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.