London/Ireland Trip, part 1

   My gentleman and I recently went on a trip to London and Ireland - my first vacation in years, our first big trip together, and his first time off the continent. Overall, it was very good, and we had some serious soul-searching on whether or not to come back. The siren song of steady paychecks were what finally won out, but we have both agreed it will not be our last vacation together or abroad.

London:

   We intentionally flew out on Monday night, so that we could have a weekend before our vacation to prep and be relaxed from the start. In hindsight, taking an overnight flight with a connection at 3am was maybe not the smartest thing, but I did like the mid-week start. We landed at London Gatwick at about 9am local time, and hopped a cab into London. Somewhat expensive, but we were both pretty fried at that point. Moreover, even the cabbie got lost looking for the hotel, so I'm pretty sure if we'd tried it ourselves, it would have been a rough start. The hotel itself was nice, if typically British (i.e. very narrow rooms with high ceilings, as if height makes up for lack of elbow room). Breakfast was included, and we slept in both days we were there. 

   Realistically, what started the whole idea of this trip is that my gentleman wears a specific brand of shoes made in the UK. While they do ship internationally, they only ship the shoes made in China - for real (quality, rugged) versions, you have to go to England. So our time in London was spent figuring out the underground, and wandering the shopping areas of Camden. We found something called the Camden Stables Market that was a fun fair, pawnbroker, thrift store, and artisian shop mixed up and thrown into an old horse trading superstructure. Lots of fun to wander around, and pleasantly bounded by some very nice restaurants. As expected, we ate way too much (no refrigerators in the rooms, alas), walked a couple dozen miles, and stumbled home, victorious, carrying about 20 lbs of boots (and other things). The next day, after shaking our heads over the headline in the paper ("London's hottest day on record since 1911!" Of course). we grabbed another cab to London City Airport, and hopped a quick flight over to Dublin. 

Dublin:

   Here's where the fun began. After clearing customs, getting luggage, and finding the shuttle to the car rental place, we opted to upgrade to a manual transmission for our driving tour of Ireland. Driving on the wrong side of the road, we decided, was enough distraction without having to remember which pedal was which. They gave us a nice, 4-door Audi whose seats were a little bucket-shaped for my taste, but since it was just a week and a bit, eh, what the heck. My gentleman was a delightful passenger, and only had to point out I was drifting a little too close to one side 5 or 6 times before I got the hang of it. After a few false starts (like the tolls that take coins only, or the fact that they abhor street numbers in Dublin, it seems), we found the hotel, parked the car, and again spent the evening being fat and lazy. 

   The next day, we discovered that the light rail terminated literally at the doorstep of the hotel, so we bought tickets and hopped over to the historic and shopping districts. Since we hadn't had time to visit the Royal Gardens in London (alas!), I was pretty insistent that we would go to Trinity College and see the Book of Kells exhibit there. It only took us about 10-15 minutes to get in, and the exhibit itself was pretty neat - it went over Ogham and Latin, how ink was made, how parchment was made, what the purpose of the scribes and the decorations were, how different scribes preferred different inks, what the animals symbolized... lots of info! They even had two of the volumes of the actual Book of Kells on display, but you needed some serious elbow strength to get up close and personal. 

   Moving on, however, led you through the old Trinity College library, arguably the inspiration for the Jedi Archives in Star Wars Episode II. Lucas claims otherwise, but here, you judge:

Sorry, Georgie, busted. They don't let you wander the stacks (obviously), but you can walk down the main aisle, and see a section where they're working on preserving/restoring the books. It's seriously impressive. We overheard one woman asking how they knew where each book was; a guard told her "Google." She didn't believe him, but the ensuing argument made it obvious (to us) that some smart cookie had liaised with Google to create a database of where each book was, and possibly what its contents are. Pretty smart, if you ask me.

   After Trinity College, we wandered back across the Liffey (River) to the shopping district, and found a little hole-in-the-wall military/surplus store, where my gentleman bought another pair of pants. I'm not quite clear on why he thought he could make a two week trip with only 2 pair of pants, but to each their own. Thus fortified, we found another hole-in-the-wall pub, and had another amazing and amazingly overfilling meal. 

   Now in need of walking off lunch, we again crossed the Liffey, and wandered for a bit before stumbling upon Dublin Castle (from whence came the city's name), and the Christ Church Cathedral. First mentioned in writing in 1030 (nearly a millenium... dang...), the church has changed hands and survived a number of religious reforms, takeovers, and schisms, and is still in operation today. Sadly, the inside was closed when we got there, but we figured we'd walk the outside to look at it. Upon entering the gates, though, we saw this:

   The entire inner courtyard area (this is just one corner) had tents and tables for vendors: food, games, toys, arts and crafts, pamphlets - you name it, they got it. Now, I'm not the most spiritual person there is, and I haven't real\d the entire Bible, but I'm pretty sure I remember something along the lines of... 

12 Then Jesus went into the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those selling doves. 13 And He declared to them, “It is written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer.’ But you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”

No? Not ringing a bell to any of you in here? Ok then, I'll just be going. 

   Apparently, I horribly misjudged the scale of the Dublin map, so we walked a lot that day.  Next stop was the Archaeology museum, where we learned about Viking activity in Ireland, and I got to watch my gentleman get the same smart-ass, semi-helpful, "I'm answering your exact stated question but not the implied question you actually wanted answered" answer from a curator there that I always get from him. This trip left no doubt; my gentleman is an Irishman through and through.

   Anyhow, turned out that the museums were staying open late that day for "Culture night," so instead of hustling in and out, we got to see some stuff, then decided to visit the Museum of Natural History. On the map, it looks like it's right next to the Archaeology museum. In reality, it's right behind it, and there are no cut-throughs; we got to walk the 1/3 mile around the end of the block and back up it (literally - I'm not exaggerating at all). The inside was an amazing display of taxidermy, formaldehyde, and Victorian-eta wood and glass display cabinets. They didn't allow photography, but my gentleman excitedly pointed out it was featured in an episode of Penny Dreadful:

The lower level included bug collections, and my gentleman and I agreed that, while Ireland apparently lucked out and has teeny tiny bees (he's allergic), they have a number of large, horrifying creepy-crawlies of their own, so no thank you. Since we'd been walking for about eight hours at that point, we decided to call it a day. On the way back to the light rail, we cut through an outdoor festival of some sort (seemed Oktoberfest-y?), where I got a sampling of Irish candy (not bad, but very sugary). We got back to our hotel, and stopped outside so my gentleman could have a smoke, when this appeared:

It was so clear that I decided to brave the rain and walk to the end of the block to see if I could get a better shot. Turns out we were right on the port, and I got a clear panorama of the entire thing. 

As soon as I got that, the rain intensified. We ran for the hotel, and I'm not kidding, the instant we ducked in, it just started pouring. So, good timing overall. Ate too much again, slept in til 1 hour before check-out, and headed out to see the rest of Ireland.

To be continued...