Robot Claw – Page 408 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Book of Kells

May 31, 2015

It’s early as hell here right now, since our original ferry (for today) was canceled due to weather and we’ve had to change our plans to catch the earliest one! Hooray for only five hours of sleep 🙂

That’s our tour guide for the walking tour of Trinity College in Dublin. We went yesterday to see the Book of Kells, which is a legendary old illuminated bible. The college is ancient and impressive and has a room like this in its library:

Here’s a shot of Florence enjoying the tour:

Dublin was busy and it was cold! I saw this topical sticker on a postbox:

Later in the afternoon we went to the town of Leixslip for their festival…

Here was my dinner:

And yes I had a beer…

…or rather a shandy from a ladies glass 🙂

Sorry for the abbreviated post, but we’re in a hurry to get ready for the ferry!

The Emerald Isle

May 29, 2015

I’m in Ireland. My trip here was easy but to be honest about as unpleasant as some of the Oz trips: uncomfortable, long (since I took the train to NYC before flying), and capped with an extremely turbulent red eye over to Ireland. Problem is I didn’t sleep a wink, so was very tired upon arrival!

I’m staying with Florence here – she’s been in Ireland over a year now. We spent the day catching up and she showed me around the village in which she lives.

That’s the local university just a hop-skip from her apartment. There also the ruins of a ~400 year old castle right next door. Aside from such things (and the weather) Ireland reminds me a lot of Australia so far.

Many of the graves in that shot are older than Australia 🙂

By about 4 I was crashing hard, but I managed to make it until about 8pm before I was just falling asleep on the couch. So it was an early night for me!

Of course now it’s 3am and I’m wide awake!

Air, Land & Sea

May 26, 2015

In a couple of days I’m heading off for my first European trip of the summer. Here’s the approximate route:

At a rough estimate, before I get home, I will have taken 8 train trips, 4 flights and 1 ferry crossing. There will be a lot of travel to fit so many destinations in such a short trip but I know it’ll be worth it.

I’ll spend the first half of the trip (Ireland and the UK) with Florence, and the second half (in France) with Sue and her daughter. As usual, I’m planning on casting myself in the ‘wise and seasoned but still ruggedly handsome ex-pat Australian supertasting world traveler‘ role. This will hopefully serve me well in France, where I know none of the local tongue! 😉

Of course I’ll be blogging as usual. Several of you have expressed particular interest in this trip, so I’ll strive to make the posts entertaining.

See you in Ireland!