One Year On: Honeymoon, Day 1

Lisa and I were married on April 28th, 2012. 3 days later, Christ rose from the dead and we got on a plane. On the 2nd of May we landed in Dublin, which is where the adventure really begins. (The only noteworthy travel note before this is that the Frankfurt airport, where we connected, was apparently conceived by hamsters bent on revenge – it was nothing but tunnels and intersections for what felt like miles.)  There were travel delays getting into Dublin so we scrapped most of our plan for light sightseeing .. which was fine, as we’d learned from our first big trip together (London) that jet lag + foreign culture = us not being our best on day 1. So, after dropping our bags off we simply checked out our neighborhood.

(Side note: dropping our bags off began our long list entitled “Holy Shit are the Irish Ever Nice.”  The lovely woman at the front desk gave the usual “so where are you from, what are your plans” shtick, and seemed nice enough about it. LATER, we discovered she’d hand-written a couple of pages of her personal recommendations for when we were in the stretch of Ireland that she hails from. Woof.) As it turned out, the Westbury Hotel was situated smack dab in the heart of where we wanted to be. Note, “as it turned out” will, for this and all future uses in these posts, actually mean “thanks to Lisa’s meticulous planning.”  Museums, restaurants, and several points of interest were all easy hoofing distance. This day, though, we simply strolled about a bit, marking time until dinner and SLEEP.

Dinner was at a lovely restaurant called The Pig’s Ear. Charming, contemporary, and laid back. For all the differences in cuisine, I think Dublin’s food scene is a lot like Seattle’s. They don’t go for dressing up the people or the food, except for a few joints that cater to that sort of thing, but decor & decorum are completely divorced from how seriously they take the meal in any given joint. We ate early, and got back to our room (which had been upgraded at the mention of the word “honeymoon,” a practice that my new bride was shameless in exploiting) and fell into bed, and sleep, not much after. Tomorrow, a tour bus to Newgrange and the Hill of Tara.

DISJOINTED MEMORIES CAUSED BY TIME: (so, in many posts, rather than belabor the point that I’m getting around to these posts a year later, I’ll simply have a section like this when I can’t figure out how to place something chronologically. Otherwise, I stress and then I stop writing, and boo.)

* At some point they sent up champagne and strawberries, completely unsolicited. God bless them.

* Our insertion into Dublin went loads easier than London. Paris, too, although Paris was smooth (it just involved mass transit in a country where we barely spoke the language and then we walked the streets, late at night, hauling luggage, for a smidge too long for comfort).

* I swear, we brought Seattle gray with us and it stayed, almost without a break, the whole trip.