Dublin about town....

July 16, 2007
This view of the castle grounds, was really more interesting than the castle itself.
Dublin Castle...
Me at my first castle, even though it looks like Bill covered up the lens....
Our first pub adventure, but it wouldn't be the last!
It wore me out just watching the energy it took to perform these Celtic dances.

Today we started our tour with CIE. We took a tour of the city of Dublin by bus. It is a very interesting place with much history. Our tour guide is David Darby, a plump Irish man, very nice and charming. I was excited to visit my first castle, but was disappointed because the castle had been recently renovated (1700’s) and looked like maybe George Washington had once lived their. In centuries past, after it had been destroyed by war, fire or whatever catastrophe befell it....the current ruler decided to give it a more “colonial” look as was the fashion at that time. It looked like a castle on the outside though. We saw many government buildings and other historical sights too.

We had a few hours before dinner, so we went to O’Brien’s Pub and had some delicious hard cider (Brummels), which was only 4.3% alcohol. It was fun to listen to all of the chatter by the locals in their lovely Irish brogue. They sure know how to "decorate" their dialogue with lots of profanity...:-) I bought some organic chocolate w/orange flavoring and we started walking back to our hotel and I said to Bill “Hey, I’m walking down the streets of Dublin eating chocolate, does it get any better than this?” I found out that it does.

We had dinner at Doyle’s Irish Cabaret with the rest of our tour group. The food was delicious! We had prime rib, steamed vegetables, and buttery mashed potatoes, loaded with fresh parsley, hard rolls and beer. For desert we had Fitzwilliams chantilly- a custard with sweet whiskey sauce and also Irish coffee (coffee, whisky, sugar and cream).

After dinner a very funny comedian, Noel McVenntey and “river” dancers, along with singers and musicians entertained us. All music was the traditional Irish rhythmic and emotional sounds, it was beautiful! We made some new friends that were from Florida, Brenda, Kim and Dave and Cathy, we enjoyed the entire evening.