A few hours in Dublin.

When you're living in a concrete-walled country house in the Irish countryside, it's a good thing to remember to keep the windows open as much as possible during the day to let the place air out. If not, you come home to quite a mildewy funk. But then be sure to shut all the windows at night because the millions of buggies will come in and you'll have a hard time sleeping imagining what all is climbing on the walls.

We're taking a day of rest today, or at least Ed and I are. Ted and Tom are off to Galway to pick up my dad who flew in this morning. They should be getting back any minute now.

We spent hours and hours in the car yesterday, driving back from Dublin. We were led by a friendly, chocolate-eating B&B owner who does not like Californians (calling Oregonians a lot more level-headed) to another beautiful little B&B in the Gowth neighborhood of east Dublin, which is a little peninsula. We got one of the last rooms in the area, ours being a family room with room for four. Perfect. Then we got up and had breakfast with four German forestry workers. Ted got the chance to practice his German with them.

We wrangled Ed into going into the city, despite his many protests. He just wanted to get back to the country house, but we knew he would enjoy at least a couple of hours of the city if we could get him there. So it started with Ted just saying that we would drive through it, and then...oh! look! there's a perfect parking spot right here on this bridge! And look, Grafton street is just two blocks away!

He had a good time, even saying a few times how glad he was that we came. He especially enjoyed the Irish literature themed bookstore and finding music by the artists from his favorite movie Once in a record shop.

I'll leave you with this video of some Grafton Street musicians. This video really reveals the inner workings of all three Rooney men featured in it, as briefly as those appearances may be. Keep an eye out for all three. Ed is the hardest to miss. Ted's two appearances may be the easiest to miss, but it's worth the effort to find him. And I'm not sure why the video link below looks different, but it does work if you click it.

By the way, not that it matters, but I'm doing very little editing of these posts from Ireland, as well as no links. So please excuse any typos and general sloppiness. I'm letting go of my perfectionism and figuring now that something is better than nothing.