Our First Day in Dublin

FIRST! Thanks for all of the wonderful birthday wishes! You guys are awesome!
Ireland was such a treat, I CANNOT wait to go back. Forget every other country in Europe, just take me to Ireland ;)

We really did have a fantastic time. Like I said yesterday, it was more than I could have asked for. We both are still exhausted. I forgot how much traveling takes it out of you. I woke up at 8:00 this morning, which is unusual for me and am still struggling. But hey don't get me wrong, every bit of exhaustion is worth it just to have been able visit Ireland.

Today I'm just blogging about our first day in Dublin, as you can tell by the title of my post. I'll just summarize it for you guys or else you'd be stuck reading my blog all day. By the way, thanks for reading my blog and commenting, it truly does make my entire day that people actually find our little lives interesting enough to read! So, thanks friends!

Friday morning we woke up at 4:00 a.m. and were out the door at 5:11 a.m. Pretty good timing!
We drove to the airport and were on the plane by 6:30. I think we took off around 6:45 if I can remember.

Thank goodness everything went well at the airport. We had heard horror stories about Ryan Air, but we found it to be a breeze! Our plane took off, and we were on our way to Dublin. Thankfully the flight was super short and we arrived around 8:30.

From the airport we took a cab to our hotel, Jury's Inn, which is right across the street from Christ Church. (Thank you Rick Steve's.) Check in wasn't until 12:00, so they locked our bags up for us and out we went to get a feel for the city. First, of course, we stopped to take pictures of Christ Church since that was the first thing we saw. Here is a photo of the lovely church.

We walked around the Temple Bar area which we heard about from our friend Sarah. It was great, we loved seeing all of the old pubs and the buildings. After walking around for a bit we realized we both were starving, so we stopped and asked for a good breakfast restaurant. A woman recommended Queen of Tarts, and OH my gosh was it amazing!

I found this picture on the internet. I completely forgot to take a photo of this restaurant.

We had scrambled eggs, potato cakes, toast and cappuccino's! YUM. That definitely hit the spot.

After breakfast we headed to the Dublin Castle.
Here are a few of the castle.

From what we could tell it is still being used for office buildings. There were many people in and out of the castle. Of course we stopped and grabbed a couple of post cards, because they have been a bit of a collector's item for us. So now we have a postcard from all the countries that we have visited thus far.

Next we walked to Trinity College. I did not realize what a beautiful college this was until we were actually on the school grounds. It was unbelievable. Here are some pictures of the college.

From Trinity we walked along the nearby streets, visiting several of the shops.

I had to take a picture of this shop.

They sell door knobs and door knockers. Isn't that AWESOME? They even sell t-shirts that say Knobs and Knockers on them. How funny. I could kick myself for not buying one.

We walked down Grafton Street all the way to the St. Stephen's Green. Okay, this park is unbelievable! I want to move to Dublin just so I can jog through this park every morning. It was so peaceful and everything was just so green and beautiful.

We made our way to St. Patrick's Cathedral.
Another beautiful piece of architecture.

After seeing the St. Patrick's Cathedral we made our way back to Christ Church.

There is a Viking exhibit inside of the church, and Jon was really eager to see it.

Here are some more pictures of Christ Church.

A few from inside Christ Church.

The Viking exhibit was actually very interesting, and we really did learn a lot. The few pictures above are from the tower. There were 96 steps to the top of the tower; the view was awesome.
At that point we decided to finally check into our hotel, freshen up, put on some warmer clothes and head back out. It was a little colder than we had anticipated!

After checking in we found a restaurant practically next door to our hotel. It was way past lunch time and we were famished. We had an awesome lunch with a couple pints of an Irish blonde beer, which was perfect and not too heavy for lunchtime.

Next, we walked through the Temple Bar area to O'Connell bridge.

On O'Connell Bridge.

By that time it had started to rain and walking in the rain just didn't sound exciting to Jon and me, so we went back to The Temple Bar and had a couple pints of Guinness.


After several hours and several pints of Guinness we both realized how beat we actually were and decided to head back to the hotel for dinner. We were running on fumes after dinner and just called it an evening. We both wanted to get a good nights sleep because Saturday was going to be another long day!

Stay tuned, there's more to come on our Ireland adventure tomorrow! (With even more pictures. I took over 400, wow!)

Our Weekly Weekend Update

Hello my wonderful blogging buddies! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Thanks for all of the kind words on my last post! You guys really do rock!

This weekend was a laid back one! How was yours??

Friday night we met our friends Sarah and Deaner for dinner at Vapiano. I cannot express how much I love their food! I had fusilli pasta with a mushroom cream sauce, (that I get every time) and a glass of the house red wine. After making a HAPPY plate we decided to take our party of four to Scrooge's Irish Pub.

After many drinks and good convo we called it an evening and headed off to bed.

Saturday we woke up to RAIN! Boooo. I had several things I wanted to do that day, but they got pushed back for another day. We stayed inside the entire day. Watched about 5 movies and went to bed early that night. We're cool like that. One of the movies we watched was Rachel Getting Married.

I LOVE this movie, it is extremely sad, but the story line was great and the acting was awesome. If you feel like a good tearjerker, this is definitely a movie you want to see.

Sunday the sun came back to Germany and Jon and I did not want to miss the opportunity to get some things done. First, very exciting news...... our friends Georgina and Josh had their baby. Her name is Addison, she was 6 pounds 12 ounces, and had a full head of hair. We visited them in the hospital and I held that precious baby for over an hour. She just slept "like a baby" the entire time. She is definitely a beautiful gift from God! We were so excited and happy for them.

After visiting them in the hospital we ran to the base to get some new windshield wipers for the car and popped over to the toy store because I really wanted the game Scrabble. Then we went grocery shopping and finally made our way back home. It was so nice outside and we had eaten a huge lunch with Josh at the hospital so we decided to go take a walk. We walked downtown and I captured some pictures of the cathedral (which I've posted on here about 100 times, but I just can't get enough of this church,) and the park.

It was getting to be about dinner time so we headed back home. While we ate dinner we played Scrabble and drank a Riesling from this area. It was a nice way to end a weekend. Other than the fact that Jon kicked my butt at Scrabble!! After about 5 games the total score was,

Jon: 946
Me: 610

Being the sore loser that I can be, I quit! I knew the only reason I didn't win is because I let him get away with a couple of things and I wasn't feeling well. That's the only reason he won ;)

Kathy if you're reading this, here are some pictures of downtown that I took just for you while we went on our walk yesterday ;) I know Wiesbaden holds a close place in your heart. I hope you enjoy!

This is what the streets in my neighborhood look like right now.

One of the many beautiful streets downtown.

One of the natural springs in Wiesbaden. The downtown square.The cathedral in the downtown square.Obviously I love this cathedral!

Another picture of the downtown square. On every Wednesday and Saturday there is a market here and all of the vendors bring their fresh produce, cheeses, meats, etc. A painting on one of the buildings.Heading to the park.The park downtown Wiesbaden.If you look closely you can see a rainbow caught in the fountain water.The theater.
As you can see, the park was filled with sun bathers. It was a beautiful and warm day.They are doing construction at the Kurhaus, so I found pictures that I had previously taken so I could show you what it looks like.

The back of the Kurhaus.On the way to our house there is another park. Here is the park and the building in the background is the train station.I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! As always ours flew by.
Happy Monday to you all!
Enjoy your week!