Day 1

Kaia, Tess and I are down here in the lobby of the Jury Inn, in Belfast, hoping that at least Mommy can get some sleep. We all were basically done sleeping around 4 this morning. The hotel folks were kind enough to give us a little breakfast, then we went outside to explore the area.

That lasted about 5 minutes, as it started raining almost immediately.

We started the day on the plane, disembarking around 7:30 am Irish time. Met John O'Connell, one of our house swap family members, and he drove us to their Dublin home. I do not look forward to navigating Irish city streets in a car where I keep hitting the wipers rather than the turn signal. Wow, some of these streets are narrow. Occasionally he'd see an oncoming car 100 yard down the road and he'd duck into a slot on the "shoulder" of the road so that the other car could make its way down the street, otherwise there'd be no room for the two cars side by side.

Had a fun time with the O'Connells, got Tess and Kai a gingerbread man at the bakery down the street, then John drove us to the bus station. We took a double-decker bus (Smiths fans, sing with me: "and if a double-decker bus, crashes into us, to die by your side...") to Belfast. I don't know if the driver was more angry than normal or if the top of a double-decker just sways more, but wow, Tess almost bounced out of my lap several times. Jodi got that terrible sweating, saliva yuckiness motion sickness that indicates you're about to lose your cookies, but she held on, intrepid woman that she is.

Checked into the Jury Inn around 3:00 and promptly crashed. Kai and Tess had done amazingly well up to then considering they'd had maybe 3 hours of sleep on the plane and bus. Woke up at 6:30, walked to a pub, had our first pint and an excellent Irish pub meal, then back to the room around 9:00.

It got dark here around 10:00 pm! Then, and I can personally vouch for this fact, it got light around 4:30. Cool.

First Ugly American incident: three of them got off the elevator and met a fourth in the lobby. Conversation was this:
"There you are!"
"Yeah, been waiting for you down here. Want to get some breakfast here?"
"Noooooo way. We're going down the street to get some REAL coffee. Starbucks!"

All of this was said about 10 feet from the hotel receptionists. On the other hand, while John was driving us in Dublin I saw an incomprehensible Gaelic bumper sticker. I asked him what it meant. Believe it or not, it was "Yes, we can", an indication of the driver's support for Barack Obama.

Michael