Depart and Dublin

Warning:  The next few posts will be very looooong and full of picture overload.  Just scroll through and look at pictures or skip all together.  I don't want to forget anything about our trip to Europe so I will be writing lots.

The day finally arrived.  We had been playing our trip to Europe since April.  It seemed forever away and then suddenly here it was.  We got all packed up the night before.

Then we were up very early to catch our plane.  I love Cora's face.  This was pretty much her the whole trip.

We had a four hour layover in Toronto.  Took that time to find our next gate and to eat some lunch.

It was a 6 hour flight over to Dublin.  All of us tried to catch some sleep on the plane.  I think we each got maybe an hour and a half.  When we landed it was 6:45 am their time, 12:45 pm ours.  It was going to be a long day. Dave had planned to take the public bus to our hotel and drop our bags, but Dublin was having a bus strike.  Just the day we landed and the day after.  Nice.  We had to hire a private bus to take us into Dublin and then we walked everywhere that first day.  We were exhausted.

Because of the strike we stayed right in Dublin.  I had really wanted to go out to the lighthouse, but it was a few miles away.  Without our backpacks and with some sleep we would have done it. Walked around Trinity College.

Went to the Museum of Natural History.

At the museum we learned that Europe 'doesn't really do the water fountain thing.  It's an American thing'  Ok, good to know.  We started packing water bottles with us everywhere but were so thirsty the first day.  I loved all the green in Ireland.

Across from our hotel was Christ Church.  We finally dropped our bags and looked at our room.  It was the cutest little apartment.  Next we grabbed a few things in prep for breakfast the next morning and then headed over to the church to walk through it.

After looking at the church and the grounds we found a little place to get some pizza.  Very different pizza, mozza was a topping you had to ask for.  Cora ordered lemonade.  When it came we all had to have a taste to see if it was lemony at all.

Tasted like Sprite with a lemon squeezed in it.  This started Cora's quest to find lemonade in Europe.  It was also my first place that I was asked if I wanted still or sparkling water.  I very quickly learned that for the next two weeks to always ask for still water.  More beautiful green and love these colored doors.  There was tons of streets with doors all colorful.

We walked around a bit more, but were so tired at this point.  When we got back to our apartment and ready for bed, Dublin seemed to come to live.  We were right on a main street and it was so loud.  Normally I think it would have been fine, but we were over tired, our room was hot and we had to keep the window open.  No screens in anyplace we went to in Europe.  I really think I saw 10 bugs.  Wouldn't that be nice.  So it was hard to sleep, but we caught another few hours.