It is a beautiful, sunny Irish morning as I write this. Strange. We heard many times yesterday how lucky we were to have arrived to nice weather as it is usually rainy or at least grey.
Yesterday was a very long day. For me it was about 30.5 hours of waking time. Jenny was longer since she didn't sleep in until five minutes before we we supposed to leave (we calculated her as 32 hours). For the most part it was a great long day.
As I said I slept in. Luckily my suitcase was all packed, and my carry-on bag was ready to go. I threw it together, threw on clothes, and got down to the taxi in record time. I have yet to notice anything that I forgot, but the trip just started.
There was a short bit of terror at the airport when they couldn't find our Calgary to Amsterdam flight. We booked through my credit card rewards thing and apparently when there was a change to the flight they forgot to rebook us. Westjet was able to fix it and all was good (this is why I love Westjet!)
We grabbed some breakfast and then caught our flight to Calgary. Then we had a four hour layover. At some point we grabbed lunch. At another point we explored a bookstore for in-flight entertainment. I believe it was somewhere in there that we took this.
Look how fresh and not exhausted we look!
The flight to Amsterdam was long of course, but I was quite impressed with KLM. It was good, other than not being able to sleep (every time I got close the kids a few rows up would squawk and wake me up again).
By later in the travelling we were much less fresh and much more exhausted.
But after a short (and very frustrating due to the lack of efficient queuing despite many Canadians in the crowd!) stopover in Schiphol we caught our last flight to Dublin. I think this is when I finally got a tiny bit of sleep - drifting in and out as we made our way over.
When we arrived in Dublin we caught an aircoach to go meet Madeline at work. It was so great to see an old friend! For those of you who know her and are wondering she is just as great as ever. We left our bags with her and went off to explore. We wandered around where she works (central Dublin, near St. Stephen's Green) and spent money we really shouldn't have. It was wonderful. After a while we made our way back to her work and the three of us grabbed lunch (yay Salad!) and ate it in the green.
After lunch we walked back up to Trinity College.
We went to the Book of Kells exhibit. It was amazing. Far more beautiful than I had realized (and my expectations were high!). It was well curated - enough information that I felt I was learning, but not so much that I would stop reading. I was very impressed.
What I did not expect was how amazing The Long Room was. It is a giant library room that was built to accommodate a desire to have a copy if every book in the Isles held at Trinity. It is a beautiful room filled with old books and busts of historic figures. It is my version of heaven. I did take some really neat pictures but they are on my camera, not my phone, so I can't post them yet. Sorry!
After that we walked back, spent some more time in the park, and picked up Madeline. After a short freshening up we joined her and some friends for dinner at a Tapas Bar for their book club. The food was delicious, and the company good. However we were very sleepy and kept almost falling asleep.
After a refreshing night in Madeline's lovely apartment (with a very shy kitty that I have now seen twice but am yet to truly meet) we are preparing for our train ride down to Cork. I am sure we will have more to share later!
I will finish with some lovely photos of our retreat from yesterday - St. Stephan's Green
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