Laurie Heath Studio: Wonderfully Made

Now that we're 5 days into our trip to Ireland, I finally have a few minutes to share some photos with you. These are from our first day -- the day that seems as if it must have been at least three weeks ago. We had left home at 10:00 a.m., traveled for 15 hours including airport waiting time, lost 6 hours in the time change, arrived in Dublin at 9:00 a.m., then picked up by our new friend Niall who met us at the airport with his taxi to take us to our hotel. When we reached the hotel neighborhood, we noticed that several roads were blocked off and Niall commented that there was to be "a girls' small marathon, just a 10K" and our hotel was right in the center of the route. He managed to smooth-talk his way past the barricades in order to drop us off at our door, and we staggered up a total of 51 stairs for the first of two naps that day.

By the time we woke up and discovered that we were hungry, it had started to sprinkle. It was also pretty chilly for these Texas Gulf Coasters, especially considering that it is JUNE. One of things that woke me from the dead of sleep was the sound of female cackling and cheering and occasional singing coming from right outside our window. I didn't put two and two together until we stumbled out of the door and saw thousands of brightly colored teams of marathoners getting pumped up for their race. We eventually found a place to get sandwiches and drinks (it was also a holiday, so most places were closed) and hunkered down in a semi-covered doorway to watch the race preparations while we ate. By this time the sprinkles had turned to full-fledged raindrops. What we didn't realize was that we would not be able to return to our hotel until 45 minutes after the race started and the course area cleared.

But it was really fun to stand in the rain within 100 yards of the starting line and get to see this:

I wish we'd had a higher vantage point so that you could have seen that the girls filled several blocks. Scattered amongst the crowd were some exceptionally lovely girls such as this one:

Periodically a group of girls would whoop and wave their hands in the air. This seemed like possibly a quaint Irish female custom ...

... until we realized that there were video cameras all over the place, including this one right behind us. This was sort of the equivalent of a "Hi Mom!" moment for the runners.

Later, after we'd returned to our room, changed out of our soggy clothes, and taken yet another nap, we ventured out again to find dinner and music. We ended up at Foley's Pub where we sampled some classic Irish fare: shepherd's pie, Irish stew with lamb, and fish and chips. We also enjoyed listening to and visiting with our new friend Brendan Shanahan.

Also, because we were sitting right by the front door, we were first to hear a very important announcement from a man who rushed into the door, looked up straight in the eyes, and shouted passionately, "You know Muhammed Ali died! The great boxer! Dead." We weren't sure whether we'd been specially chosen to spread the news or just lucked into that newsflash. The internet hasn't even heard this news -- we checked!

More later...