Europe Day 1

I guess this technically is about days one and two since I left Utah early Friday morning.  I had to be at the airport at 5:30am, which sucked, but due to my lack of sleep, I was able to snooze on the flight from SLC to Chicago.  Unfortunately I had a 7 hour layover in Chicago, which was never-ending.  I took myself out to lunch at Chili's and walked all around the entire airport to kill time.  I also tried to get some work done, but they don't have free wifi in the Chicago airport.  Lame!  I bought a one day pass, but the connection was horrible, so I didn't get much work done.  I finally boarded my Aer Lingus flight for Dublin and was pleased to find out that the plane was only about half full.  I had plenty of room to stretch out and relax.  After watching Taken 2, I finally did get some sleep, although it wasn't hugely restful, as you can imagine. 

We arrived shortly after 9am local time.  I made it through immigration, got my bag and caught a taxi without any problems.  I'm staying in the apartment of a couple named Liam and Aisling.  They're both super nice.  Upon arrival, I took a shower and a nap that went on for several hours longer than I had planned.  I decided to take things easy today and not really do any sight seeing.  I did walk around the neighborhood, locate the bus stop and visit the grocery store, though.  I love European grocery stores!  They always have such interesting stuff.  As I type this I am eating King Prawn Cocktail flavored potato chips.  They are delicious!  While at Tesco, I also picked up the latest and last Maeve Binchy book.  I wanted to wait to buy it here so that it would be special.  If luggage weight and money weren't an issue, I would go buy a copy of all of her books just so that I can say I have all Irish copies of them.  Yes, I know I'm a dork!  After getting back to the apartment, I had a migraine come on pretty suddenly and started throwing up, so it was a really good thing that I chose to take it easy today.  Fortunately the migraine didn't last long and I was able to sleep it off.  I spent this evening chatting with Liam about the problems Ireland is facing and different locations in the States that he wants to go.  He and Aisling both have a family member who has or had a disability, so we also talked quite a bit about my work. 

Other than my moment of being sickly, today was nice and relaxing.  I'm really glad I took the day off; I really needed it!  Tomorrow I'll be on the go all day and keeping busy, I'm sure.  There's a hop-on-hop-off bus tour of Dublin that I want to do tomorrow.  I think it'll be a good way to get the lay of the land and one of the places I really want to go, Kilmainham Gaol, is further out on the other side of the city, so this will be the perfect way to get there.  I also want to go out for some proper Irish food.  I'm thinking a nice stew or chowder at a pub for lunch tomorrow.