Dublin!

To take my mind off the current threat of world destruction, I decided to report on mine and my dad's recent trip to Dublin!

The flight to Dublin from Leeds Bradford went very smoothly, I have to in particular recommend the Viking car park system - you park your car a couple of minutes away from the airport, they take your key, and give you a lift in a mini bus to the airport, and then on return they monitor the flights so that as you leave the airport the mini bus pulls up again to take you back to your car, and this happened flawlessly.

Once in Dublin we headed for one of the oldest drinking establishments in Dublin, Mulligans.

It may not be obvious from the photo, but of the 25 or so beer pumps behind the bar, no less than 4 of them were devoted to Guinness, and as we walked in the barman was pouring pint after pint of the black stuff.  We wasting no time in ordering two pints for ourselves and finding a seat.

Then, I remembered one of the other excellent drinks available in Dublin (any many other places I'm sure) are hot whiskeys - whiskey, hot water, a slice of lemon with cloves placed carefully within, and an optional spoon of sugar.

Hot whiskeys are quite small though, and we found that it was more sensible to order a hot whiskey with a pint of Guinness, so that we didn't have to go to the bar quite so often.

For some reason after a few hours in Mulligan's we went to the hotel and slept for 16 hours or so.

The following morning we happened upon a cafe called Metro that did a decent breakfast, that somehow managed to make us feel halfway human again!

So the second day was spent at a more relaxed speed, visiting the Guinness Storehouse but apart from that catching up on the Commonwealth Games.

I did experience one of my pet hates that evening when, going out for some dinner, I ordered a pie.

For the avoidance of doubt - the photo above does not depict a pie.

A pie should be fully encased in pastry (ideally shortcrust).

What this meal consisted of was a bowl of stew, with a hat on.

The last day we went to several museums - the "National" museums of archaeology, natural history, The National Gallery of Ireland, and Book of Kells are all sited quite close to one another.  I have to say that the free options (aka not the Book of Kells) are definitely the better ones to experience.

Massive skeletons of gigantic deer in the natural history museum

Of course, no trip would be complete without one awkward experience, and that would be the flight back to the UK. When it was time to get to the plane, we obediently boarded two buses that would take us there, which then sat and didn't move for a while.

Then they drove us to the plane, but didn't open the doors, they just showed us the plane for a while. Eventually they told us that we couldn't board, because the crew for the plane hadn't shown up yet. If only we'd had some kind of paperwork, or card, that told us which seat we were supposed to sit in! Maybe you could call it...a boarding pass?

Eventually the crew arrived - it turned out that the normal crew wasn't available so it was a standby crew that had been brought into action - and we took off.  Very soon after lift off they advised us that conditions at Leeds Bradford Airport were extremely bad, and that there was a good chance that we'd end up at Manchester Airport instead - not ideal, when my car was at Leeds Bradford.

Despite this, they did manage to land at Leeds Bradford even though as far as I could see the fog was such that there was no sign of any lights, runway, or even where the ground was for that matter. The landing was a little rougher than the one at Dublin (which was in the middle of the day in good weather) but we were just happy to be down, in one piece, and even better, where we were supposed to be.

All in all I certainly had a great time, and I'm renewed in my desire to work out just how to make a hot whiskey!