by Jim Bellomo | Jun 15, 2019 | Uncategorized
Sitting in the Club World Lounge in Terminal 3, Heathrow, I think I have enough time to upload Belfast (their WiFi is pretty good and it is already written). We shall see. It was the next stop after we boarded in Dublin where I left off (other my WOW Iceland post and my Woeful WiFi post).
We awoke on our first day after leaving Dublin to a truly blustery day in Belfast. Due to tides we weren’t able to dock until almost 11:00 am. As soon as we were able, we walked four of our party who had never been to Belfast before out to a private excursion I had arranged through Tours by Locals that would take them to up the Antrim Coast to Giant’s Causeway. We had done this on a previous visit to Belfast and we along with four others in our group who had been here before decided to forego that and pay a visit to the Titanic Experience.
I fully realize that visiting a museum dedicated to a cruise ship that sank by hitting an iceberg while on a cruise seems to be tempting fate but we went anyway. If you are in Belfast, this is a must-see. They have done an excellent job of detailing pretty much everything about the Titanic, its building, the times it was built in and so much more. Not only are there a number of excellent exhibits, there is even a ride. Who knew? We were pretty surprised. It was a great tour and worth the money and time.
Our original plans after the Titanic experience had been to jump on the HoHo bus but since it was pouring rain, we crammed ourselves into a taxi and headed back to the ship. All and all, a pretty decent day.
Remember, you can click the first photo to see the pics larger and as a slide show.
Post note: Wasn’t able to upload everything in the lounge. Finishing up at home with my usual AWESOME WiFi. Exhausted but more about that later.
The Titanic Experience
The Experience had awesome exhibits
Looking up at the original scaffolding
Steve, Jamie, Holly and Kathleen take the elevator up to the Titanic Ride
Looking down from one of the cars on the ride
Inside the Titanic Experience
Inside the Titanic Experience
Was this bar in Belfast or Edinburgh?
Inside the Titanic Experience
Looking out of the Titanic Experience
Inside the Titanic Experience
Inside the Titanic Experience
A mural directly outside of Inside the Titanic Experience
Walking to the Nomadic
A dry dock plug (used to keep water out while they built)
The Nomadic. A glorified tender for the White Star ships.
You can tour the restored ship
There were hologram guides on the Nomadic and Inside the Titanic Experience
The Titanic hit the iceberg not because they could not see it coming but because they could not change direction. —Dean Devlin
by Jim Bellomo | Jun 2, 2019 | Uncategorized
I am so serious. This city never sleeps. Went to bed with a huge, post football party going on at every bar on the street. Woke up to the party still going on. Seriously, drunks staggering down the middle of streets, trash everywhere. It even inspired me to write an Irish poem about it. Or I was inspired by the Irish House Party last night.
Dublin Sunday Morning
Beside the lovely Liffey, it didn’t make no diffy.
Dublin’s kind of iffy Sunday morning.
Trash and drunks all over, mixed in with poop from Rover
I didn’t see one clover,
Sunday morning.
Hope you enjoyed that. You will see in my pics from my early morning walk exactly what I am talking about. And there is another NSFW verse about something else I saw that you will have to ask me the next time you see me.
After my walk and breakfast we headed out to use the second day of our HopOn/HopOff (HoHo) bus pass with Big Bus Tours. Here’s what I have to say about Big Bus Tours…never and I mean NEVER use this company. There is another HoHo bus company. BigBus drives red buses, the other guys drive green. Use them. Let me explain.
There is a marathon going on today in Dublin. The finish line is on our street actually a block from our place. We realized yesterday that this would mean that some stops would not be available today due to the race. So we checked the company website and their app. Both said that the only thing that was rerouted would be the two stops near Marion Square. I have a screen shot that says these ae the only low numbered stops that were going to be affected. So we (just Kathleen and I) walked quite a few blocks to the other side of St. Stephens Square where we had seen the bus drop off and pick up yesterday. But guess what? The bus wasn’t dropping off or picking up there. So I called the phone number I had for them and asked. She said that because of the race, they were picking up and dropping off on the other side of the park. So with my bad knee and Kathleen neuropathy killing her legs we walked back across the park (it sucks to get old). When we got there, there was a bus. We asked the driver whether he was the red or the blue line (they have two routes) and said “I am neither. We aren’t using this stop today. You will need to walk to Stop 2 (about 10 minutes away.” Normally, no big deal but the way our bodies were working today—a very big deal). So I called the company back and was told that the number I was calling was not really the bus company but rather a number in a tourist agency and they would take a message. (No wonder the woman didn’t know about the St. Stephen’s Green bus stop change.) I asked for the number of the actual bus company and she said, she didn’t know it and even is she did, she wasn’t allowed to give it out. Please excuse me here but “WHAT THE HELL????”
But we did it anyway only to get there and find out that the stop only picked up Red Route (which we had done yesterday) riders. If we wanted blue we would have to get on and go three stops up and change busses. What the hell…again! See what I mean about this company. We took the bus to the next stop and were told it would be 20 minutes until the Blue bus came and we just gave up and walked back.
And one other thing. On the back of every bus was the ad at right. Only problem was, it wasn’t true. We rode four different busses and my brother and his family rode four others. On only two of them were their live guides. The rest had almost unintelligible, recorded (with music) narration. Boring with a capital B.
On our way we had a nice lunch, picked up some art and postcards for family and friends (yes, we still do that) and headed back through the marathon mess to home. On the way I stepped on a piece of pavement that was dry but had water and mud underneath it and shot straight up onto the other leg of my jeans that had just been washed. So now we are home washing them again and hoping they will dry tonight before we have to pack them to board the ship tomorrow. No dryer in this unit.
I am finishing this at 4:35 am Dublin time on June 3. We are off to the ship in about five hours. I am not sure how often I will be able to post while on the ship but I will try to do it on a somewhat regular basis. Our stops include Belfast on the 4th, then Reykjavik on 6th and 7th and Akureyri on the 8th & 9th before we head to Cork on the 12th and finally back here to Dublin on the 13th.
Early morning Dublin
Early morning Dublin
Drunks walking barefoot down the middle of the street
Early morning Dublin
Early morning Dublin
Early morning Dublin
Early morning Dublin
Early morning Dublin
Early morning Dublin
Early morning Dublin
Early morning Dublin
Early morning Dublin
Typical street scene at 6:30 in the morning. A total mess.
Ha’Penny Bridge
On the Liffey
On the Liffey
On the Liffey
Early morning Dublin
Early morning Dublin
Early morning Dublin in front of the needle
The Customs House in Early morning Dublin
Great squirrel mural
Early morning Dublin
Early morning Dublin
The Famine Monument
The Jeanne Johnston, a famous famine ship
The figurehead on the famine ship Jeanne Johnston
Sculpture on the Liffey
Falling in on itself
Molly Malone statue
Early morning Dublin
Early morning Dublin
Plate in sidewalk outside the local theater
I want this suit.
Oscar Wilde
Dublin in the afternoon
In St. Stephen’s Green
In St. Stephen’s Green
Street performer at Molly Malone’s statue
Below the green cross, the world famous
End of the Women’s Marathon
End of the Women’s Marathon
Paris is cafe culture, Dublin is pub culture, and that’s the best place to solve all the world’s problems: over a pint! One of the great joys of living, I think. The problems of the world seem to disappear. —Liam Cunningham
by Jim Bellomo | Jun 1, 2019 | Uncategorized
This morning I was out the door before 5:00 am to walk Dublin streets and take photos. I got a bunch that I really like including a ton of doors to add to our collection. (If you have ever been in our home, you know we have more than 100 photos of doors on the walls.)You will find a lot of my favorites below. But while I was walking alongside the River Liffey I got a text from Kathleen that she wasn’t feeling well and was going to go back to bed.
We had planned to join the rest of our Bellomo/Dorff entourage on the Hop-on, Hop-off (HoHo) bus but this put a slight crimp in our plans. Instead Kathleen slept (remember when I slept in last week, the day we toured Leeds?) in and the rest of the gang went off to ride the bus and I worked on my photos from the early morning. By 11:00 Kathleen was up and ready to go get some food and then we did a round of the HoHo bus ourselves. We rode all over Dublin (it’s a pretty compact city) before we came back to the house to FaceTime with our kids back in Washington. Had some big news there as they did what they have done before while we have been in Europe, started a big move.
This evening the entire group of us including Bob and Holly met up for a dinner and a show at the Irish House Party. It’s a combo dinner and show and we should have just gone for the show but we did both. Not the best food (kind of Irish cafeteria food) but adequate but the show is outstanding and if you are in Dublin, it’s worth seeing. Just get tickets for the show and skip the dinner.
Tomorrow we still have HoHo bus tickets and a few others things we want to do before we board Celebrity’s Reflection to sail to Iceland on Monday. Here’s the pics and remember, they look better if you click the first one to watch a slide show.
Early morning Dublin
Early morning Dublin
Did you know Dublin had a canal?
The old city hospital
The Irish House Party…13 hours early
Locks on the canal
Early morning Dublin
Canal boat
Early morning Dublin
Dublin doors
Dublin doors
Dublin doors
Dublin doors
Look at the lower left corner
He had his eye on me
Early morning Dublib
Early morning Dublib
Early morning Dublib
Early morning Dublib
An entire neighborhood where all the buildings were Google
See Spiderman
Naked Spiderman
Early morning Dublib
Early morning Dublib
More Google
The end of the canal
Early morning Dublib
Early morning Dublib
Early morning Dublib
Early morning Dublib
An arti installation in front of a theater
An arti installation in front of a theater
An arti installation in front of a theater
Early Morning Dublin
Early Morning Dublin
Early Morning Dublin
Early Morning Dublin
Along the Liffey
I wasn’t caught
Along the Liffey
Along the Liffey
Along the Liffey
For some reason there was a statue of the man who founded the Argentinean Navy
Along the Liffey
Along the Liffey
Along the Liffey
Along the Liffey
Along the Liffey
Early morning Dublin
Early morning Dublin
Early morning Dublin
Early morning Dublin
Early morning Dublin
Kennedy’s Pub
Moor doors
More doors
More doors
Moor Doors
Early morning Dublin
At the Irish House Party
The Irish House Party
Irish music in the local pubs was my first exposure to musical expression, and I feel like Irish music is very close to musical theater because it is always telling a story. —Rory O’Malley
by Jim Bellomo | May 31, 2019 | Uncategorized
After six days in Yorkshire we bid a fond farewell to Paul and Gail. Paul drove us to the airport at 6:00 am (thank you again Paul) and Gail got up to tell us goodbye (thank you again Gail). We caught our 8:22 Aer Lingus puddle jumper flight from Leeds-Bradford airport to Dublin. Arrived 10 minutes early, but unfortunately, our ride to the hotel arrived an hour late. After that snafu, we got a great driver who took us in to the city to our luggage drop where we…dropped our luggage. Then we walked a few blocks to meet our buddies Bob and Holly for lunch at a great little place called O’Neals. A real Irish pub. It was great seeing them again. Bob and Holly, not O’Neals.
After that it was back to pick up our luggage and head to our AirBnB where we got settled, welcomed my brother and his family around 4:30 (they were wiped out after flying non-stop from LA) and went out to dinner to Brookwood, an outstanding restaurant that turned out to be right across the street, we watched a little more of Britain’s Got Talent and it was off to bed.
A couple of quick thoughts about Dublin and our AirBnB. Dublin seems more crowded and crazy than Edinburgh and definitely more than wonderfully sedate Leeds and Yorkshire (where of course we were staying in a neighborhood and not right down town as we are here). For instance, we have a very famous pub (Toners) and a couple of bars across the street from us. Normally when I get up to walk in the morning (like today when I am up at 4:30), it’s quiet in the neighborhoods. Not here. There is still a loud crowd out in front of a bar down the street (I can see the bar from our front window). At 4:22 am??!! Do these people ever sleep? Our AirBnB is pretty cool. The host, whose name is Phil, met us and has really taken great care of us. A super guy. We have a big living room, a gourmet kitchen (not that we will cook) and a four bedrooms. Check out the listing at the link above. Another win for us picking great AirBnBs. It even has a bakery downstairs and we will see how great they are later today.
As I was finishing this up at 4:30 am I realized that for the first day in 10 days, I hadn’t taken any photos. Well, I took two. Both out the window from the living room. One of the world famous Toner’s Pub and the other of Brookwood, the restaurant where we had dinner (they make a wonderful lamb) so sorry, that’s all you get today. But as I am going out in about 10 minutes for an early morning walk, you should have much more tomorrow or tonight.
Fabulous place, Dublin is. The trouble is, you work hard and in Dublin you play hard as well. —Bonnie Tyler
