With all the hours of travelling under our belts and not a whole lot of sleep, not much else happened tourism-wise on Sunday night after the Ubuntu 10.10 release party in Dublin. On Monday morning MJ and I enjoyed a quick breakfast together before he had to head off to work and I to meet up with Laura Czajkowski to start my sight-seeing! I have to say, while Dublin is quite the tourist-friendly city, having a local to spend a couple of days with and show me around was quite a treat, not to mention that Laura just plain rocks. The first thing on the list was a Viking Splash Tour, since Laura had never been on it and in spite of them existing in cities all over the world, I’d never actually been on a DUKW tour either. It was a fun tour with a lively and pun-filled tour guide. The water portion of it was quite short, just bringing us around the end of the grand canal, but it was enough to enjoy a breeze and a bit of a splash as we entered the water.
From there it was lunch at Hairy Lemon Cafe, where I went for fish and chips and ended up with their excellent soup and sandwich lunch. From there it was a lovely walk around town, my first ride on the Luas, and walk around the grounds of the National Museum which was, alas, closed on Mondays.
We then headed down to Trinity Capital Hotel bar so Laura could prep and give her Ubuntu Open Week presentation on IRC. It was a great little place for such a break, free wifi, comfy seats, and they will bring drinks for as long as you want to order them (although I admit only drinking soda on this occasion). MJ met us at the bar so we could head out to dinner over at The Brazen Head, the oldest pub in Ireland (est 1198), where I actually did have fish and chips, and my second (and third) Guinness of my trip.
A wonderful finish to my apparently very viking-themed Dublin day!
Tuesday was on to the zoo and to search for leprechauns, but that will have to wait for another blog post!