OMGosh!

It was Italy all over again! You can read about that here--about mid way down about the train-- to refresh your memory.

Stephanie and I were to take a vintage tea tour. Since we didn't know exactly where we were going, we left very early. To make a long story short, we arrived at 12:45 for a 1:30 tour---or so we thought. We were on the river, so we sat at a bench facing the river about 15-20 feet from the exact pick-up spot. About 1:18, we moved over to the exact spot. We waited, and waited and waited. At 1:45, I emailed Mary (my travel agent friend---I wouldn't want her job for anything!). We waited until 2 p.m. and decided that perhaps we were in the wrong spot even though this was supposed to be it.

We weren't sure if this was the north dock. Turns out, I should have noticed that the pick up was 1:15. We were so busy talking that we never even knew that the tea trolly pulled up behind us! Sheesh! Mary is trying to get our money back. I love that she works on our behalf!! We'll see what happens. It was totally our fault!

On the other hand, looking on the bright side, we went down a block to see if we were possibly in the wrong place---dock-wise. We came across these sculptures/statues---don't know what to call them. They are dedicated to the Irish who died during the potato famine. Thousands of people walked along the river. A German couple stopped me to ask what it was about. They had never heard of the famine. I proudly relayed what I had already learned on our tour---during the years of the famine---1845-1852, millions of people died or emigrated. The population has never recovered---although it's getting there now.

This was really cool. Had we been on our tour, we would have missed it!

And we might have missed this. We shared a brisket sandwich with mac and cheese in the oldest pub I think we'd been in. While we were here, Butch and Nicky were across town actually in the oldest pub in Dublin!

It looks like people were buried in this pub!

Nor would we have had time to stop by this ancient library. Doesn't everyone stop in a library while on vacation?

 We just stepped in the front door and snapped a couple of pictures. It was beautiful!

We met Butch and Nicky at the museum to see the "bog" people. We would never have known about this if I hadn't seen a sign about them at this "cheesy" bog village we visited on one of our bus tours.

About bus tours---we are DONE with them! It's going to be private tours from now on. We all agreed we'd rather do that and get all the personal attention, not to mention the extra fun sights. When you are on the big bus tours, you waste a lot of time. There's always one couple that doesn't want to follow the rules and make everyone late! We figured we spent 7 hours one day for about 2.5 hours of actual touring something. No more! Believe me, it's worth the extra money!

Our trip was fabulous! We ended with our final dinner at the Hairy Lemon for one last:

bread and butter pudding. Simply the best thing I had in Ireland!! The homemade from scratch hot chocolate with Baileys was a close second!

Another thing we're done with: American Airlines. We hate them! One problem after another and not a single employee cares! It wasn't a fun way to end our trip. Without going it to all the details, the last thing that happened was the loss of Butch's suitcase. AA ended up leaving it on our front porch at 5:14 this morning! Thanks to our new "Ring" monitoring service, we know exactly what is happening and when!

Back to the real life! Now I need to spend this week getting ready for my beach trip with friends on Friday! Retired life is tough!