A Day Off

So when you’re focused on finding a job in an economy such as the one here in Ireland, waking up to see a headline like this,”Eircom to shed 2,000 jobs in effort to cut €100m per year” is not an encouragement. Thankfully Liz & I had decided that this was the day we’d take the 3 younger kids out around town and be tourists. (There is no school this week for primary & secondary school students).

Liz & I (& Méabh) went into town early for an appointment, and then Erin and Brenna took the train in a couple of hours later & joined us. We had lunch at the Bull & Castle, or Castle & Bull…for some reason, I’m having a bit of brain lock remembering which it was, and I don’t feel like looking it up again.

At the table next to us were two couples…over here on vacation from the states. It is kind of a weird experience encountering other Americans…they likely (& reasonably) assume that we are also on vacation…but obviously, we are in the early stages of beginning a new life here. Nothing profound, or exciting, just a track that runs through your mind a lot.

After lunch, we walked over to Dublinia, which is the Viking/Medieval Dublin Museum.  There was a lot of interesting information about the Vikings settling here, and various practices, but the highlight of the tour was being able to climb a series of stairs up to the top of a town and look out over the city.

Finally, we headed up to Swords to get the girls a few things they need as they head back to school.

Another interesting part of the process for us is walking or driving around and seeing a place that we saw two years ago, (or possibly last year for Liz & I), but now it fits in the bigger picture of Dublin.

As you can already tell, my brain is a bit “fried,” so I figured rather than writing much, I’d instead share some pictures from our time around the city today…and I’ll try to label them correctly too!

Today was a really good day hanging out with the family…(minus one). Back to the hunt tomorrow.