Park Inn, Shannon Airport

Yesterday of course was a slow day. Shelly and I had brunch, then walked across the city to get tickets to Belfast and found out that out of the three train stations, only one of them goes to Belfast, and it wasn't that one. So we gave up on that idea for the day, did a little more shopping on one of the main drags (O'Connell Street), and went back. We got Rachel out of bed at the crack of 2 pm and went out for Thai, then hopped a taxi to see St. Patrick's Cathedral. Unfortunately, by the time we got there, we couldn't go inside, but we got some awesome pictures of the outside. And at least now I've seen it.

So that was it basically. We saw Christ's Cathedral, then looked in at the fake-face Dublin Castle, which is really just a big house, and went home and watched Top Gear and went to bed.

This morning, we got up at 7 am and took off for Northern Ireland to circle around and down to Shannon. Instead of going to Belfast, we went just across the border to Newry. There is no border patrol anymore, which is nice because the border is not straight. It cuts back and forth and in and out and we crossed it about four times today. In Newry, we ate lunch, and left for a tiny little town where Rachel's grandfather is buried. So we visited him, and someone had been putting flowers on his grave. It was nice for her to see that someone still cared, so she took a picture and sent it to her dad and we left.

Then we went back into Ireland. Then we went back into Northern Ireland and saw police stations that looked like they were good to take a bomb or two. We're not used to seeing that in the States. A building like that is usually a private governmental building or something, but no, these are just normal police stations with watch towers and everything! We were like...what the crap?! It was cool to see though, especially now that the war is over and we don't have to worry about running over a bomb on the main drag. After that, we went back into Ireland and stayed there.

We drove to Galway and bought another suitcase because we bought to much crap to take back with the suitcases we had. Heh! :D Then we left for Shannon and, surprise, we're here! The internet isn't free. It's 12 Euro for 24 hours, which isn't bad, so we went ahead and paid for it.

Shelly's out of the shower so I'm gonna go take one, and she's gonna steal the laptop. Be back in WI tomorrow night!