Ireland!

Patrick's mom grew up in Dun Laoghaire, Ireland, a city right outside of Dublin.  Patrick has gone with his family 4 times to visit her family in Ireland, but he had not been back for 10 years.  We got to go from July 24th to August 2nd with Patrick's parents and his brother Kevin.  Our Irish family volunteered to house us all, but we wouldn't have fit into one house, much less two.  Ed and Marie stayed with Marie's brother Bernard, his wife Ann and their daughter Maria in the house that Marie grew up in and her father built.  Kevin stayed down the road in his cousin Ronan's apartment, and Patrick, Connor, and I stayed with Marie's first cousin Rita in her house with her son Darren and her daughter Sonia.  We had some full houses!

Our room at Rita's house.  We bought the fan there, and it was a huge blessing.

Let me just say that it was an incredible blessing to stay with family.  Not only did they cook and do laundry for us, but they watched Connor, and just talked to us.  I really felt as though they were my family.  I'm so sad I didn't get pictures of Rita, Sonia, and Ann.  I wish I had gotten some of them with Connor since they helped us take care of him so much.

Our trip started on July 24th when we went to the airport around 1PM.  We had to wake Connor up from his nap, which he was none too happy about.  The short hop from Huntsville to Atlanta took only 30 minutes, but we had to wait forever on the tarmac in Huntsville and it was hot and yucky.  Once we got to Atlanta and our gate, it really hit me that we were going to Ireland!  We got settled in the plane and I had high hopes my sleepy buddy would go right to sleep and sleep the whole trip.  I was sorely mistaken.  The plane took off at 6:45 and they didn't turn the lights down for at least 4 hours.  Connor was miserable because he was being overstimulated the whole time.  I knew that we were going to land at 7:30 Irish time and we would need to keep him up until nap time to try and get on the correct schedule.  I kept hoping he would fall asleep, but he didn't really until they turned the lights off.  He got maybe 4 restless hours of sleep while constantly nursing and I got possibly 1-2.

When we landed, we were greeted by Uncles Bernard and Eamon and Bernard's son David.  David drove Patrick, Connor, and me to Rita's house so we could meet her and settle in.  I tried to get Connor to take a nap, but he couldn't settle down since he was so over tired and in a new place.  I eventually gave up and we had lunch (Irish breakfast!) and Bernard came over to pick us up and take us to his house.  On the way he gave us a car tour of Dun Laoghaire and we stopped by the pier and gave Connor his first view of the ocean!

Connor and me at the Dun Laoghaire pier.

We hung out at Bernard's house for a while and Patrick and his parents went shopping so Patrick could get a cell phone to make all of our plans much easier.  We also got in contact with Kevin, who had been in Ireland for a couple days already, but didn't have a cell phone.  He came over and we all had stew for dinner, along with the first of many delicious desserts made by Ann.

Connor and Dada in Bernard's garden.

After a very rough night for Connor and me, we all woke up feeling fairly rested and ventured out into Dublin.  We took the bus to St. Stephen's Green to meet Ed, Marie, and Kevin.  A very friendly woman (the first of oh so many) told us how to get to the park and we fed the pigeons and ducks for a little while before wandering around and finding an excellent playground.  Patrick went with Connor and played hard for over an hour while I got to sit on a bench and veg.

Connor feeding the birds with Happaw.

Connor at the playground.

 After a while, Uncle John and Aunt Clare found us and we set off to find lunch.  We decided to get fish and chips and they led us to a place that is fairly famous.  On the way, Connor fell asleep on my back and he slept the whole time we were eating.  After lunch, Ed and Marie had to get back to Bernard's to see Marie's cousin Joan, but the rest of us went to the National Botanic Garden.  It was incredibly beautiful.  It was founded in 1790, so the trees are enormous and old and the whole place is obviously very well cared for and even loved.

Uncle Bernard supervised the renovation of this greenhouse.

Uncle!

Connor liked this waterfall.  He even tried to climb into it.

Connor and I stopped to nurse at the foot of this tree.

On Friday we met Uncle John and his daughter Orla at the Dublin Zoo.  It was enormous!  It was on the top of my list of things to do in Dublin, because I love zoos, but I had no idea what we were in for.  I think we were there for 4 hours.  It was really huge.

Connor's hand is the size of a spider monkey's.

Ed's was the size of a chimpanzee's!

Uncle John, do you want to watch the sea lion show too?

Sweet baby giraffe with his mommy.  He was a month old.

Sweet baby gorilla with his mommy.

Sweet baby Connor with his mommy!

Near the farm section of the zoo, we found these cute chickens and had Connor ride on them.  Cute pictures ensued.

On Saturday we took Connor to his third country: Northern Ireland!  We went with Uncle John's son Ronan, whom Kevin was staying with.  We rode in a train that took about 2 hours from Dublin to Belfast and then walked to a restaurant that Maria had suggested to us called Cafe Vaudeville.  It was in this really neat former hotel and the food was really great.  I wish that I had taken pictures, but we were focused on keeping Connor happy and eating our wonderful food.

Connor Jemison: international traveller.

After lunch we walked to the city hall to try and catch a bus tour.  Once there we decided we didn't have enough time to do a bus tour before our reserved time at the Titanic exhibit, so we headed off to Falls Road, which is in the Catholic side of Belfast and the buildings have a lot of historical murals about the conflicts between the Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.  It was a pretty blustery day and we didn't get very far onto Falls Road before realizing we really needed to get over to the Titanic museum because it was on the other side of the city.

Giant screen outside the city hall showing the Olympics.

The Titanic exhibit has only been open since March and was packed.  We had to book our tickets online in advance and were kind of sad to only be able to get a 3:40 entrance time because our train left at 6:10.

The museum was really, really great.  It was a really beautiful building and the whole place was really well put together and fun.  They even have special event rooms, which I think would make an amazing reception venue.

Love my Jemison men.

Connor fell asleep on my back again.

Sunday we went with Uncle John's daughter Catherine and Maria and her partner Bill to a beautiful lake called Glendalough about an hour south of Dublin.  Words cannot describe how pretty it is.  It was astonishing.  We walked along the lake for a while and looked at how awesome it is.

This is the only picture that comes close to showing how pretty it is.

We stopped for a while when Connor was sleeping and had some ice cream.  Ireland has a great treat that is a Cadbury Flake (a chocolate bar that's just really thin sheets of chocolate all layered on top of each other) pushed into a soft serve vanilla cone.  It's really tasty.

We then walked the opposite direction to see the ruins of a monastery from over 1000 years ago.  On the way Connor and I stopped to nurse in the woods.

In the graveyard of the monastery is a cross that is over 1100 years old called St. Kevin's cross.  The superstition is that if you can touch your hands together while hugging the cross, then a wish will come true for you within 6 months.  Patrick and Kevin both touched their hands.

Part of the cathedral at the monastery. 

On the way back to the cars we stopped at a waterfall and took some family pictures.  Some photoshop might be required to make these any good.

 We also found a patch of cedar moss for Connor to play in.  Patrick and I got engaged in a cedar moss garden, so it is special to us.  In this picture Connor is re-finding the rock he dropped.

After Glendalough, we went to Maria's twin brother David's house for dinner.  They served us an incredible amount of delicious food.  Patrick and I agreed that their house was awesome and Connor had a lot of fun with their youngest child Holly and their sweet dog Cookie.  He even learned how to say the dog's name while we were there!  He would often say "Cook-cook" the next few days.  Patrick was really excited to have rhubarb for the first time.  Strawberry rhubarb pie was among the huge amount of desserts heaped upon us.  We also had a strawberry pavlova.  Rhubarb and pavlova were both things we had fairly often in PNG and I had forgotten that I hadn't had them in forever!  So good.

On Monday morning we woke up and waited for Ed to come and pick us up in the rental car so we could drive to the other side of the country and go to Westport where Catherine had gotten us a great deal on a three bedroom apartment in a B&B and restaurant her friend's father owns called The Helm.  After getting settled in the apartment, which was really great, we got back in the car to take advantage of the nice weather to take a drive out on Achill Island.  The whole drive was really lovely, but the beach at the end was amazing!  We saw a bunch of families on it, so we decided to let Connor have his first visit to the beach.

Panoramic view from the beach.

Every time a wave would break, Connor let our a shriek of delight.

That night we met up with Uncle John and Aunt Clare, who were also spending the night, and everyone but Connor and me went out to dinner.  We didn't think to get a reservation, so the earliest everyone could eat was 8:40, which was far too late for Connor.  They brought me dinner back from the restaurant, which was amusingly called Asgard.

The next day (Tuesday) was dreary and rainy, so we decided that we would walk around Westport and shop and, later in the afternoon, go swimming in the hotel a couple doors down from the Helm.  I was really excited since the only shopping I had been able to do was at the Titanic museum.  

The Helm is a B&B, and we got Irish breakfast both mornings we were there.  Since we ate a lot for breakfast, and had reservation for dinner at 6:30, we decided to have chocolate treats for a midday snack.

After eating some yummy treats.

Dinner at the Helm was great, and after a relaxing evening, we all went to bed.  The next day we decided to drive back to Dun Laoghaire as soon as we were packed, and we all went back to Bernard's for the evening.  After saying our goodbyes, Patrick, Connor, and I came back to Rita's and I furiously unpacked from our trip to Westport, and repacked everything so that we could head out with ease early in the morning. 

Our day on Thursday started at 5:30.  We managed to get both our checked bags to below weight and also were able to keep Connor asleep until the absolute last minute, around 6:30, when David came to take us to the airport.  Going through the Dublin airport was fairly easy, if a little time consuming, since they do customs in the airport.  It was nice to not have to reclaim and recheck our bags in Atlanta though!  The transatlantic flight went fairly well, though Connor was pretty cranky and screamed some.  I thought he did excellently, all things considering.

We got to Atlanta two hours before our plane was scheduled to leave and we thought we were home free when we were all boarded and buckled.  Unfortunately, the plane had other plans.  The air conditioning was on the fritz and we had to deplane.  They predicted at 45 minute wait, but that turned into about 2.5 hours.  Connor was totally wrecked and I got him to fall asleep by walking up and down the halls with him on my back about 45 minutes before we got on the plane.  He even went back to sleep once we were settled in the plane again.  His body was telling him that it was 11 PM and he had been up, with one 1.5 hour nap, since 6:30.

When we landed in Huntsville, Jessica (my hero) was there to greet us and we thought, hey, we're almost home.  However, one of our bags had not made it to Huntsville, so we had to arrange for it to get delivered to our house.  When we finally made it home, we gave our sticky, sweaty, exhausted baby a bath and put him to bed.  I tried to stay up as long as possible, but passed out around 9.  It was 3 AM Ireland time so I had been up, with some very short naps, for almost 21 hours.  Whew!