As I write this, I’m sitting in the lounge of our apartment in the region of Brittany, France. Yesterday we left the UK via the 0830 ferry from Dover to Calais. We picked up our hire car in Calais and headed south to the tiny medieval town of Dinan. We arrived last night at approximately 6pm – 12 hours after we left our apartment in Whitstable – but just in time to walk down to the town square to watch the fireworks. Hamish was weak with hunger, so we found a creperie, ordered from the French-only menu and had a lovely dinner before returning to our apartment. Our apartment is effectively 4 rooms at the top of a tower. It’s gorgeous and we’re here for Christmas.

Our last day in County Kent was spent at Dover Castle. Initially, we’d planned to also walk along the iconic white cliffs of Dover, but the weather and eventually the time, was against us.

Take a second to think about what the word castle conjures up in your mind. To us, a classic castle has draw bridges, moats, tunnels, battlements, spaces in the walls for firing arrows or muskets, cannons and stories of power and betrayal. Dover Castle has all of these things and more. We spent the best part of four hours at Dover Castle and still didn’t see everything.

Historically, (nearly) all the major players had some input into the site of Dover castle:

• The Romans – AD 43, built a lighthouse
• The Saxons – some time after that, built a church
• William the Conqueror – 1066, started building proper fortifications
• King Henry II – 1180’s, built the imposing castle that stands there now

A labyrinth of underground tunnels were cut into the chalkstone cliffs; some of these were built during the time Napoleon was keen to invade England (about 18^th century). Masses of soldiers and officers were barracked in the tunnels. As it turns out, Napoleon didn’t invade and the medicos at the time suggested existing below ground in tunnels wasn’t a particularly healthy way to live. However, the tunnels were given an upgrade during the second world war by Welsh Sappers (Engineering Corps), who happened to know a thing or two about mining.

We explored two tunnel systems. One was essentially a field hospital, complete with triage, operating theatre and ward beds. It was used for both civilian and military illnesses and emergencies. Sometimes, airmen were rescued off the coast and brought to the hospital and stabilized before being transferred to larger tertiary hospitals (sounds familiar).

The other tunnel system was used for strategic purposes, such as:

• Operation Dynamo – the evacuation of allied troops from Dunkirk
• Eastern defences
• Preparation for invasion

The weather was wild this day – the wind was so strong you really had to lean into it so as not to get blown off course! We braved it to eat our packed lunch outside and look over the English Channel. Rod and Hamish ate their sandwiches quickly and without issue, but I was not so lucky. A HUGE ocean gull dive-bombed me in order to take my sandwich: I threw my sandwich on the ground in an act of self-preservation.

From there, shaken as I was, we continued our self-guided tour of the castle. We walked up along the castle walls and eventually found another tunnel system, which was perfect timing as the heavens opened. These tunnels had cannons and slits in the walls for firing muskets.

Next, we explored the Great Tower. The spiral staircase seemed to be never ending – I mean, we’re talking maybe 150 steps to get to the top. But once on the rooftop (battlements) the view was definitely worth the leg work. It was super windy and cold, so we got a few pics, made sure Hamish didn’t get blown off the rooftop and made our way back down the stairs. We stumbled across a little museum within one of the castle buildings, and then decided to call it a day.

We headed back to the car and congratulated ourselves on deciding to visit Dover Castle. It was awesome. We have voted it as our favourite castle (sorry Dunnotar Castle).

 

Wednesday

After a full day’s driving, we arrived in the small seaside village of Whitstable, which is about 20 minutes north of Canterbury. Our apartment is fully self-contained, with a mezzanine level and sunken lounge room. It’s smack in the middle of the village and very comfortable. Rod popped into the local supermarket to get a few supplies whilst Hamish and I unpacked. We had a simple home cooked dinner, but it’s the first we’ve cooked from scratch since leaving Australia!

Thursday

At breakfast, I asked Hamish to look through the tourist information and pick something he’d like to do: he chose the swimming pool. Not exactly what I had in mind, but a good choice none-the-less.

We spent the day exploring the village on foot. Whitstable has plenty of shops, including a second hand book shop. I was about to walk past it when Hamish said, “Mum, you can’t walk past a book shop – let’s go in!”. (Of course, he found a book he wanted and has read it three times since!) We found the local castle, the indoor pool and the waterfront. We were lucky with the weather, a balmy 11 degrees and no rain! After walking the length of the village, we found treats from a cake shop and sampled the local cod and chips – Rod also sampled a “giant pancake roll”. The boys swam at the pool in the afternoon and I hit the local Sainsbury’s.

Friday

After a bit of Googling, Rod worked out a strategy for spending the day in Canterbury. This included a ‘Park and Ride’ car park/bus situation, as Canterbury centre is foot traffic only. We made our way to The Canterbury Tales, Hamish and Rod dressing as a Knight and King. The tour included some of Chaucer’s Tales and a bit of history about pilgrimages to Canterbury, and the bad blood between Henry II and Thomas Beckett.

After this, we stumbled across the Roman Museum, which was fascinating (and had also been on Rod’s list.) We literally descended into Roman history below the streets of Canterbury. The artefacts, history and archeology we encountered were amazing. Those Romans really knew how to build things – they invented ducted heating! Watching Horrible Histories (the TV show, not the live stage performance) has made many parts of the trip so far very relateable for Hamish. This has meant more time for all of us exploring things that might not normally interest a nine year old.

Like a rookie parent, Rod had pointed out on arrival to Canterbury, that the Christmas Markets sold German sausages and Hamish could have one for lunch. However, when it came to lunch time, we couldn’t find the sausage booth, could we. When I suggested eating elsewhere, Hamish’s eyes pleaded with me. “But Dad said I could have a sausage!” Canterbury was very busy that day and nothing happened quickly. The aforementioned sausage involved a ten-minute wait by Hamish and Rod, whilst I glowered from the distance. I might take this opportunity to also drop Rod in it, re: the weather. “No, you won’t need your puffy jacket, it’s going to be 12 degrees” It might well have been, but there was no accounting for the wind chill factor. I purchased a scarf from Debenhams.

 

Taking the opporutunity of still being in an English-speaking country, I duly lined up at the post office, to send home two tiny parcels and a handful of postcards. Again, this took forever – enough time for Hamish came up to me to whinge that Rod wouldn’t buy him a Jumanji DVD.

Oh, and lastly; the Cathedral. It’s incredible. No pictures we took do it justice. It is an architectural masterpiece – who said there’s no money in religion? (Nobody I know.) Amongst other things, there’s a shrine to Thomas Beckett (Saint Thomas), and a showcase of where he was brutally murdered.

The hallways are lined with the tombs of past noblemen and clergy, some dating back to 1100’s. Interestingly, the Cathedral costs 18 000 pound per day to maintain, so I didn’t really mind paying the entrance fee of approximately 38 pound. However, Rod wasn’t so keen to further support the Cathedral via the purchase of a tie (30 pound). Fair enough. (It was a rather good tie, though. And Rod prides himself on his tie collection. Still …)

The trip back on the double decker bus to the car park, was a bit of a highlight, as we sat up the very front on the top deck. Spot the country kids in the city.

Horrible Histories

A few months ago, after watching one of our favourite family shows (Horrible Histories), I said to Rod, “Imagine if they had a stage play and it was on when we’re in the UK”. A google search by Rod, showed they did indeed, have a stage show. AND, there was one in Blackpool (an hour North of Liverpool), when we were going to be around.

We checked maps, train timetables and accommodation bookings. It seemed too good to be true. We excitedly purchased tickets. This show is cool. And we were going to see the Christmas Special live on stage. Sweet.

Once in Liverpool, Rod booked return train tickets. We’d need to leave a little bit before the end of the show, to make the 9.01pm back to Liverpool. We spent the morning at the Liverpool Museum, then walked through the shopping precinct, where I was disappointed I couldn’t spend the day. However, we had Horrible Histories to get to.

At Liverpool station, we didn’t really pay much attention to other line cancellations due to ‘lack of staff’, or indeed, when our train’s departure was delayed due to having ‘no guard’. Rod said, “What a lame excuse. Imagine having no staff for the train at Christmas”. We giggled when the locals in our carriage started complaining in a style reminiscent of The Four Yorkshireman (Monty Python).

We arrived in Blackpool in time for dinner before the show. Have you been to Blackpool?? Not that we felt unsafe, but it just didn’t have a good feel about it. Still, we’re visitors, it’s not for us to judge the families huddled outside the pubs in the cold with their babies (but we did judge).

Horrible Histories was great. We loved it. Loads of jokes for both kids and adults alike. The HUGE theatre was only partly full, but this meant people could move to seats other than their allocated ones.  We snuck out just before the end of the show and easily made our way back to the station for our 9.01pm to Liverpool, quietly congratulating ourselves as being “Parents of the Year” – but this didn’t end well.

Without any notification, we arrived at Blackpool station to see our 9.01pm to Liverpool had been cancelled: they couldn’t find a driver. What a lame excuse…said none of us this time. The next train was scheduled for 10.18pm and there was no other option (costing less than 200 pound) to get back to Liverpool. We were devastated and angry and disappointed all at once. Except Hamish. He got to drink hot chocolate, eat chocolate and play his tablet. Rod played Pet Rescue, drank a coffee and I played The Cat Empire (and ate chocolate). It wasn’t just the waiting in the cold, empty train station that rankled, but the fact that our beautifully-laid plans had been derailed.

Our train did eventually depart at 1040pm and we arrived back to our apartment 1230am. Again, super proud of Hamish’s ability to cope when things got a bit tough.

 

Roald Dahl

The next morning, Rod picked up our hire car and drove back to our apartment where Hamish and I were getting ready. We left Liverpool and headed to our current destination of Whitstable (North of Canterbury). This was always going to be a long day, but exacerbated by our unexpected late night. We’d previously looked up how we could break the drive and found the Roald Dahl museum kind of on the way. The traffic in the UK is intense even during off peak hours, but we arrived in Great Missenden by 2.30pm.

I am pretty sure Rod and I enjoyed the little museum more than Hamish, even though we are all fans. I found it touching to see his writing studio preserved exactly as if he’s just walked out to get a cup of tea and his reminder for parents not to be boring and to have fun with their kids. Something we forget when we get lost in our busy lives.

“When you grow up and have children of your own, do please remember something important: A stodgy parent is not fun at all! What a child wants – and DESERVES – is a parent who is SPARKY!” Roald Dahl

You’ll be pleased to know I scored 80% on the Sparky-Meter (Grandpa Joe Level) and Rod managed a 70% – Fantastic Mr Fox level. Not too bad I suppose!

 

Sunday

It was an early start from Ballinakill to make our 1025 Ryanair flight to Manchester. Our hosts had packed us a breakfast to go, so we were full of fruit, yoghurt and muesli bars by the time we reached Dublin airport. Our entire process of dropping off the hire car, bag drop and flying to Manchester was seamless. We’d read poor reviews of Ryanair, but they were excellent. The flight was less than an hour.

You might be wondering why we flew to Manchester and not directly to Liverpool; the flights to Liverpool were either at 0600 or late in the afternoon. This way, we could catch a train or bus to Liverpool and still arrive in daylight hours. Interestingly, the train was going to cost us 38 pound each, as opposed to the bus, which was 12 pound for the three of us. We took the bus – one hour, no stops.

We found our apartment easily, (cobblestones again! our nemesis) just at it started to rain, and hauled our luggage up four stories. After unpacking, we did a quick trip to Tesco for supplies and settled in the for evening. All three of us exhausted from a long day.

Monday

Magical Mystery Tour by Rod

 Hamish and I were most excited about this tour, visiting several significant Liverpool landmarks synonymous with the history of The Beatles. Our host, Neil, was a wealth of information, with a multitude of facts, numbers and dates rolling off his not-too-Scouse tongue. He was funny, too. My favourite comment went something like “Paul, at 76 years, played 47 songs over 3 hours, without a break! To compare, Justin Bieber manage to play for 1 hour 10… too long.” We stopped at George’s birthplace, as well as the houses where the other 3 grew up, along with Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields.

I was quite emotional at various times, since The Beatles have been such a big part of my life. As a bonus, we got to see a couple of streets where they film Peaky Blinders. (Set in Birmingham but filmed in Liverpool.) When the bus finished its trip we were able to wander into the Cavern Club, or so we thought. Who knew there was a Cavern Pub right across the road! Ten photos and a video later, we realised our error and dropped into the real thing, which was much busier and more atmospheric.

We found our way back to the ticket office at Albert Dock to meet Belinda. From here we continued “B Day” by visiting the Beatles Story museum, where Hamish and I heard and read much of the same information we had already digested on the bus. This is what we call recapitulation in the trade. It was still music to our ears. We must have remained excited, since we spent 60 odd pounds in the souvenir shop; something that my Scottish blood does not normally tolerate. All Beatled-up and aglow, we walked back to our apartment to enjoy a laid back afternoon.

 

Western Approaches Museum by Belinda

Whilst the boys were off on their Magical Mystery Tour, I walked to the former site of the Western Approaches Command Centre. This former top-secret site was set up during WW2 to increase safety of shipping (both military and civilian) after huge losses of merchant ships and men. It also served as a secret training base for naval commanders learning how to out-maneuver German U-Boats. Staff (many of them young females) coded and decoded messages, plotted aircraft and shipping, and followed naval battles. Their mathematical accuracy enabled search and rescue missions to be directed to the site of downed planes or sunken ships, ultimately saving lives.  Being three levels underground, it’s not hard to imagine the stress and excitement that would have been associated with working in such an environment.

Tuesday

Hamish and I walked down to River Liffey to pick Rod up off the airport bus. It started to rain, so we waited for him in the comfort of a nearby Starbucks. We spent the afternoon at Dublinia, which is a tremendous little museum dedicated to the story of The Vikings and their part in Irish history.

From there, we had a quick bite to eat followed by an hour tour of Dublin Castle, complete with moats, ancient walls and the more modern entertaining rooms, which are lavish and gorgeous.

We had dinner at The Oak pub, a few doors away. Hamish has had a very hearty appetite so far on this trip and he made short work of an adult serve of Beef and Guinness pie.

Wednesday

After getting on the wrong bus and having to walk an extra kilometre with luggage (after reading Rod’s account of his transport woes in Germany, no wonder he put us on the wrong bus), we picked up our hire car and headed out of the city to Galway.

We stopped at Athlone along the way for morning tea. After commenting on his excellent coffee, our barista gave us great recommendations of where we could get good coffee in Galway. Irish hospitality at its best.

Not long after this, I started to feel a bit off. This turned into intermittent abdominal pain and nausea – we thought maybe I had a bit of gastritis again (not gastro). I’d had a spot of gastritis back in Wangaratta a few months ago and thought we’d managed it well.

We arrived at our BnB in the early afternoon and Rod got me some supplies from the local pharmacy. The boys went to the Galway Christmas Market for the evening and I went to bed. Hamish and Rod had a great time at the Christmas Market, eating all the sugary fatty foods they wanted without me there to keep a check on them!

Thursday

I woke up feeling better and managed a cup of tea and yoghurt for breakfast. Our plan for this day was to drive to Killarney via the Cliffs of Moher. However, five minutes out of Galway, I was in intense pain, coupled with the sweats and nausea – everything rolled into one. Rod pulled over, but he wasn’t really sure what to do. I took some more antacid medication, but this didn’t work and the pain started up again. I suggested to Rod he take me to the hospital.

Fortunately, we were close to the Galway Clinic. Looking very much like I was having a cardiac arrest, I was seen immediately. Got a full cardiac work up and imaging, but in the end, looks like it was an acute severe episode of gastritis. I was discharged with scripts, results and advice to follow up for a scope when I get home. The ED Dr also suggested I could have picked up a few shifts whilst I was there. If I’d realised at the time we were at a private hospital and we were going to be billed $1000, I might have taken him up on the offer!

The drive to Killarney was dreadful, in that I was nauseous for the entire trip. At one point, Hamish was desperate for a wee. Whilst Rod found a car park, I had to leave the confines of the car and walk Hamish into the Co-Op to find the toilet. I decided that I also needed to use the facilities. There were two empty men’s cubicles, so I told Hamish to wait for me. Alas, I’ll spare you the details, but Hamish had to find me some toilet paper. What a little champ. I told him I’ll never forget the time he saved the day and rescued me with toilet paper!

We arrived at our BnB just out of Killarney, where I showered and went to bed. Hamish found a friend in the hosts’ 7 year old son; they bonded instantly over Lego and Minecraft. Rod and Hamish went into town for dinner and to get scripts filled for me at the pharmacy.

Friday

After a restful night’s sleep in a very lush BnB, I woke up feeling great. The boys enjoyed the array of breakfast foods, and I had some tea and fruit toast. Again, we didn’t really get to explore the surrounds due to me being unwell, which is just unfortunate. We drove to our current stay, Ballinakill in Co. Laois via Cork. One of Rod’s Uni mates lives ten minutes away with his partner, so we are here for two nights. We’ve had lunch and dinner with Gerard and Fiona and met some of their friends. The roads are windy, narrow and hedge rowed. It’s a beautiful part of the world and we feel very welcomed here.

Saturday

Today we had a lovely breakfast of cereals, yoghurt and freshly made scones with homemade raspberry jam and fresh honey. What a treat. The hosts are both teachers and Anne is a primary teacher. She has spent much of the morning entertaining Hamish, which has been fabulous. Quizzes, games, collecting moss for Christmas wreaths – Hamish has just loved being here. Yesterday he helped walk the dog with Will and Rod. This morning it snowed for about 5 minutes – just long enough for us to get excited.

We ventured into Kilkenny today and loved it too! Although it was pretty cold – see for yourself from our Michelin-Man like appearance in the photo. We’re having dinner again with Gerard and Fiona tonight, then tomorrow we head to the UK, flying from Dublin to Manchester, then catching the train to Liverpool where we’ll stay for a few days.

 

If you’re thinking of coming to Ireland, definitely do it. The hospitality of the rural people is second to none. And other than me being unwell for a few days, we’ve had a wonderful week.

 

 

Written by Rod

Whilst Hamish and Belinda headed to Dublin, I was enjoying a sidestep to Heidenheim, in the south of Germany. Let me backtrack a bit, though. My last school day for the year (Friday) kicked off in a most unusual manner. On arriving to the staff room my eye was drawn downwards to a bit of movement on the floor. Squirming away in the corner of the doorway was a wee tiger snake, no more than half a step from my feet. It took a while to register that it was, in fact, a snake welcoming me to my Friday. (I have taught for a long time and a staff room snake was a new experience for me! One more thing ticked off the bucket list.) Thankfully it headed underneath a couch, waiting to be captured, but it did not bode well for my last day at work. Waiting for me at the other end of my day was my adorable year 9 double Maths lesson. Luckily I survived both of these incidents relatively unscathed and ready for my trip to Europe.

I said so long to Belinda and Hamish at Dubai before my solo flight to Munich. There I caught a bus to the Central Train Station. No problems then buying my train ticket for a 3 hour trip to Heidenheim, with one change of train (all listed on my ticket) at Ulm. The train departed at exactly the 2:35 pm advertised kick off time; German efficiency, I thought to myself. Many announcements were made (all in German) as I mindlessly noticed how many farms had vast arrays of solar panels. However, one announcement was also thankfully made in English; informing me that that train would split in two at Augsburg, with the front half going to Ulm and the rear half going elsewhere. Of course, I was at the very rear of a very long train. At Augsburg I made a mad dash along the platform, getting as close to the front as I could, just to be sure.

At Ulm, things got messy. I had about 20 minutes between my trains and made my way to the advertised platform (again on my ticket) to find a very crowded train. I panicked and quickly found a small crevice to slide into, before thinking: I wonder if this is actually my train? It wasn’t. Disaster narrowly avoided as I alighted just before it departed to God knows where. Another train then arrived, on a different platform. Nobody seemed to know for sure where it was heading, but I took my chances and arrived safely in Heidenheim 50 minutes later (at 6 pm), to find Esther, my hostess, waiting for me. I do a quick calculation to realise it is just over 36 hours (with about 1 hour sleep) since we left Wangaratta.

Klaus has been unwell lately, but he and Esther are generous and welcoming hosts. We stayed with them on our last trip to Europe and I am pleased to see them. Klaus tells me that German Bahn (rail) is rubbish and I was lucky to get a train at all!

We have six students on exchange here at the Max Planck Gymnasium and I meet them for lunch on Sunday and visit them at school on the Monday. It is a fun visit and they are all enjoying their time on exchange.

I get to the station in plenty of time to catch the 1:00 from Heidenheim back to Munich. The train does not arrive as the platform gets more and more crowded. The information board maintains the 1:00 departure line until about 1:15, when it just gives up and starts telling the time, pretending there was no train scheduled. Somehow the train has just vanished! No announcement, but gradually the commuters gravitate to platform 2, to catch the 1:24 train. Much to my relief, this one does show up, albeit a bit late.

The next morning I am at Munich Terminal 2 at 6:15 am for my 8:30 flight. The Lufthansa area is vast and bright and yellow. I have checked in online and arrive at baggage drop to find no queue (not one person) and 4 staff to assist me. I am through in 20 seconds. Security is slightly more busy. Passport control is a joke; I walk my way through the maze of crowd control ribbons, literally the only person in the queue and am through to the departure gates at 6:22 am. Unbelievable! The bubble bursts, though, when we have to walk down 8 flights of stairs and catch a bus half way across Munich to our smallish plane which has not one spare seat and no meals. Just a few bland biscuits flung at passengers from a cardboard box. Still, I am on my way to catch up with meine Familie.

 

Written by Hamish and Belinda

Belinda

This day trip to Belfast has been in the planning for months and was triggered by Hamish’s love of all things Titanic after a trip to Sydney at the start of the year with Rod. I booked tickets to the Titanic Museum and our return train journey a couple of months ago.

Hamish

The day arrived and we went to the train station, we had to catch a bus to get there. Mum had snacks in her backpack (pringles, chocolate and bananas) and activities for me to do. We had to wait at least a good half an hour before the train left Dublin. On the train we had to sit across from the grumpiest lady in the history of the world. I accidentally kicked her a couple of times under the table and she wasn’t very happy about it, even though Mum apologized. Mum and I ended up swapping seats – then the lady kicked Mum under the table.

It was a biiiiig walk from the train station to the Titanic museum. But it wasn’t raining – phew!! When I saw the museum, it looked amazing. It was ginormous! When we went inside, we had our tickets checked, then we put our stuff in a locker (which cost 1 pound, twice because Hamish locked it before it was closed…). Then we had lunch – my toasty was amazing, so big I couldn’t finish it. Then we started the tour of the museum.

I was given a challenge by the staff member, to find out information along the way. Such as, how high was the gantry the Titanic was built around (69m high!!). We got to see how much bread and provisions were on board – there were 40 000 eggs! At one point, we caught a lift up to the 4^th floor, to give an idea of what it was like to be a worker on the Titanic – it was scary! (It was 20m lower than the actual Titanic gantry).

Once we finished looking around, we bought a few souvenirs and then looked at the last remaining White Star Liner called Nomadic. I wasn’t especially interested in that, but we looked around and Mum took some photos.

Then we started to walk back to the train station. Mum said we should walk because it wasn’t raining and we had time. She fed me smarties to help me make it back to the station. On the way we saw a huge seagull dropping mussels on the ground to crack them open to eat the meat. It was very interesting.

After that, like ten minutes later, my feet were killing me! I was going to take a break, but Mum said you can’t take a break because we’re almost there. We caught the train back to Dublin, it was dark just after we left Belfast at 4pm. In Dublin, we caught the bus back to our street and went to the Spar to get some dinner (sushi), juice, bread, yoghurt, fruit and biscuits.

Belinda

Hamish has been the best travel buddy and I’m super proud of him. This makes it easier when we’re trying to navigate multiple public transport systems in an unknown city. We’ve not done too badly, us kids from the country. Rod arrives soon and he can update his 3 days from Germany.

Oh, and you might be interested in the menu from the train service. I could have purchased a full bottle of prosecco for my trip!

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.

To say Hamish has been incredible over the past 36 hours is an understatement. I’m so proud of him: he’s exhausted, but has not whined or even looked like he was going to lose the plot once. As I write this, he’s asleep. It’s 430pm Saturday afternoon.

Other than a seating mishap, our flights were smooth and uneventful. Hamish ate everything Emirates served up to him, including the ‘Mum, I think it’s spicy’ pide. He’s loved the entire onboard entertainment system from movies, games and quizzes to the mounted camera coverage and flight details. We had to make haste between flights in Dubai, where there seemed to be an endless stream of Irish people trying to make their way to Gate B20.

 

Once we arrived in Dublin, things started to resemble our tired state:

• Customs was understaffed
• Our bus left from another terminal (which was a decent walk for a tired 9 year old)
• I purchased two bottles of sparkling water instead of normal water (“Mum, this tastes just terrible!”)
• The airport bus drop-off point was not as close to our apartment as I had expected
• Cobble stones and suitcases (ergh)
• The hot water is rubbish at our apartment

However, our accommodation is cute (small), cozy and central. We have spent the last few hours sorting out our bags, showering (quickest shower I’ve ever had!) and planning tomorrow. We walked up to the Spar and got a couple of things for breakfast, then had a light dinner at Eddie Rockett’s Diner (so incredibly Irish…).

Tomorrow we’re catching up with Rod’s mate Gerard and his partner Fiona and we’ll probably do a bit of hopping on and off the tourist bus. I suspect tonight, I’ll be in bed by 7pm at the latest. Rod is safely in Germany, but he can update you next week.