Leanne & Mark's 2023 European Travels

 We woke this morning to a miserable grey day with the rain bucketing down. All we could see out the window was water running down the windows with a grey Dublin in the background. This, this needless to say, was not the sort of weather we were hoping to see. However, it'd what we got.  So we set out to try and make the most of it. We wrapped ourselves up in our weatherproof gear and trotted down to the local bus stop for a bus trip down to the EPIC, the Irish Emigration Museum. This documents the Irish diaspora that led to 70 plus million people around the world claiming Irish heritage. It was very interesting to see the combination of political, economic, societal and climatic drivers that forced or encouraged so many Irish to travel to a new life around the world. In particular, it was amusing to see how the Irish claim the achievements of those who were one, two or three generations removed from Ireland. And we even got the opportunity to buy Ned Kelly t-shirts in the sho...

  After a good solid night’s sleep in our comfy bed we were up in about 8:3 0- 9:00 o'clock this morning. We had a quick bite of cereal for breakfast and headed out to catch the hop-on hop-off bus and looped around Dublin having a look at what was going on. We had Gavin as driver, who entertained us with his commentary and some old and new (U2) Irish music. We hopped off the bus at a couple of locations and toured around having a look at Dublin. Liffey River: We toured the National Art Gallery near the Merion Gardens. There we found some interesting numbering in the lift: We wandered around Church of Christ Cathedral: And saw lots of interesting sights: Guiness Storehouse: Pearse Distillery: D'Olier Chambers: Detail of National Library of Ireland (used to be the exclusive Kildare Street Club): Pearse Station: Pearse Street Garda Station (originally Garda HQ) Old Ulster Bank: Leanne waiting for the bus: We didn't get here  but the name was intriguing: The Spire (120m t...

  Good morning all you . Sorry I didn't update you all yesterday we finally got to Dublin about 12 o'clock Dublin time after 24 hours or so on a plane our brains and our bums were both completely numb. The flights were as good as you could expect. We had no delays.   We had plenty of leg room on our first leg which was in premium economy class but normal business resumed on our economy class leg from Dubai to Dublin. That said, Emirates does have a reasonable amount of leg room and for people with short legs like Leanne and I, we managed to survive. However, by the end of 24 hours their seats are bloody hard. We got to our hotel (Staycity Tivoli) about 2:30 and settled in fairly well. It's got a nice comfy bed - king size - a nice warm shower and a kitchenette that allows us to make the basics (which is what we had for dinner last night - toasted cheese sandwich as we were too tired to do anything else). We did get out for a walk around.   It was a bit of a gray day...

We're finally off on our 6 week tour of Ireland, UK and Denmark.  It's been a long time coming, as we intended to travel years ago but family issues and Covid got in the way. Packed and ready to go: Flight EK 407 leaves Tulla at 9:15pm and travel time to Dublin is 24 hours, including a 2 hour stop in Dubai. Hopefully we arrive about 12:15pm Dublin time. You can see our intended itinerary here .