Ireland: Harps, not shamrocks or leprechauns.

Finally, I think I'm starting to get the hang of this long-flight-travel thing after all these trips. Between sleeping with my beach ball (see first post from last trip) and my compression socks to avoid swelling in my feet, I had the best flight ever perhaps. I am proud to say I slept about 4 hours of the 6 hour 45 minute flight from Chicago O'Hare to Dublin. We actually took off from Chicago almost two hours late but only arrived 50 minutes later than scheduled so that was impressive. The only thing that would have made it better is if my movies had worked. 

When I arrived, I was met by the EF staff and our tour director whose name I can't pronounce yet. We had to wait for others until 11am so I sat in the airport and killed time by reading updates on the attack in Nice last night. Side note: Nice is near and dear to my heart, especially that particular area that's been in all the pictures today so despite the warm, fuzzy, personal memories I have there, it will now always seem marred. 

Once our group was all here, we took the tour bus to our hotel and dropped our bags. Because this is an adult tour, not a high school tour, we have more free time to explore on our own. So after an afternoon snacks of tea, scones and black currant jam, we joined our TD (tour director whose name I will learn and practice tomorrow) for a walking tour of Dublin. Our hotel is right by Parnell Square so we visited the Garden of Remembrance and down O'Connell Street. We passed the Millennial Spire  and the Post Office, the site of the 1916 revolution where 1500 Irishmen and women declared their independence from England. We crossed the River Liffey into the Temple Bar district with lots of pedestrian areas and pubs. We crossed the river via the Ha'Penny (half-penny) Bridge and back to our hotel. Four of the five single ladies on the trip decided to go to our dinner spot early, park it on patio with half pints and people-watch. Dinner was great with salad, vegetables, Irish stew and hot apple pie with yummy sauce. We walked back to the hotel and are going to have an early night since most of us are still trying to catch up from last night. 

Garden of Remembrance: 

Temple bar area: