A Long Way to Dublin
Posted by Leonard And Me , 7.12.2018 1:58 PM
It's finally time to cross the pond and head to Ireland. Today we left Edinburgh and made our way down through Ayrshire and along the coast to the ferry in Cairnryan. Along the way we passed the Prestwick Airport....the only place in the United Kingdom where Elvis Presley was known to have set foot on his way home from the army in 1960. And we caught a glimpse of the Trump Turnberry Golf Course on the west coast of Scotland. I'm kinda having Trump withdrawal over here while I'm away....I haven't read a newspaper in 10 days!!! :(
After arriving in Belfast, Ireland....we had the opportunity to visit the Titanic Museum and learn about the famous ship that was built right here in the local docks. In March 1909, work began in the massive Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast on the Titanic and continued nonstop for two years. In May 1911, Titanic’s immense hull – the largest movable manmade object in the world at the time – made its way down the slipways and into the River Lagan in Belfast.
More than 100,000 people attended the launching, which took just over a minute and went off without a hitch. The hull was immediately towed to a mammoth fitting-out dock where thousands of workers would spend most of the next year building the ship’s decks, constructing her lavish interiors and installing the 29 giant boilers that would power her two main steam engines.
The rest is history....
From this point we were headed to Dublin! The night was still young....and then it wasn't! We left Belfast at 3:00 and didn't reach our hotel in Dublin until 8:00. By this time our entire tour group was exhausted and damn near starving! Our hotel was located outside center city and required us to catch a taxi to take us into town. Jenesa and I were certainly ready for the pubs!
Our first stop for dinner was at Oliver St. John Gogarty's Traditional Irish Pub! This place had several different floors with live Irish music and it was hoppin' with tourists! We were each given a customary Irish straw hat that we proudly wore throughout the evening. Dinner consisted of seafood chowder and a large pot of mussels....delicious!
For the rest of the evening we hung out with Clark and Nancy from our tour group. They like to call us "the kids" because we're the youngest people in the group.....by about 20+ years! Before the night was over we hit the Temple Bar, the Auld Dubliner, and the Horseman. The live Irish music and Mardi Gras atmosphere around here is fun to see and hear! It's definitely past our bedtime here in Ireland...but it's only 7pm back home! :)
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