Our day began sometime very early in the morning. An alarm went off that could not be ignored. I thought it was somewhere on Dan’s side of the bed, but of course being pretty deaf in my left ear meant I have no sense of direction. Dan checked his side and he said it wasn’t his phone (the only way it could have been would have been one of those national emergency alarms and even those aren’t that loud — at least I don’t think so!), and he thought it was on my side. Nope. Eventually we just went back to sleep because the alarm was quite brief.

Then at 4:00 AM it went off again. Just this horribly loud noise that lasted for maybe five or ten seconds. Well, this time we did more investigating. The bathroom fan, which had been on since Dan had some laundry hanging there, was no longer working. Hmm. Odd. We smelled no smoke, and of course the alarm had stopped and I doubt it would have done so had it been a fire. Still, Dan looked out the door and he said the fire doors had closed. Finally he called downstairs. They said someone had an issue with their shower and there was no problem at all. Meanwhile there was this periodic extremely low hum — almost like a foghorn — and we wondered about that as well. (Later I started to wonder if the person in question had run very hot water in the shower to get wrinkles out of clothing, but had left the bathroom door open: I had taken a hot shower some years back and left the door open and it triggered our smoke alarm! So maybe …? But who knows?)

I was just relieved it was not a fire. Going outside in cold temps wearing pjs is not my idea of a fun way to spend early morning, and I suppose if it were a fire that’s what we’d have had to do (although, as always, my clothes were sitting out for the day already).

But back to sleep we went, and didn’t rise until well after 8:00.

Once we did get moving (slowly) we went in search of breakfast. I’d located three possibilities. We chose the one with the higher ratings (although who knows what ratings mean!), and went inside. We were quickly shown a table, and soon ordered and paid for our food and coffees via Dan’s phone. That’s getting more and more common, it seems. Our food was quite yummy. When we first went in there was room for more people, but when we finally left there was quite the line to get in. I guess it’s popular!

Next up was St. Patrick’s Cathedral. We spent quite a bit of time wandering around. I have to roll my eyes sometimes at what they might write about someone who is laid to rest there, or at least has a memorial plaque. They always sound like such flawless men and women! I do hope that, should I even have a service when I die, people are honest and say, “Well, she could sometimes be a handful and could definitely be annoying!” I mean … the truth is just fine by me. Just be sure and mention my incredible wit.

Or not.

I enjoyed reading about Jonathan Swift. (I think I might need to reread him sometime.)

From there we started to make our way to the Guinness location. We managed to make a few wrong turns, but it’s really not a big deal since we like seeing more of the city.

Finally there it was.

We purchased the self-guided tour tickets and made our way inside. I took far too many photos and don’t want to bore you too much, but I might bore you a bit. So it goes!

This water thing was rather cool!

There was a lot of information and parts of the tour were what Dan and I refer to as an “experience”, but really it was interesting and fun. It took much longer than I’d expected, too.

There was a section on an artist who did a lot of work for their advertising that was cute.

When I saw this particular display I cracked up. I had a t-shirt with that saying on it (you have to watch the full video) back in the later 70s. (My dad sure didn’t like that shirt!)

We were taken into a room to do a small tasting, but I didn’t do photos there. We walked a bit more and eventually wound up on the top floor where we were given a pint of Guinness. It wasn’t easy to find a place to sit, but eventually Dan nabbed a spot and we enjoyed sitting, drinking the beer, and I had saved a few packages of shortbread so we also ate those. Who knew shortbread and Guinness would work okay together? (Or maybe we were just hungry enough we didn’t care.) There were good views on that top floor.

We eventually left Guinness and planned on finding a light bite to eat. We walked a bit but didn’t find a place that appealed.

I had to shoot that last photo for my friend Bernie Sheehan!

So on we walked, through St. Stephen’s Green. I loved the sight of all those schoolboys squeezed on a bench!

At that point it did seem like perhaps dinner was in order soon. We ambled more, and even a bit more, not spotting anything that screamed out to us. Eventually I remembered that I had seen an old Victorian pub that seemed quite interesting so I did a quick search and found one. Whether or not it was the one I had seen online earlier I don’t know, but it was really cool. We walked in to find a very long hall. Then to the right there was a pub entrance with high tables. We aren’t exactly high table fans, and I had seen stairs that led to other rooms and I wondered about them. Someone who worked there said we could go on upstairs. So up we went. The first floor had a really nice, somewhat private room and we thought that would be perfect so in we went. I ordered the turkey roast (far too much food!) and Dan ordered the cottage pie. All was very good. Eventually the room did fill up so it was a bit noisy, but I was so happy to have that time when we were almost alone. At 7:00 a musician showed up and started to sing and play in the larger room adjacent to ours. The funny thing was that he was singing songs from our youth like “Have You Ever Seen The Rain?” and “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” We had thought we’d be hearing Irish folk music or something!

Walking back out I took a few more photos:

Then it was time to head back to the hotel, passing once more through St. Stephen’s Green.

Thus ends our day. In some ways it feels as if we didn’t do all that much, but the cathedral and the brewery did take a lot of time.

Oh, and my watch was happy with me today. Whew! I’d still prefer to do even more walking, but this’ll do.

16,645 steps, 6.74 miles, 5 flights climbed

Goodnight!