Dublin

This weekend Emilie and I went to Dublin, marking my first visit to the soil of my Irish ancestors. We decided to take a Friday afternoon flight out and return early Monday morning, so we were able to benefit from having two full days for our visit.

If there was any question of where we were headed prior to boarding, it became overwhelmingly clear once we began to board. First there was the Aer Lingus plane, which was as Irish as you can get – covered in green with a shamrock on the tail – and then there was the purser: Sinead O’Neil.

We took a cab from the airport to the hotel and our cab driver was a bit of a trip. He had as thick of an Irish accent as you could imagine and I could barely understand a word that he was saying. He also seemed to have a preference for U.S. country music.

Our hotel was adjacent to St. Stephen’s Green, and after dropping off our stuff we walked to the nearby Temple Bar area to get some dinner. It felt a bit touristy, but we found a nice restaurant serving some traditional Irish food.

I went with the Fish and Chips, which turned out to be a perfect choice.

And we were both very original with our beverage choice: Guinness.

After dinner we wanted to experience a true Irish pub, so we headed to The Brazen Head -- the oldest pub in Dublin at nearly 1,000 years young. I can’t say that it really felt like an authentic pub given the size (I think it's definitely grown a bit over the years), but it was an interesting experience nonetheless.

To finish off the night, we stopped at another pub – O’Shea’s. There were a couple of guys there playing traditional Irish music, which was a lot of fun to watch. And once again I decided on a Guinness. I guess that I just figured "When in Rome..."