K-So…Sleep was a particularly difficult commodity to come by last night. (Don’t everybody look surprised all at once.) Both Cheryl and I spent a couple of hours in the middle of the night up, reading.  Fortunately I got to sleep just before the alarm went off at 7:00 this morning. but we were dressed and ready and met Billie and Steve at the appointed hour for breakfast.

You need to tell me how you really feel about food reports/pictures.  I can include more or less depending on what you want to see.  However…I couldn’t resist the honey dispenser for the porrage station at this morning’s breakfast buffet:

After breakfast we took the shuttle back to the airport, figured out the best way to get downtown, bought tickets, and sat on a bus for the half-hour ride to O’Connell Street.  One of the landmarks of this “widest Main Street in Europe” is the General Post Office, site of the beginning and the end of the “Easter Rising” of 1916.

We even looked at some of the bullet holes from the subsequent British attack on the building.

Our main agenda item for the morning was to take a tour of the city – get our bearings, find the important sites, hear some local lore, etc.  The best way to do that is always a HOHO – a Hop On/Hop Off bus tour.  So we hopped on a bus and took the tour.  The driver was informative, though not quite the “story teller” we had hoped.  We did catch the important sites including:

We even saw that the Pope came to visit

Following the tour we retired to a nearby pub for a pint of refreshment and an excellent stew (for Billie and me – Steve had a roast beef and potatoes plate and Cheryl had a shrimp and avocado sandwich).

Thus fortified we returned to the HOHO for a short trip to stops that particularly interested us.  Incidentally there are many important sites that you don’t see here.  In some cases we’ll be visiting specific sites later this week.  In other cases I’m way past my “picture limit” so you’re just going to have to suffer.

Of particular interest, however, was our stop at the

Again, too many photos to share but no Dead Zoo (that’s what they call the place) would be complete without

At that point it was 4:30 – close to closing so we retired to the bus stop to catch the bus back to the airport. The bus arrived at about 5:45.  By the time we fought our way thru rush hour traffic, waited for the shuttle, and got back to the hotel it was after 7:30.

Tired, and not really hungry (yet, see the lunch above) we retired to the bar for:

Then it was back to our rooms to post blogs and ready ourselves for the ‘morrow.

Tomorrow we meet the group and travel to Cork.

Till then wish us luck staying asleep tonight.

R