Dublin

     Paul and I attempted to wake up early today to get a head start on the day. The plan was to drive from Belfast down to Dublin. We got up on time, but getting everything all ready and figured out in the morning took us longer than we were hoping for. We left Belfast sometime around like 9:30 ish and headed out to Dublin. Luckily we only got lost a few times trying to find our way.
    We made a pit stop at a cute little harbor town called Howth. We walked along the waters edge and walked along the cute little shops they had there. We found a chippy and shared some lunch as well as got an ice cream cone. I decided it is nice to be on vacation and be able to splurge if you want to.

Sharing some ice cream in Howth

The pier in Howth

     After we left Howth, we decided to check into our hotel, then head into City Centre for the evening. We only got lost and had to ask a local for directions once. Thankfully the locals are all so nice. They have helped us find our way MULTIPLE times this trip. Once we checked in, the receptionist told us it might be better to take the bus to the City Centre. We took her advice and waited at the bus stop. I got to ride in my first double decker bus! it wasn't as fantastic as I thought it would be, but maybe that is because the bus was so stinkin hot and muggy!
    When we got to City Centre, we were SO grateful we took the bus. There were SO many people downtown that it would have been impossible to find parking. Or it would have been a terrible nightmare to do so. Especially when we don't know our way around down town. We hopped off the bus and did a little sight seeing. We walked up and down a few main streets. We visited some shops and ended up finding a plug converter for Paul's laptop. The one we had only had two prongs instead of three. As we were walking down the streets, there were tons of street performers. It was crazy to see how many people try to make a living off of peoples extra cash. One group was pretty cool though. It was a group of five guys and they did a bunch of break dancing and other cool dance moves.
     We found a cute sandwich shop and stopped for dinner before our show. And lucky for us there was a pretty decent park just across the street. We had our dinner in the grass at the park and it was lovely. I don't know how we lucked out, but we have had perfect weather since being here. It was been cool like 70's and they didn't have any rain while we were here. Paul and I had fun people watching all the locals. It is so hard to see how poor and sketchy their life style is compared to ours. My heart goes out to all those pregnant teens and addicts. I am so grateful that our standard of living is much better and we don't have to worry about those types of things quite as much.

The park in Dublin

     The highlight of the night/trip was our show. We went to see Riverdance. Ever since I was a little girl in my Irish dancing class, I have always wanted to go and see Riverdance. I felt like a little girl at Christmas time I was so giddy with excitment. We had a blast. The show was great. It was quite different than I expected, but they did a fantastic job. The theme I think was countries around the world. They had several different styles of dancing other than Irish. It was great. Even though Michael Flately is not the male star of the show, whoever was the male star this year was brilliant!

Waiting in the theatre to see Riverdance

They wouldn't let us take pictures of the dancers, but I snapped one of the curtain before the show 

    After the show we caught the bus home. Thankfully we hit the regular bus rather than the night bus. I guess the night bus costs double the price so we were lucky to catch the regular bus. When we got home we took a walk around the courtyard of our hotel. It is right on the river and has a cute little footpath you can take up the river. After we finished our walk we packed up our luggage in preparation for tomorrow. Tomorrow we fly out of Ireland and into Norway. We are visiting Paul's basically adopted sister Sofie. Can't wait!