First in a series : Ireland

Well, hello!

We're back from our vacation after many adventures - some good and some bad, but all exciting! I'll be breaking this up into a number of smaller posts for ease of reading for you and typing for me.

We started our vacation in Trim, outside of Dublin, at a beautiful B&B called Highland House. This was to be the beginning of a downward-slope of B&B quality, but we'll get to more on that later.

Mom and dad met us at the airport in Dublin, where we all piled in the car and marveled at the mis-placed steering wheel and pedals - crazy stuff! At first the GPS unit the car came with wasn't working, but a couple changes to the wires set everything right and we were soon on our way.

The B&B was just perfect! Mr K managed to contract my cold while at the airport in Geneva and was feeling pretty bad by the time we arrived in Dublin. The beautifully-accented owner of the B&B welcomed us inside and, when she heard Mr K was ill, gave him a pat on the arm and said she would be right back with a warm whiskey - it was delicious. Thus fortified, we headed out to walk into town and see what there was to eat. We found a promising-looking Indian restaurant and, since Mr K and I have been craving good Indian for months, mom and dad went along with it despite an unfamiliarity with Indian cuisine. The restaurant was beautiful and the food really, really tasty. We had butter chicken, chicken korma, chicken tikka masala, and tandoori chicken washed down with Cobra beers. The woman working the door seemed to be new (maybe to this restaurant, possibly to the whole concept of restaurants and food in general). This led to one of the funnier experiences of our trip. Mr K ordered a second beer from her and, looking confused, she went off to find one. When she came back to our table, she set down a glass, poured half the beer - and then, taking the still half-full bottle with her, wandered off. That beer didn't end up on our check, so no harm done I suppose.

The next morning we woke up and had a tasty Irish Breakfast before crossing the street to explore Trim Castle. The weather was perfect and we were all happily full from breakfast. We walked around for about an hour and a half before catching the bus into Dublin.

We walked around Dublin for a few hours, doing a little shopping and a lot of people watching. I was beyond overjoyed to find whole stores of books in English, but I was good and only picked up a couple. We had a nice lunch and walked some more, before heading back. All told, we walked just about six miles on our first day - not too bad! For dinner, we had sandwiches and soups before heading back to go to sleep before 10 PM - a trend we continued for the duration of the trip.

From here we headed to Northern Ireland - come back soon for more stories!