We arrived safely in Dublin around 10 am after two uneventful flights. Neither of us sleep well on planes, but I got a little more sleep than Charles, which is how I’m still awake to type up this blog while he snoozes. The flight from Dulles to Dublin was only about 2/3 full, which meant that most rows had at least a couple of extra seats. So while we may not have gotten good quality sleep, we were at least a bit more comfortable than if we were packed in like sardines.

We made it to our hotel around noon and were back out sightseeing by 1 pm, as is our custom for conquering jet lag on international trips. The weather was a big help for this, as it was around 55 degrees with a cool breeze and warm sun. The crisp air helped us stay awake while the warm sun (hopefully) helped reset our circadian rhythms. We booked a historical walking tour of Dublin at 3pm, which meant we had a couple of hours to kill before the tour started. We headed first to Christ Church Cathedral for a brief tour, hitting the highlights of the audio guide. About the time we finished our tour, I became ravenously hungry since it was approximately breakfast time back home, so we stopped for a quick snack at Spar before heading on to check out a cool local bookstore. We didn’t quite have enough time for a full perusal before we had to head to the meeting spot for our tour, so we may make another stop tomorrow if we have more time. We’ve been reminding ourselves that we will have a rental car for the majority of this trip and don’t have to be quite as careful about accumulating souvenirs in the early stages as we normally would.

Our walking tour turned out to be the most perfect cure for jetlag, as it was fully outdoors in the aforementioned weather and our tour guide was engaging enough that we temporarily forgot to be jetlagged. Much of Ireland’s history occurred in and around Dublin, so the tour included a lot of general Irish history in addition to Dublin-specific history that should help set the foundation as we make our loop around the island. Our guide was fantastic and even sang us a few songs at various points on the tour, since song and verse are important parts of Irish storytelling. The tour ended back at Christ Church Cathedral where we had been just a few hours before and where we had happened to notice a steady stream of people walking around with bundles of fish and chips, so we decided to follow the trail and got some fresh battered cod, chips, and mushy peas to take back to our hotel.

It was still not even 6 pm when we finished our fish and chips and we knew we needed to try to stay up a little later, so we headed back out one more time to walk the Temple Bar strip. I expected it to be unbearably crowded on a Saturday evening because it’s popular with tourists and a common haunt for stag/hen parties and because we had already witnessed a couple of said parties staggering around as we passed the end of the street during the tour. It was definitely hopping, but fortunately wasn’t as raucous as I had feared. And along the way, we spotted a Tesco and decided to make one last strategic stop to pick up breakfast supplies for the morning.

Today’s Highlights

• A travel itinerary with very few hiccups
• A beautiful crisp, sunny day
• Touring one of Ireland’s oldest cathedrals
• An informative and entertaining historical walking tour
• Our first (of hopefully many) fish and chips of this trip

Tomorrow’s Proposed Adventures

• Tour of Trinity College & Book of Kells
• Pearse Lyons Distillery tour
• Tour of Kilmainham Gaol
• Dinner at a pub, hopefully with live traditional Irish music
• My first real Irish Guinness, which allegedly is a much different experience than bottles/cans in the US