Day 2 - Explorations Begin(Pre-Tour)

After my sleeping for so long, at about 8 the next morning I went down to have breakfast. According to Mom she came back within 5 minutes to switch rooms and pounded on the door and yelled at me, doing everything short of getting a maid to open the door to try and wake me. I found this out next morning at breakfast while she pouted for the rest of the meal about my wasting a perfectly good bath but otherwise I hadn’t missed much; They had gone to a pub for lunch and walked around the city a bit before having dinner. Today we were going to take a ‘hop on hop off’ bus tour to get around the city and visit a few sites.

Our First Stop: The National History Museum of Ireland

Ireland’s other language is Gaelic, or Irish, which is technically their native language. The vast majority of the country speaks English despite this fact. It does, however, require all their signs be printed in two languages.

The one on the left is Diana(or Diane, to be honest I never was sure which), a couple my Mom and Robbie had met on the Scotland tour had come with us to Ireland early and we spent the two early days there with them. The one in the middle with the hat is my stepdad, Robbie and the one on the far right is Gary, Diana’s husband. I don’t have too many pictures of the people on the tour, but there were, in-all, 40 of us. And I don’t know who the lady walking out is, she was just in the picture unrelated to anything we did.

The museum was originally a military yard and converted at some point. We spent a lot of time there due to Gary and Robbie’s desires to read every. single. sign. in the place.

Once done there, we got back on the bus and headed to the Jameson(pronounced Jam-eh-son, not James son) distillery who make, I must say, some delicious whiskey. I convinced Mom to raise her hand for the volunteer ‘taste testing’ and of course they picked her. I’m the devil on her shoulder. They provided the volunteers with small samples of Jack Daniels Black Label, Jameson, and some other one I don’t remember, they all agreed(minus two guys who liked the Jack) Jameson was better but of course it’s probably set up somehow. When I tasted the Jack they offered it was definitely not as good as normal Jack Daniels. Import problems? I know Guinness bottled isn’t nearly as good here in the states as in Ireland, for example.

After Jameson we went to the Bodies exhibit at the Ambassador Theater. To be quite honest the exhibit was a let down. I suspect it was much reduced from the displays at other venues, perhaps because of the controversy over how the bodies were gained.  Obviously pictures couldn't be taken inside

We went to the hotel, had dinner and went to sleep. Not before switching rooms, though. They wanted that whirlpool bath.
Tomorrow the real tour starts.