Vacation Complete

posted on may 10, 2004, tag: vacation

There's a lot to mention about the vacation, but it will require several posts and some time to decompress and think about the whole trip. Short version of it is that we had a really great time and we're glad to be home now. A few notes worth mentioning right off the bat since they're fresh in my mind:

• Contrary to what I've heard, the Underground (Tube) was great. It's like the NYC subway but cleaner and prettier.
• There were Cadbury Creme Egg vending machines in the Underground stations. 3 eggs for £1. Fantastic!
• Westminster Abbey was far more impressive than I thought it would be.
• Every person begging for money on the street in Dublin was under 25 (most seemed to be in their teens).
• The Guinness Storehouse was surprising. Glass, steel, waterfall—very modern and pretty inside. Plus the beer's good too (even though I think I officially like Murphy's better).
• Both the Pound and the Euro have prettier bills and coins than US Dollars. Significantly.
• The English love the word "mind." It's "mind the gap," and "mind the doors." I love it too now.
• The ham in Dublin is fantastic.

The weather in Dublin was jokingly bad. The first day we were there, it rained so hard we almost cried. It would rain very hard for about 45 minutes and then clear up completely for 20. Then, just when you started to enjoy a clear, blue sky, it would start pouring again. We got used to carrying our umbrellas wherever we went, no matter how nice it looked outside. Dubliners, however, could care less about the rain. Almost no one had an umbrella, and most just walked through the rain carefree. Those who didn't want to get drenched would simply step into a doorway or cafe or under an overhang until the rain calmed down. Then they'd go back to walking.

London, on the other hand, ended up having better weather than we were expecting. London was actually a lot like Seattle in the way that it would rain in the morning but clear up around lunch time. The rest of the day would be great. It didn't rain at all one of the four days we were there.

I took 915 pictures. 915. I remember having the camera in my hand all the time, but it seems strange to me that I shot that many. Even more interesting is the breakdown of photos by location: 458 photos taken in London, 457 taken in Dublin. I inadvertently took nearly the exact same number of photos in each location. Very weird.

The Belkin iPod Media Reader worked wonderfully. I have a single 256MB compactflash card and I took nearly 3 gigabytes of photos. Every 100 or so pictures I would take a moment and dump them to the iPod, then wipe the card. It was an extra step, and sometimes slow, but it worked perfectly and only cost me $99 (instead of approximately $430 for 3GB worth of compactflash cards—see these).

Let me also say that Xanax is overrated. It didn't really do anything, and I found that I like flying even less than I did the last time I flew (1998). On the long journey home from Dublin—which involved waking up at 4AM and taking a 7AM flight to Heathrow, wherefrom taking a flight three hours later back to JFK—I took two 0.25mg pills and still felt like shit every time we hit turbulence. The next time I fly, I will be asking my doctor for a prescription of unconsciousness with a side of 200mg kick-to-the-face pills for good measure.

I also need to thank everyone for their suggestions as to what we should see. We tried to do everything suggested, and I think we pretty much did. I want to especially thank Buzz Anderson for his recommendation to take the Jack the Ripper walk. We wouldn't have done it if he hadn't suggested it, and it was completely worth it. Rumbelow was great and we really enjoyed the tour. Oh, and on a side note—it's a coincidence that on our first night in Dublin, we walked a few blocks from our hotel and chose to eat at Gallagher's Boxty House, without even realizing that it had been on the recommendations list from everyone. It was excellent! Thanks again for all your suggestions.

More to come, including crap-loads of pictures once I get a chance to go through all of them.

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