Dublin part 2, and on to the UK

Where we last left off, our heroes were exploring Dublin.

It was getting close to 3, so Jay and I decided to go get our bags from storage and head to our AirBnb. So we got our bags and hauled them across Dublin (about a 30 minute walk, but it felt like more to our untrained backs) and found our way to our place. I'd contacted our host earlier and she'd said that she would send me the code to get in to the apartment if she wasn't going to be there to let us in. I'd been checking my email at every free wi-fi spot possible and nothing had come through, so we went to the house and knocked on the door. And knocked.

And knocked.

Crap.

We walked around looking for wi-fi to see if she'd sent anything or so that I could send her a message. We found some, but it wasn't very good and I had to by a Very Bad cup of coffee to use it. Still no luck contacting her. We went back to the apartment and knocked again. Still nothing, so I left Jay at the door with my backpack so that I could search a little more for wi-fi. I should mention that one of the things that we wanted to do Saturday was go to the Marsh library, which I'll get to in a minute, but the point is that it closed at five and it wasn't going to be open on Sunday, so we could only waste so much time on this endeavor. I didn't have any luck finding a connection, so we decided to just take our bags with us. We stopped in at a café that was closing and begged the use of her phone so that I could call the contact number for my host, but she didn't answer. We went to the Marsh library, which is Ireland's oldest public library, and was set up because the founder thought the Trinity library was too hard to get in to. To paraphrase the librarian who welcomed us, it's still a public library, but the books are all so old and fragile that you need to give a very good reason for them to let you touch them. Bram Stoker apparently spent some time working in this library. It has books from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. We enjoyed it, but our backs were getting pretty tired and we were getting a tad anxious about the AirBnb. The Marsh library is close to Saint Patrick's Cathedral, so we went and sat in the park next to the cathedral and tried to steal wi-fi. We could barely get any signal, and at that point my phone battery gave up the ghost.

We decided to find a place with wi-fi so that I could continue trying to contact our host and maybe contact AirBnb. We had tickets for a tour at 7, and it was ~5 at that point, so we decided that we'd spend the intervening time trying to resolve the AirBnb problem and if we didn't, we'd go on the tour and find a new place to stay afterward. It wasn't an ideal plan, but it was a plan. Fortunately we found an internet café and I was able to get to the AirBnb help site. I sent in a urgent request for help, sent a few more messages to our host, and spent the next 10 minutes refreshing my emails and my AirBnb inbox every five seconds. Finally, I begged the proprietor to let me use his phone so that I could call the AirBnb emergency line. I think the term "emergency" must mean something different to them, because I was on hold for an hour. The proprietor of the internet cafe was starting to look a bit cranky. We'd decided that at 6:15 we were gonna give up, run into a grocery store Jay had seen down the street and grab something edible for dinner, and then head to our tour. I kid you not, at 6:12 I finally got a person on the other end of the line. So I explained the situation while Jay ran to that grocery store to get food. The AirBnb guy asked for my phone number so that he could hang up, call the host on her emergency line, and then call me back, so I had to go ask the increasingly grumpy proprietor and beg for the number, which he gave to me. Jay came back while I was waiting for the guy to call. Turns out that grocery store was more of a convenience store and somewhat lacking in food for a fast dinner, so he brought back a pack of prosciutto and a bag of peanuts. Now THAT'S a dinner.

The AirBNB guy called back with the code to get into the apartment we're staying in. Apparently, the woman had texted me the code.

But I'm not using my cell phone in Europe.

We could argue all day about whether it was silly of our host to try and communicate by text when all of my previous communications had been through the AirBNB messaging app, but it is what it is. After I got off the phone with the AirBnb guy, she actually called the number I was at so that she could apologize. I mentioned that we'd tried calling her and no one had answered, and it turns out that she hadn't picked up because she wasn't expecting a call from a Dublin number. Sigh. So it was all the result of an error in communication. I've learned my lesson. All future hosts will know that we are email only.

With the problem resolved, but our backs still sore, we went to meet up with our tour. On the way, I ate the prosciutto and Jay ate about half of the peanuts.

 This was a ridiculously touristy tour that I normally wouldn't do, but it seemed kinda neat, had good reviews, and wasn't too expensive. It was a Irish Storytelling Bus tour. Even better, the bus was only a quarter full, so it felt more personal. The inside of the bus was tricked out to look like an old fashion bar (complete with Guinness on tap), and the second level had a stage area where the storyteller could sit. So we drove around Dublin and out to the coast and got off in a couple of different places while he told very entertaining stories about some of the history and mythology of Ireland. Like I said, it was touristy, but it ended up being perfect because it was mindless, and we could put our bags down and just let the man talk at us for a couple of hours.

Two of our stops on the storyteller tour, and our guide, who was fantastic!

After the tour we had one more walk with the backpacks back to our place. The code got us in, we stumbled into our rooms (I noted that I had ~24,000 steps for the day on my fitbit), made a quick plan for the next day, and went to sleep.

When we woke up Sunday, first thing we did was go looking for a grocery of some sort so that we could make breakfast, but it was 8:30 on a Sunday, and NOTHING was open. Eventually we stopped in at the only open business we could find, which was a news agent, and Jay excitedly started exclaiming "eggs! EGGS!" You should remember at this point that poor Jay literally had peanuts for dinner the night before. That and the Guinness on the tour bus.

Yes, they had eggs. The proprietor did not look happy to see us or particularly interesting in selling us anything, but we bought the eggs, went back to our apartment and made a quick breakfast. Among the things we visited today were St. Patrick's Cathedral (cool), Christchurch Cathedral (the oldest building in Dublin, also cool), the National Gallery (meh, most of the exhibits were closed), the Natural History Museum (which I thought was awesome, but Jay was bored, and there were A LOT of little kids running around, and the Archaeology Museum (very cool). Pictures below.

St. Patrick's Cathedral: the stairway to the organ, soaring ceilings, cool stone carvings, the outside view, and the best of my attempts to capture the majesty of the stained glass windows. The best part about St. Patrick's was that because we were there early Sunday, we happened to still be in the cathedral when the choir started warming up. It's amazing to hear so many talented voices singing in a giant hall like that. Also, they had free wi-fi, so Jay was happy to sit and let me listen. 

Christchurch Cathedral: The older of Dublin's two medieval cathedrals (the other is St. Patrick's), and, as Jay put it, a pretty badass building. One representation of the stone carving known as a column swallower, used to decorate the tops of the columns in some of the cathedral's original stonework (it's been renovated several times). The original medieval tiles and the Victorian reproductions, Interesting metal work, and the crypt which is the largest in Ireland and the UK and is super cool. That part of me which is very much Linda Lacy's daughter had to take a picture of the elaborate alter cloth (look at how pretty that is, Mom!). A decorative oil holder that Jay was disappointed to find out wasn't a salt shaker. Last but not least, the Cat and the Rat who are apparently famous. They are a cat and a rat who were caught in an organ tube in the 1860s and mummified, and were made famous by James Joyce in Finnegan's Wake. They are now proudly displayed among religious statues, an original copy of the Magna Carta, various alter goods, and examples of the costumes from "The Tudors" which did some of its filming at Christchurch Cathedral.

Me, grinning like a fool in front of the skeleton of an Irish Elk (actually an Irish Deer, but my fellow biology nerds know what's up). An Irish golden Lunulae from Bronze Age Irish society, ~2000-1500 B.C. I didn't take many more pictures at the Archaeology museum cause Jay's knee was really bothering him, he was sitting on a bench, and so I was breezing through the exhibits. There were some very cool exhibits from Viking Ireland and Medieval Ireland.

Jay's knee was bugging him from two days of heavy walking (some of it with a heavy backpack) so we called it a day a little early and went back to the apartment, stopping to buy dinner at a grocery store on the way. The early night ended up being a good thing once we realized that we would have to get up at 3:30 in the morning to catch our flight to London….

So we woke up at 3:30. That was fun. In a rare twist, Jay slept better than I did. So I was kinda groggy and barely starting to stand up from the bed by the time he was dressed packed and putting on his shoes.

We trekked across central Dublin and discovered something entertaining. Monday was a bank holiday, which meant that the streets of Dublin were something like you'd see on a Saturday night, but maybe a bit more. Lots of people, lots of hollering, nothing unfriendly but very entertaining. We found our way to the stop where we were supposed to meet the airport bus and waited around for a minute. We were a little bothered by how slow things seemed. There wasn't a sign of a bus anywhere, and there were two taxis parked at the end of the street. Jay was getting concerned, so we walked down to the taxis to ask if they knew if the busses would be running on the bank holiday (we'd checked, and there was no indication that they wouldn't but we were hoping for some clarification). The cabbie we talked to explained that half the roads in and out of the city were shut down because they were laying rail for the new tram so the bus probably wasn't going to be making it in today.

Nobody warned us of this (we'd been to multiple tourism offices). There was no warning on the bus website. So we go into damage control. The cabbie we were talking was booked so we asked where the best place would be to find another cab, and he told us there wouldn't be any out that hadn't been specifically called. He asked when our flight was (6:30) and looked at his watch anxiously. We were conferring with each other on what to do and the cabbie took pity on us and told us to get in. So we did, and he booked it to the airport. He kept apologizing for how fast he was going and how erratic his driving was, but Jay and I went to school in New Orleans and this all felt pretty familiar. I think he was going ~100 mph at one point on the highway. That man was awesome and a lifesaver and he got us to the airport with time to spare and I had no quandaries tossing a large bill at him as we got out of the car. Nameless cabbie driver of Dublin, thank you, you saved the day. We had to go through a long line at RyanAir in order to get our visas checked, which unfortunately was the same line that took the baggage drops. The cheapest flights all fly out at ungodly hours early in the morning, so things were pretty busy. There was woman in front of us who had a huge 60+10 liter backpack on and had two smaller school backpacks stuffed full and a small child in a stroller who most definitely did not want to be in that stroller. She screamed and screamed and SCREAMED. I felt sorry for her mom, and then there ended up being some problem so that they wouldn't take her bag and I felt even worse for her.

Once we got to the front it was just a matter of a quick visa check and then we were off to security. Aside from me forgetting to take my liquids out, everything was fine, we got on our plane, I dosed in and out for the entire flight and we landed at London Gatwick. When we got off the plane, I got out my phone to search for wi-fi and saw something Very Not Good. My phone seemed to be having some sort of epileptic fit and within a couple of minutes appeared to have reverted to factory settings. I have no idea what happened. It wasn't in response to the UK wireless network, cause I had the thing in airplane mode, but my phone was not in good shape. What that meant is that we no longer had access to our offline navigation app or the googlemap I had saved as backup or the instructions to our AirBnb. Which meant we very much needed to find wi-fi, so Jay could get the map. This was an all too familiar feeling at this point, as Jay and I had already spent the last two days living off of whatever free wi-fi we could find. He managed to get a map, but I was still anxious about what we were going to do. We headed to the rental car desk and, miracle of miracles, they had a mobile wi-fi hotspot that you could add on to your rental for what, at that time (and still does), seemed like a reasonable fee. We were saved. We got our hotspot, got our navigation and headed to Oxford. We couldn't check into our place in Oxford till 3, so we needed to find a place where Jay could sit and work for a few hours. We had the mobile hotspot as a backup, if necessary, but working in the car didn't seem particularly ideal. We wondered around Oxford getting increasingly hungry and couldn't find a place to park, so then we headed out to Toot Baldon (where we're staying) to see if we would have better luck out there. Short answer: no, but we did get a preview of the absurdly adorable village where we're staying, so we had that to look forward to. We'd seen a Sainsbury's earlier (think British Walmart) on our route so we headed back to that so that we could at least feed our starving selves. Miraculously, the Sainsbury's in question has a café in it, so we stationed ourselves there to pass the time till checkin. I think we're presenting something of a novelty to the locals. Our checkout girl initiated a conversation with us, and I'm pretty sure it's cause she wanted to hear our accents. It's fun to be out in the country where they're not bored with American tourists. Kinda like the time I met an Irishman when I was ~16 in Ruidoso, New Mexico. I thought he was so cool.

The time came and we found our way to the place we're staying in Toot Baldon, "The Flowerbed Shed." It's perfect, and I'm so glad we get to have a few peaceful days here. Pictures to come. Click the link for a preview.

I have to return to science for bit so that Peggy (my PhD mentor) and I can get a paper or two submitted, so time to put on my PhD cap. Adios for a while.