First Trip into Dublin Center

Following a very good and long night's sleep on our wonderful Tempur-Pedic mattress (WOW!) we messed around on-line for a while and then took the nearby tram into Dublin.  The tram is about a 3 minute walk from the house (after you get the front door locked) and it takes about 20 minutes to get to the center of town. 

We didn't have anything special in mind - just to walk around a bit and get some lunch.  As today was an unusually warm and sunny day (t-shirt weather) everybody in Dublin was outdoors walking, eating, and laying around in the park.  Dublin is a small city with a lovely pedestrian area, lots of shops.  We accidentally came upon the famous status of Molly Malone "selling her wares".

There were tons of street performers and music was coming out of all of the pubs.  The rightmost picture is pretty amazing: a cripple (see wheelchair on the left side of the picture) using his crutches to juggle a soccer ball.  And he was really good at it!  Now you don't see that everyday hanging around Cape Cod or Cary, NC.

We walked down to the Liffey River that runs through the center of Dublin (not too impressive) and then wandered a bit around the Temple Bar area and selected a great pub for lunch and the raising of our first pint.  As you can see Larry got the first sip, but I got to drain the glass.  Neither of us is really a fan of Guinness but it actually wasn't as bad as we had expected.  We are thinking that we will be able to acquire a taste for it fairly quickly.  Larry swears that the second glass was better than the first.

Here is a very brief video so you can hear the wonderful music we enjoyed at the pub.  You'll have to turn your volume up very, very loud to hear it as we heard it.