There and Back Again

Today's Topic: Travel, Ireland

I have returned from my first trip overseas! I have so much to say that I have no idea where to begin.

Probably the first thing I noticed in Ireland was how they treated addresses. Having grown un in Chicago, which in my opinion is the most logically laid-out city in the world, it was difficult dealing with the craziness that was Dublin. Our "hotel" (not the proper term, more on that later) was on Upper Abbey street. Abbey was fairly easy to find on the map, as was Lower Abbey and Middle Abbey. Now logic says to me that Upper Abbey would be north of the other two. Not so. It was actually west and a little bit southward. The numbering system made absolutely no sense. A friend today explained to me that the numbers go up on one side of the street until the end of the street and then continue to clime back the other way on the other side of the street. Unfortunately, I was not armed with this information at the time. Not that it would have mattered because none of the buildings had numbers on them. Finally, we wondered into a building that looked like a hotel to ask for directions. When we told the woman at the front desk what we were looking for, she said, "I should have known." Apparently, the place that my brother picked to host us is notoriously hard to find.

Still, we did better than my mother, father, and sister who wondered around for several hours trying to find the place. They stopped for directions several times and received different directions every time.


OK, I don't mean to start my first blog about traveling to Ireland with complaining. I just wanted to start with my first impressions. Just be glad that I skipped the part about our lay-over in Heathrow. That place is a previously undiscovered extra circle of hell. Don't worry. I'll tell you more about that later....

Let me take a few lines to balance this all out to say some positive things. The coffee in Ireland is awesome. I don't think that I had a bad cup the whole time I was there. In fact that was my second observation after the address thing. After locating the hotel and locating my family, we headed straight to the cafe next door, Lemon Jelly. After all to stave off jet lag you have to stay up until the normal bed time in whatever time zone you are in. For this, we needed coffee, and Dublin did not disappoint.

Anyway, I have to wrap this up for now. Let me first apologize for my last two posts. First off, the last entry, "Score!" Should have been posted on my other blog. I wasn't paying attention. If it didn't make any sense to you non-gamer types, I apologize. Secondly, my plan with leaving a book in Ireland totally fizzled out. I just couldn't settle on any book that I actually wanted to read and drag around with me.

I suspect Ireland and travel stories will dominate this blog for some time. Stay tuned.