Days 2 and 3- London to Dublin

Yesterday we travelled from London to Dublin, and arrived at the second hostel of the trip. Before the flight we had a relaxing morning of hanging around in a coffee shop and then wandering around the "neighborhood" section of London near Victoria Station. It was a beautiful area with lots of different little restaurants. We happened upon Ian Flemming's house (the author of James Bond), which was pretty funny as we weren't really out to see anything specific.

 Some random thoughts from last night that we wrote down in the journal when we didn't feel like actual writing that I am still too tired to put together into paragraphs:
- Pub food is not good. In fact, it is bad. Do not let your love for mashed potatoes to cloud your judgement and lead you to order some kind of beef and potato dish. It will likely disappoint.
- People RUN in London and Dublin while on their way to work. I can't remember seeing anyone run downtown DC other than in running clothing other than to catch a bus half a block down. Perhaps this is an extension of the DC "Southern Efficiency."
-London is exceptionally international, even compared to DC and NYC. I suppose this is a result of geographic closeness to Europe, but for some reason had not been expecting it.
- The first hostel we stayed in (in London) was much less fun than the one here in Dublin. In London, the hostel had a feeling of a storage facility for sleeping humans, versus here in Dublin people are much more friendly. I wonder how much of this is driven by the following facts: In London the bunks are stacked 3 high, here they are only 2 high. In London there are privacy sheets that can be pulled across the bunk when sleeping. The result of this is people are just not as interested in talking to people? Also in Dublin Matt and I are much more the average age of other hostelers.
-There are SO MANY Australians here on vacation! And they are all travelling for 7-12 months. It's amazing...
-Flying out of Gatwick was very odd for the following reasons: 1) You don't have to remove your shoes for the metal detectors. I had no idea that was just what we do in the US. 2) Gatwick doesn't announce the gates until just before boarding, so you are forced to wait in the big shopping area. If this was not odd enough, they are also giving out samples of vodka in the middle of the waiting area. 3) Flying RyanAir is like being inside the shopping network channel where stuff is being sold to you constantly, including lottery tickets and children's toys.
-Our first real train line journey illustrated how the train splits and that it is important to pay attention to what car you are getting on, even though it didn't split until after we got to the airport.
-When we got to Dublin we took a Double-Decker bus from the airport to the hotel. It was highly entertaining riding on the upper level- first time for both Matt and I on that type of bus. It holds so many more people, I wonder why they don't run these as the public bus system in DC?
-Had some microbrew at Mssrs. Maguire which was very good and pretty cheap after we ate at a cute Italian place for dinner- discovered the best way to pick a dinner location is to look for where there are lots of locals, not a place in the tourist guidebook!!


Day 3, October 7
Today we went on our own tour of the city, as well as the Jameson Distillery Tour and the Guinness Tour. Both were quite entertaining- the Guinness tour concluded with a free beer at the top of the 7th floor, from which we could look out on the entire city in a 360 degree windowed room. It was really beautiful, and we could see the hills off in the distance. The Jameson tour was more like Disney World, with model versions of various parts of the brewing process. This was somewhat odd, especially since it was taking place in the building that had been the distillery since the 1700s. I managed to get selected to be a "whisky tester" at the end, in which we compared Jameson, Jack Daniels, and 12 year old Scotch. I found for the first time that, given the right type, I will in fact actually drink whisky- something I had not previously enjoyed! My favorite turned out to be the Jack, and I also discovered that mixing whisky with cranberry juice (how they drink it here in Dublin) is really quite good!

In addition to those tours, we saw Temple bar district (the area of all the bars you see on TV), Dublin Castle and St. Patrick's Cathedral, and other parts of "old Dublin". It is really amazing how old everything here is. The oldest buildings in the United States don't even warrant a mention when compared to the history in these cities.

By the end of the day (now) we are once again exhausted. Must stop trying to see entire cities by foot in one  day... Part of the problem is that we don't really know how to "be tourists" yet. How to decide what all do to, and as importantly what not to do is somewhat challenging. We are having a great time already, even though we are wearing ourselves out. Hopefully later this week when we get to Dingle we will be able to settle into a better rhythm (as there isn't much to do there anyway).

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