After a solid 14-hour sleep, Hamish woke up at 0530. Waking up this early is frowned upon in our household, but there’s no arguing with Madame Jet Lag. We were up and eating our breakfast as the sun rose at 0830. Yes, the daylight hours are super short, with the sun setting just after 4pm. At times today, it was difficult to tell if there was any sun about to set, but there were some brief moments which made the city look beautiful.

Apparently, there’s some bad weather around Ireland at the moment: Storm Atiyah is a particularly nasty weather system all the way from Iceland. We didn’t even know storm warnings were in place across Ireland until late this afternoon – we just thought sideways rain and frosty wind was the norm in Dublin this time of year.

As planned, we made the most of the hop on/off tourist bus, which has a stop directly across the road from our apartment in Dame Street, Temple Bar. After seeing some of the big attractions from the comfort of the bus (Zoo, Croke Park, Guinness Factory, Kilmainham Gaol), we hopped off at The Irish Emigration Museum. This is an impressive interactive overview of many aspects of Irish life, with displays tackling topics such as: conflict, famine, storytelling, emigration and whiskey. Australia features heavily in many of the displays – not particularly gleaming accounts I can tell you! Anyone remotely famous with ties to Ireland are proudly claimed, including Paul Keating (whose grandparents were Irish).

After the museum, we walked to O’Connell Street where we were meeting Rod’s uni mate Gerard, at The Spire. We navigated from the museum to The Spire with the use of a handy little mapping app, called MapsMe, which allows me to use maps offline. Hamish once again, commented about my navigation abilities: “Mum, you’re actually doing a good job of finding things” Thanks Hamish.

The day was rounded off with the second half of the bus tour which dropped us off where we started. We purchased a few little snacks for our train trip to Belfast tomorrow from the Spar (convenience store) and relaxed back in the apartment. Take away dinner from the Italian restaurant downstairs has topped off our day nicely. Hamish is now tucked up in bed and was asleep by 730pm.

Oh, and we’ve sorted the issue with the temperature of the water, so we’ve both had lovely warm showers, which makes us super happy. Tomorrow we’re off to Belfast on the 0930 train for the sole purpose of visiting the Titanic Museum. Rod arrives Tuesday morning.