Ireland Day 2 - Plan Changing Cold

After sleeping for only a few hours, I woke up at around 2am with a nasty cold! I could not believe how suddenly I went from feeling great to feeling like my head was going to explode! Our plan had been to fly to London Monday morning, but I had such a bad sinus headache I knew I could not get on a plane in a few hours. I've flown with a cold before and it hurt so bad!

Pete called down to the front desk to see if they had anything that could help me and they brought me some chamomile tea which helped a lot, but I was still pretty miserable. I struggled through the rest of the night, but really wasn't able to sleep.

We got up at 6:30 to meet the rest of our party to tell them we were just going to stay in Dublin while they went to London. Of course, our meeting time was a bit of a miscommunication, and they didn't end up coming down until more like 7:30. Pete and I said goodbye to them, had some breakfast in the hotel restaurant (which was another good full Irish breakfast buffet), then went back up to bed.

And this is pretty much where I stayed until around 2 or 3 in the afternoon.

Here is the lovely view from our window of the Fire Brigade. I had to take this picture to show George. Also, the lights on the fire engines are blue over there!

Finally, I couldn't take any more sitting around and we really wanted to get out and see more of the city! I was feeling a little better, but still not great so first we went in search of some cold medicine. This was more difficult than we thought because we didn't know what to ask for since they didn't know what DayQuil was. We finally went to a pharmacy and got something that seemed to help. We walked around a bit then decided to stop in one of the many, many cafes that are practically every other building (with the other building being a pub).

We picked this one called The Humble Bean, but they didn't take credit cards and we didn't have any Euro so we went and found an ATM then went back. I'm glad we did too because I got the most beautiful and delicious hot chocolate I've ever had. We also shared a piece of carrot cake that was amazing! That helped me feel better and we set off to do some more exploring!

We crossed The Liffey a couple times. Here's looking one way (East I think).

And the other way. The bridges are all different and beautiful in their own ways. One of them that we crossed (maybe the one behind me here) had a plaque on it saying it was built in the 1700s. It was pretty awesome to be standing on a bridge older than our country.

Here's a cool building we walked by with lots of cool details.

We passed a big wall with some kind of map of the stars that was really cool.

Then finally, we found what we were looking for! The Christchurch Cathedral! Unfortunately, even though it was only about 5:00, it was already pretty dark, and there was a private event going on inside so we weren't able to go in, but we still really enjoyed walking around it.

To one side of the Cathedral, they had this Viking plot that was all blocked out just with stones on the ground which was a pretty cool way to give you an idea of how big their houses were back then. We didn't get a picture of that because it was too dark, but here's the plaque.

Here's the front which was really well lit.

We walked around some more until we found this beautiful place to eat called The Bank on College Green.

It really was so beautiful! From the high Victorian ceiling...

to the mosaic tile on the floor.

From the cute little fireplace we sat by...

...to the grand piano (which someone started playing soon after I took this photo),

 and the stained glass windows.

The food was so amazing too! I had the "Roast Pork Belly €14.50 (slow roasted for 12 hours) Served over Braised Red Cabbage on a Bed of Mash Potato with a Mustard Cream Sauce & Jus." Definitely the best food of the trip.

I, unfortunately, was still not feeling well at all, so we went back to the hotel soon after dinner to try and get some sleep. "Try" being the main word here. I am not a good sleeper normally, but being sick and jet-lagged really did not help.

I did go to bed totally in love with this city, though. It was a great evening!