.

We wanted to be sure to do the Guinness tour, so Matt booked tickets online. When we finished eating, we had more than enough time to get there, but not quite time to do anything else. So we went ahead to the Guinness Storehouse and joined the queue. We actually got to go in earlier than our scheduled time, which was nice.

This tour was said to be interactive and child-friendly, as well as wheelchair and stroller accessible. I would say that it's barely wheelchair accessible. There are elevators, but they only give access to certain parts of the tour. After about 10-15 minutes, we folded up the buggy and let Clara walk.

To be honest, none of us were impressed with the tour at all. It was self-guided, which would be okay if it hadn't been so crowded. It feels like they just try to pack as many people in as possible rather than have an interesting and informative experience.

More barley for the kids to play with and try to eat

We just sort of breezed through, and stopped for refreshments about 2/3 of the way through. Beer for the adults, cookies for the kids. I had heard people say that the Guinness tastes better in Ireland, and it's really true. It tastes smooth, mellow, and not as heavy.

After our break, we decided to skip the rest of the tour and go straight to the tasting room. This was the best part of the whole experience. We each got three samples from the bar, and there were people passing around two other samples as well. There was music, and the kids had a blast dancing. They also had Irish step dancers at one point. The tasting room sort of made up for the let down of the rest of the tour.

When we left, we decided to take the kids back to the apartment to let off steam. Matt and my dad walked to a Thai place and brought food back. We wanted to try to get the kids to bed quickly since we had an early flight the next day (we failed - they stayed up late, but luckily still behaved well during our travels).

When we got to the airport the next morning, my dad still hadn't gotten his suitcase back. He spoke to a British Airways rep to ask them to send it to our house in England once they found it. Not only did we miss out on a full day of visiting with my parents, but there was continued frustration because of the baggage situation.

And as always, we asked the kids their favorite parts of the trip.
Miles: leprechaun museum
Clara: bone church (um no), dancing at Guinness
Lily: the giant room in the leprechaun museum

Meemaw and Da Visit - Dublin Day 2

The kids woke up around 6:30. When they found out that Meemaw and Da had arrived, they immediately wanted to go 'prise them. We held them off for a little while longer, and everyone was really excited when we finally met up.

The hotel had a hot and cold buffet, which was pretty good. In Ireland, we had our first taste of white pudding, which is similar to black pudding but made without blood. The texture was sort of mealy, but the flavor was good.

After breakfast, we took my parents to Killiney Hill. It was cloudier than the previous day, but the views were still amazing.

Then we took my parents into Dalkey for lunch. We ate at a pub called Finnegan's, and Matt's shepard's pie was really good.

"What you want on your plate?" She was taking my order.

Miles and Clara liked playing with the little lobster that came with someone's meal. Lily wasn't a fan.

We wandered slowly back toward the castle, and stopped for a sweet treat.

And then it was time to check out and get to the Airbnb in Dublin. I'll admit here that I was dubious about this place. The price was well below the other places we had seen, so part of me half expected a last minute cancellation. Thankfully that didn't happen. We had to pick up the keys across the street, and they were in a lock box attached to a utility pole. That felt shady, but the keys worked, so maybe it's more common than we thought. The apartment was very basic, but it had a coffee maker, showers, and beds (and that's really all we needed). I'm glad that my fears were unfounded.

Once we got settled, we had enough time for a short outing and dinner. We took a taxi to the Jameson distillery for the tour (which did allow children).

Outside the kids had been a little rambunctious, so we were worried about their behavior inside. But they did really well. It helped that the whole tour was only about 45 minutes. There were three parts to the tour: history, the making of the whiskey, and tasting. The kids were able to participate a bit, smelling the alcohol at different parts of the process, and feeling/smelling the barley (Clara also ate some barley, though it wasn't recommended).

In the tasting room, we had the samples -scotch whiskey (Johnnie Walker Black), Irish whiskey (Jameson, obviously), and American whiskey (Jack Daniels). I'm not a whiskey drinker at all, but I still tried each one. The Jack was awful, basically all burny alcohol flavor. The Jameson was slightly better, but still not my jam. The scotch was actually my favorite, with a lovely smokey flavor. I took a few small sips of that, and although I won't be switching from gin anytime soon, I can see the appeal.

We had a quick stop in the gift shop...

Clara kept asking for a shirt in her size

And then we each got a drink ticket for the bar. I chose Jameson and ginger ale, and I liked it with a mixer.

When we'd finished, we headed toward one of the nearest restaurants, which was a small Mediterranean place called Cafe Oasis. It was sort of a hole in the wall, but the food was fantastic.

We took dessert home for the kids, and that was delicious, too.

It was getting late for the little ones, so we called a taxi to take us back to the apartment. One thing I loved about Dublin was that we could easily find taxis for all 7 of us. Matt downloaded the mytaxi app, which was started in Dublin, and it was really convenient. Also, the taxi drivers were really friendly and talkative, which I enjoyed.

Anyway, we got back to the apartment and everyone pretty much crashed. We had to rest up so we could try to fit in as much as possible the next day.