Dublin--coffee and the post

 so as I mentioned before, we were staying at the Clontarf Caslte Hotel--from the outside I thought it resembled the Chicago Art Institute--and that was before I saw the lions!

 It was really nice staying there and seeing my mom after along school year right before all the stress of final exams.

 How lucky was I to have such a cool mom--she not only supported me in all the re-enactment I was doing, but she participated with me!

 funny story: the heel of her shoe broke so she whipped some electrical tape out of her purse to fix it,and even put a matching stripe on the other shoe. Being the wife and mother of engineers has its perks!

 Here I am at the general post office--it was amazing seeing the bullet holes in the walls--a lot of history happened here--to the left of the entrance is even a little museum to learn more!

 I got some stamps while I was there...

 Because the tour we wanted to go to that day didn't work out we went to the museum instead--I loved seeing the artifacts I had been learning about all year. Pictured above is a 'weaver's sword' which I found particularly interesting since I do some weaving at working the summers... not pictured are all the other Neolithic and Late Bronze age artifacts I was so taken with.

 I especially loved the temporary exhibition the Battle of Clontarf, seeing how I was going to be participating in the 1000 year anniversary reenactment shortly.

 We are fans of Porterhouse. They are not that common,they can be found in only a handful of places: there is one in London, New York, Cork, and 2 in Dublin. We stopped in for a pint upon finding this one!

As we were waiting for the bus for  our second attempt at a Newgrange / Hill of Tara tour we found a snug cafe across from St. Steven's Green called the Beanhive. the owners were really nice--gave a homeless man a meal and made us some (really yummy) carrot and coriander soup...

Not to mention some really super coffee! I am not a huge fan of coffee--but this was really nice. We made sure to give them a nice review on Tripadvisor!

Of course,be a larger city, Dublin had its fair share of  street performers! I figure, of someone makes you stop on the street, you owe them some change! One music group was so cool that I bought their CD!

By now I was getting really excited for the Battle of Clontarf--pictures (hopefully) some video and stories about that are to come!