We started a bit late after last night’s festivities and missed breakfast but after quick showers and what not, we hiked past Phoenix Park…

 

… to catch the #10 bus to O’Connell Street and saw the Irish Spire and the massive statue of O’Connell, founder of the city.

 

John got lost a bit…

And then we made our way back to Trinity College to see The Book of Kells and The Long Room…

 

 And the we went to…

We wound up getting a late start this morning because we were so wiped out from the previous day’s travel and what not. But when we got things going, we started the day off with a traditional Irish breakfast: Irish bacon, beans, fried egg with mushroom and tomato plus toast and cereal. Then we uploaded yesterdays post and some pictures and checked on the process of our bags, of which there was none. 

After that we hit the road and made our way to the City Center. Our first stop was Christ Church Cathedral.

John took it upon himself to stop and say a prayer for our bags.

After that, we made our way to Forbidden Planet comic shop and talked to the manager about comic trends in Ireland and the Irish comics being published.

Then we traveled to the Temple Bar area to get some replacement clothes and John and James got separated from Victor.

Later John and James ran into Victor again…

Our breakfast had worn off by this time so we stopped at the The Stag’s Head. The pub was just what you expect to see at a pub, including football fans watching a match. Don’t ask we don’t know who won. Victor tried a Bulmers, which was a hard cider. He didn’t seem too impressed. John and James stuck to the local favorite, Guinness. Truth be told, the stuff they export is great but this stuff had no equal. Freshness makes all the difference. From brewery to bar in 10 blocks!!!

The food was the typical pub fare (well if you are in a real Irish pub), John and Victor had ham and cheese toasties, which are just toasted sandwiches. James stuck with his usual, liquids only (But he is still dehydrated, we wonder why?). Victor also ordered a vegetarian plate with pickles, coleslaw, oranges, apples and cheese. Like an overbearing mother hen he kept yelling at James…“Eat something!!!” Stubborn as always, James just picked.

The merry trio went on to find a lovely little comic shop called Sub City. Once there they met the owner, Robert Curley who, incidentally, is the author a graphic novel series called Freak Show.

We then headed to Trinity College but the tour of The Book of Kells was closed so we headed back to the guesthouse to rest a bit before geting dinner and what ever else the night brings.

Our Internet connection at the guesthouse is wonky so we need to go to an Internet cafe to upload the audio and video iles we have recorded.

 

Day One – Gathering the Party   

For James and Victor, the travels started Thursday, April 26th at Detroit Metro Airport (DTW). We arrived at DTW a bit later than expected but where told our flight on American Airlines was a bit late (moved from 5 PM to 6:10 PM EDT) and there might be trouble for our connecting flight in Chicago (at 7 PM CDT).

We arrived in Chicago at about 6:15 PM CDT and rushed to the Air Lingus terminal. By the time we got to the gate, the flight had left about five minutes before. An extremely helpful woman at the American Airlines ticket counter got us on stand-by for a 9 PM American Airlines flight to London with an Air Lingus connection to Dublin at 1:30 PM the next afternoon. (If we didn’t make this standby flight, we wouldn’t leave Chicago until 5 PM Friday and then not get into Dublin until 9 AM Sunday, which would strand John in Dublin, alone for 2 days and without a hotel since all the reservations where in my name.)

Luckily, we got onto the 9 PM flight to London, which wasn’t really a bad flight. We arrived in London Heathrow at about 12 PM GMT on Friday, about an hour to make our connecting flight. James’ disability got us through the massively long wait to go through the security checkpoint line for international departures without any delay and we arrived at the Air Lengus gate with about 15 minutes to spare. When we gave our tickets, we were told we were not scheduled for the1:30 PM flight and where instead on a 4:50 PM flight to Dublin. We made some phone calls to John and the guesthouse we had reservations at and were able to get him checked in to the room and James and I hunkered down for our next flight.

The flight to Dublin went with out a hitch ticket wise but there was a bit of a delay on the runway. We arrived in Dublin at about 6:25 PM GMT. But the Fates had one more trick for us. Our bags were still in Chicago or London maybe even Istanbul for all we knew. Air Lingus put a tracer on them and they should be delivered to us at the guesthouse soon. Air Lingus gave us a nice dop kit with toiletries, a t-shirt, and surprisingly a pair of underwear.

James and I bought tickets for a double-decker bus from the Dublin airport to the stop nearest to where we where staying and then walked a short bit to the guesthouse, finally meeting up with John. It was about 8 PM GMT and after a long day of travels, none of us where up for anything much so we just got food from a Chinese take-away and some drinks and holed up for the night.

All this is a bit tame compared to the real experiences and we’ll post an audio of James’ more colorful commentary on our flight experiences and John’s own travel nightmares and his solo tour of Dublin later.