Ireland: Days 1 & 2

Ireland! A long time dream of Joe's has been to go to Ireland. So we decided that we would go for his 40th birthday last summer, but we couldn't find flights using miles. So we watched united's website, and watched and watched until finally seats became available at a time that worked for us. Audrey will miss the first few days of school, but alas, we were going to Ireland! So we left on Friday, the 17th and should have landed in Dublin around 10:30 am Saturday, flying from Denver to Dulles to Dublin. Triple D. As we were preparing to leave the house on Friday we kept getting messages about our flight from Dulles being delayed 8+ hours. The ticketing agent in Denver fiddled around for like 20 minutes with our itinerary (totally killing our ability to walk casually through the airport and thereby making us the last people to board) but she got us out of Dulles on time (instead of having to spend the night there waiting for the delayed flight to take off at 6:30 am- ouch), but routed us through London. Of course there was some kind of weather that screwed up the take off pattern, causing us to sit on the runway for 1 hour. We were unaware that the flight we were supposed to be on out of heathrow to Dublin left 30 minutes after we were scheduled to land in London. And there was no way to make it from point a to point b in that airport in anything less than 50 minutes. So of course we missed the Dublin flight by a solid hour plus, putting us in Dublin around 3:30 pm. By the time we got to our hotel, it was 5:30, for all intents and purposes our day was dead, and all were beat. It took us about 22 hours door to door, which is somewhat ridiculous. Not to mention, literally as the plane came to a stop in London and the seat belt sign went off, Scarlett proceeded to barf all over herself. Thank goodness she was out of her carseat and most of it landed on the pillow and her pants. I managed to get her wiped off and stripped down to her undies and a coat and she seemed fine. A have a few theories why she barfed out of no where, but my best guess is that she had just slept overnight on the plane, getting about 50% of her normal amount of sleep. The she had some oj and Cheerios (at what would normally be 3:00 am for her)right before landing. I suspect it was just too much for her system; for my little lady who is prone to gagging, choking, spitting up, barfing, etc... One might think our first stop upon securing lodging would be a nice hot bath for Goo and a shower for mommy (as I obviously had some mystery puke on me that I couldn't locate), but no. We hit the streets and found the nearest pub, o'shea's, with a dinner menu that looked doable for our varied food needs and ordered up a couple of Guinness. All. Was. Suddenly. Perfect. Best damn beer ever. But the girls didn't agree. (we let them lick the foam and they both thought it was 'disgusting.' ( or 'gi-stusting' as Scarlett said) Joe is the Guinness drinker in our family. I don't mind it, but it's not my beer of choice. Until now. Man they weren't kidding when they say Guinness tastes better in Ireland. It's smooth like butter. Pure as honey. Downright delicious. We plan to have at least 1 every day (probably more like 2 or 3) that we are here. I intend to have one with breakfast tomorrow and joe was just discussing going out to get one before heading to bed. So we managed to get the kids to bed at a decent hour, but they both woke up around 1:30 and were up for 1 hour, hungry. After feeding the beasties, and switching beds, we all were asleep and accidentally slept until noon! Doh! So we killed our morning, but there was no way I was leaving the hotel without showers and baths as that mystery puke was still lingering. Speaking of our hotel, I booked a 2 bdrm apt hotel near Christchurch and Guinness. They upgraded us to a 3 bdrm, but the girls wanted to share a room anyways, so 1 room is untouched. It has worked out well, as joe and I can be up doing stuff in the living area and not on lock down like we usually are when we all are in the same room. So it's our first official full day in Dublin. Let's see what we can accomplish.