Dublin

The day began inauspiciously.  Jan spent months working out tour researching, booking, confirming and reconfirming tour arrangements and this morning’s did not show up.  Don’t use Over the Top Tours in Dublin.  I won’t waste time in the blog to give their reasons.  Ask us when we return home.

Any good sports story contains a promise that when the breaks are beating the boys you win one for the Gipper.  After a huddle we reorganized.  Four of our party of 14 hired a local cabbie named Johnny to give us the same tour.  Because the new group was smaller we were able to learn more about Ireland.  We asked lots of questions and Johnny gave us lots of answers and we laughed. 

First stop was a park well outside the city in order to get the full impression of that lush Irish green.  Then over to the Glendalough monastery.  Steeped in history the grounds are full of past lives carefully watched by a round tower.

Keeping religion at the forefront of the tour, because when you come to Ireland you don’t ignore it, we stopped by Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.  If you are a bit rusty on geo-politics, Saint Pat’s is a Protestant Church because we are in Ireland and not Northern Ireland.  This is the independent free country.

From there we drifted back towards the city which requires you pay your respects to Molly Malone.  Molly’s dress is in fashion again.  Finally we sampled true Irish cuisine.  A long day with a few early complications that finished in victory.

That's Johnny, our cabbie over Jan's shoulder