Pretty much I am easily entertained, and I was having fun even at Logan (actually the entertainment started earlier in the week…). We left Logan at 6:15 pm.
Logan Terminal E
Anyhow, Terminal E has a great view!
There’s a map on the floor of the world, and you can hop about to all of your destinations (which of course I did). Here I am landing in Spain (actually I’m landing off the coast of Portugal, …details…),
And there’s a spot to drink your, ahem, beverage, that shows you the distances to a bunch of airports… In case you’re interested, Sidney is 10,090 miles from Boston, and NYC is 190.
Even the gift shop was entertaining… in case you forgot that little something,
Entertained?
Aer Lingus Flight to Dublin
Finally, we’re off… and a lovely view over the harbor,
Sunshine on the shamrock, this can only be a good thing, no? It was a fancy plane, with blankets and pillows and movies and food… And smashing flight attendants in Mad Men-esque uniforms.
Aer Lingus had a great selection of movies to watch. Ginny and I watched The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito), which I’d been wanting to see. It’s an Almodovar movie with Antonio Banderas… (one of my recipes for fun). Early in the movie I suggested to Ginny what was going on… she looked at me somewhat aghast. In the end, she says “how did you know?” Because it was an Almodovar movie…
The meal out was far better than the one they served on the return flight, and we had to purchase wine.
Even the little trip maps and info were entertaining…
Dublin!
Arrival in Dublin at 5:25 am local time (they are 5 hours ahead of us), so that made a flight of about 6 hours. We had an 11 hour layover and managed to see a lot in that time. First things first, though, right?
Here’s what you need to know. That can next to the commode wasn’t labeled, so I had assumed it was for feminine hygiene products. In Spain, many toilets are set up similarly, with the can labeled for hygienic paper, which I learned is not the same as feminine hygiene products, but rather for the toilet paper itself. It was hard remember this, and even when I was thinking about it, 50 years of habit sometimes overcame the thought in my brain. Just so you know… it takes more water to flush a small amount of paper than it does to flush poop…
The airport bus dropped us off at O’Connell Street. As we got off (the only passengers save for the guy chatting up the driver), the driver asked if we were sure we were where we wanted to be. Yep. But it sure was deserted…
No worries, Mary Mediatrix was watching over us…
Just watch when you cross the street to look right first (unless you’re at a one-way street). There was such a confusion of streets that they were all labeled with which way to look…
It’s maybe 6 am in these photos. The River Liffey,
Contrary to what several people (travelers and Irish natives) told me, pretty much nothing was open at 6 am on a Sunday. We mostly saw drunkards and late night revelers wandering, presumably home. And a few early morning construction workers. And a LOT of street cleaners. The streets were a mess! Broken bottles, trash, rivers and lakes of beer… we suspect it was due to a soccer game the evening prior.
I’m not sure this quite makes it as a fashion name, “Swamp: Spring is in the Air”… but it did entertain me!
Yuccas? Yep, they do well there…
The Liffey is tidal, and the Ha’Penny Bridge is attractive.
Not so these cakes in a bakery window…
Santa’s red suit had faded to nearly orange, I forget what’s next to him but it was all wrong. And there is dirt on that flower cake, never mind that the flowers are filthy.
Anyhow… We wandered and wandered around, hoping to find coffee, or Guiness.
Part of town is called Viking Dublin. The Wikipedia page notes that it had a large slave market where thralls were captured and sold by the Norse and by warring Irish chiefs. Um, this wasn’t mentioned on anything we saw in town! They did have some celebratory viking sculptural thingies though…
Must be thralls on their way to the slave market…
A view into one of the Four Courts,
Everything is labeled in Gaelic, and then in English. We even heard a fair amount of what we presumed to be Gaelic spoken…
Loads of gorgeous doors. I won’t be making a calendar.
St. Audoen’s Church,
Dublin Castle. Check out the interactive image at the link, the place is really huge… apparently we were wandering all around it (outside) and had no idea. The plaza is very austere. There was a Plants Committee conference there, but we only saw a few people as it was relatively early.
Ninth century or so wall, around the corner from the castle,
10:30 am and we finally found someplace open! Coffee! Brekkies! (but geesh, what a lot of sausage, though those small circles are called puddings, one black, one white, and the weiner looking sausages had a lot of oatmeal in them). Tasty, but overall rather salty.
You can get some Propelling Pencils here! Reminded me of Harry Potter, but it’s just what the UK calls mechanical pencils.
Before we ate, we wandered around the outside of Christ Church Cathedral aka Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. We went inside after. It was pretty fabulous! The Wikipedia page also has some good photos, as does this religious art page. My inside photos are almost all horrible.
That’s an effigy of Strongbow, who is buried at the church.
You get the idea… soaring arches. It’s a Romanesque cathedral. (I got a bit of an art and architecture education on this trip!). And then we went into the crypt!
Costumes from The Tudors! Apparently much of the show was filmed here, which explains why a couple of the chapels looked familiar…
There was some treasure down there, silver, plate, old bibles, and a coffee shop.
And…. The Cat and the Rat!
Here are a few other odd things from the Cathedral.
We saw some very fun and funky bikes,
and the Spire of Dublin, and then it was back to the airport to head to Madrid.
Pop your cutting in a glass of water and place in a sunny spot. I had 12 jars lining my bathroom window sill all winter. In a few weeks you should begin to see roots coming from the bottom of your cutting. I felt like mine took forever to get roots but just as I was ready to give up, they rooted like crazy. My mama does this all the time and she thinks the rosemary roots quicker if the cutting is resting on the bottom of the jar, not floating. Also, be sure to change the water every four or five days.
Why do we put coats on newborn lambs? One of two reasons- the first is that it’s cold and the forecast calls for hard frost. As of Friday night, we were still having hard frosts a couple times a week. I think they’re probably over now, but you never know. THe other reason to coat a lamb is that they are shivering and don’t seem to be warming up quickly. In that case, we go back and take the coat off within an hour or so once they’ve warmed up.
What are the signs of labor? There are lots of signs that a ewe is in labor, which gives you lots of opportunities to notice. A ewe in labor may paw at the ground (called nesting), make a knickering noise that is usual for her, turn her head and talk directly to her belly, look around for her lamb (even though it hasn’t come out yet), run around the paddock smelling other ewes’s lambs, and get up and lay down repeatedly in an effort to find a comfortable position. All of these things can go on for hours, but I find that when they start making the face above, they are usually pretty far along and are starting to push.
Do we have any bottle babies this year? Other than 
