Blog2010 ≫ Our trip to Dublin (part one)

What we done and that

Went to Dublin for the weekend, just Clare and I, we left the wee man at home. I did miss him a lot, I get even more homesick than before these days, even on the shortest of trips.

Good flight times with Ryan Air meant we had time to drop The boy off at Granny and Grandpa's, have a cup of tea and then drive ourselves up to Gatwick without any bother. I went with meet and greet parking for the first time, something we do at work. I can get cheap parking, really cheap in fact but last time went for on airport parking thinking that would be the best bet. It's not at all. Without sounding too much like an ad, you just drive up to the terminal, hand your car over to someone, they take it to the car park for you. This means no hanging around for a bus transfer, which even when you have the "on airport" option could be half an hour or more. So, this really worked, though we had a slight delay waiting for the driver to come and collect our car. I thought he'd be waiting for us, but no. Advert over, in to the terminal!

We were all checked in already so just to get food and drinks, a hasty coffee just for the delight of having someone else make it (don't forget I don't live / work in London and the Starbucks near here just closed so it is a treat for me), then sandwiches for the flight and BEER! Wetherspoons, brilliant. Slight delay on the flight so time for one and a half pints. Saw a stag do in the pub also, it took me back, but where were their stag tags?

Bus to our hotel easy. We were a bit North of the Liffey (unlike London all the action is South in of the river Dublin), good hotel though, rooms were fine, street was quiet. Much better than I was expecting from the comments Clare had read me from tripadvisor.com1. It genuinely was opposite a strip club though.

I don't seem to have a trail of receipts to see me through the afternoon, not sure where we went, just window shopping mostly and getting our bearings. Stopped for drinks eventually, was the Porterhouse really our first watering hole? Maybe it was Fallon and Byrne2 first, a fab food hall with restaurant upstairs and wine bar downstairs. We just stayed for drinks, really should have eaten there too. I had something from New Zealand and a claret. We ordered by the glass just for the variety, and the novelty of there being so much available this way, but they have a massive massive range of wine. Clare had an Australian Barossa Shiraz which was best of those we tried. I like this place, seek it out if you go to Dublin. Anyway, then on to the Porterhouse. It's exactly like the one in London, not sure if they have done a meticulous recreation in Covent Garden or if they're both cast from the same "authentic pub" mould. I like the London one and I like this one too. Look we took pictures:

[flickr]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2796/4424833117_f1e15096e1.jpg[/flickr]

Dinner at Juice (South Great George Street) a vegetarian place, just for the novelty of finding such a thing where we did not expect. Early bird menu, three courses for about fifteen euros or so. All nice, but a bit light, could have done with a bit more. In hindsight I should not have been trying to save money on the food.

We ended the night back at Porterhouse, there was live music from midnight onwards, I have some video I think. This guy (will embed video later) was very good but seemed to be bored of playing the actual tunes of songs and was more interested in shoehorning in as many playing techniques and snippets of other songs as possible. We drank and sang along, all a bit Frog and Frigate style. I shouted out for Freebird, I don't think I was the only one.

Next day to come later...

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Paul Clarke's weblog - I live in A small town. Married to Clare + father to two, I am a full-stack web engineer, + I do mostly js / nodejs, some ruby, python, php ect ect. I like pubbing, running, eating, home-automation + other diy jiggery-pokery, history, tree stuff, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, + TIME TRAVEL.