And rainy and windy.
Which is less than ideal if you plan to see the city on foot, as we did. You can only imagine how lovely this was for my rats nest head of hair. It just kept growing bigger all day long. Ugh.
We took a taxi again from our hotel and were dropped off right by The River Liffey.
We made our way down the streets and into a few of the shops.
Including this one! This is Knit! Love the name, love the shop.
Kelly is such a good sport. She even bought her own yarn that I will turn into some socks for he in the near future.
A little further down the street was Dublin Castle. Magnificent!
This is the Christ Church again in the daylight. So beautiful!
We worked our way down the maze of streets using a less than perfect map. We only had to ask for directions once, and found the second Dublin knitting shop that I wanted to find, only to have it closed on Mondays. Dang It! Well, I told Kelly we wouldn't have seen the cool painted skein of yarn on the door if they were open.
A few hundred more turns down winding streets that weren't labeled at all brought us to the Guinness Storehouse.
This was my poor attempt at a Miss Katie pose (Morgan's AWESOME dance teacher) in front of the Guinness gate, but remember that wind I was talking about? Yes, still here. Also, it's clear that I'm not nearly as flexible as that Katie!
We were a little disappointed with Guinness because they wouldn't let us in to the bar or gift shop without paying for the tour, which we really didn't want to do, so we wnt and gave them some money at the pub down the street instead.
Arthur's pub was fantastic. Very authentic and just how you'd imagine an Irish pub to be.
Kelly and I both had a beef & Guinness casserole that was SO good! Talk about comfort food! It had a huge plop of mashed potatoes and a fluffy pastry roll on top. My favorite meal so far!
Back over to the other side of The Liffy...
And we found the Jameson Distillery.
We opted to skip this tour also, because we are planning on catching the other one in Middleton in a few days. The building was really cool though, as was the gift shop.
By this time our feet were getting sore, and the late night from the night before was starting to catch up with us, so we headed back to our beautiful hotel a little earlier. I'm sure several of you have been very concerned about the lack of knitting updates, but I'm happy to report that I finally got some time to finish up that sock I was working on on the trip over. We have been so busy that I haven't had much time for it! Hooray for sock #1 completion!
Our breakfasts have been great so far. Usually eggs, roasted potatoes, tomatoes, mushrooms, and on this day I splurged in a delicious pastry.
They are SERIOUS about their sugar for their tea and coffee here. We even heard them talking about it on the morning radio show this morning when we were driving. The female host said she'd "go completely mental" if someone tried serving her tea with no sugar. Ha!
Again, I just get a kick out of things like this that distinguish that this is "Irish" butter. I guess we just don't describe it at home as "American" butter. :)
This was our pretty dining room for breakfast.
Clontarf Castle Hotel. I highly recommend it!
Kelly found a new friend in the lobby.
The view of the castle tower from the lobby was very pretty.
Unfortunately that's all the time we have for you, Dublin. Hope I get the chance to see you again some day!
XOXOX
NH
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