Knowing that today's plan was just to return to Dublin, with nothing specific site-wise to do, we were able to sleep in and take a leisurely drive across the country. The drive was uneventful, on nice wide highways, and I was able to snooze a little.
At one point, we did stop at a McDonalds attached to a gas station. (The air in the tires needed checked). And Holly and I bee-lined straight for it, our mouths drooling at the prospect of some iced tea. It occurred to me, as we were walking the wrong way through the drive thru to the front door, that I hadn't really seen any of those ubiquitous styrofoam cups anywhere in the country... and that that might be a bad omen re: our chances for iced tea heaven. But I tromped on... only to have my hopes dashed. I was heartbroken. So I down troddenly meandered over to the gas station and bought myself some juice - black current, my new favorite. Don't know if we have it on our side of the pond (doubt it) but I will definitely check for it.
We arrived in Dublin, parked the car at the guys' hotel and had lunch. We took this opportunity to decide how to spend the rest of our day. The guys wanted to head to the Jameson Whiskey factory tour, and in fact, Tom was chosen to be a special taster! I needed to find a bookstore to see if I could find any Superman comics for someone back home, and Holly and I needed to check into our hovel du jour (which was the same one we stayed in before, just different room.)
We were successful in both regards and dumped some of our stuff in our room, this time on the third floor (six, count them, six flights of stairs). We still had a couple of hours and there was a chocolate cafe just down the street that we'd had our eye on ever since we arrived almost a week ago. As we sat outside of the cafe drinking our (bottled) iced tea and eating our chocolate ice cream, the heavens opened up and for the first time since we'd arrived, it poured. Almost immediately, pedestrians crowded under the awning - we, however, just relaxed at our table and felt like we belonged there, as opposed to feeling like tourists.
After the rain stopped (temporarily, as it turns out), Holly and I started traipsing toward Christ's Church Cathedral, which was where we arranged to meet Tom and Bill. My new umbrella was in the car, in the parking garage. So when the heavens burst forth again, this Rose got watered. I don't know how many blocks it was to the Cathedral, but I looked and felt like a drowned rat when I got there. It was a very pretty building, and there was a mass service going on while we were milling around, which felt sort of intrusive. I know that if there were tourists roaming around church while I'm sitting there trying to maintain focus, it would be very difficult.
In the basement, there were exhibits.. the most intriguing of which was the mummified cat and rat that were found in the pipe organ at one point when they were cleaning it. Rather macabre, but still interesting.
It was still raining when we left and as we trekked back towards the car so Holly and I could wrangle clean undies to take upstairs to our hovel, as we were NOT going to lug our suitcases up six flights of stairs, we found a New York Pizza place and decided to go in, eat, and maybe wait out the rain a little. That plan worked because it was only drizzling when we left.
Finally, we got upstairs to our hovel, vowing not to go back down until morning. The wi-fi worked and we had warm water in the shower. It was a relatively relaxing way to spend our final night in Dublin.
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