Dublin then Paris

Phew - getting online has been a chore, and being able to upload photos even more problematic. Except one spot (Kelly's cousin's in Belfast), we've not been able to plugin the camera, so everyone will have to be patient with our photo uploading - personally, I'm not a fan of how this handles photos inline with posts anyway, it's a pain!

So... July 6th - Kelly's Great Aunt Betty made us a traditional fry for breakfast, then we hopped on the rather uneventful bus to Dublin. When there, we just got into the hostel, and wandered around the city seeing nothing in particular (but it's a nice city!). We had a relatively early night, I think the flurry of activities in Belfast wore us out. Little did we know that we'd seen NOTHING yet!

July 7th - we went to Trinity College, and while wandering around campus we asked some guy what a particular building was used for (it had a greek pantheon look to it). Turns out it housed a Gutenberg style printing press, but more importantly, it turned out the guy was there for the past while from Toronto, studying his PhD. He offered to get us into the library and to see the Book of Kells for free (since he's a student), so off we went. The library was absolutely amazing, it stopped me in my tracks (coincidentally, images of it were "stolen" by Lucas for use in the 2nd Star Wars as the Jedi Archives - look it up!). Anyway, we then took Jon (our benevolent guide) for a coffee, since he had to discard his to enter the library building. After we hit the Chester Beatty Library which houses one of the largest book collections, in terms of rare prints. It's like the Bata Shoe Museum for the history of printed material! Very neat stuff (some papyrus pieces on display dated to circa 150 AD!!)

After that, we hit the General Post Office for the history, and (of course) to mail a postcard. A quick photo opp with the James Joyce monument led us onto the bus to the airport to get to Paris. What an adventure this turned out to be - the flight was delayed a bit in departing. Then, upon landing at Beauvais airport, we were held on the tarmac due to a security lockdown. Some idiot had left unattended baggage in the terminal, which was subsequently evacuated. After an extra hour+ on the plane (it got kinda warm), and another 30 minute wait to even get into the terminal (they let us just stand in line outside the terminal on the tarmac), we finally got through customs, our baggage, and only a 1:15 bus shuttle to Porte Maillot - quite a ways in the west end, far from République where we were headed. Oh, and due to the delays, the metro was no longer running. A 20 minute cab ride later, and we finally got to our hostel rather tired at 2am.

July 8th - But we're in Paris! Today was just walking around, seeing the Panthéon and a bunch of famous dead people, Notre Dame, and more wandering around. Tonight might see us wander towards the Eiffel Tower, weather permitting (stupid rain!! We left Ireland because of that, don'tcha know?).

Cheerio, more to come - we're in Paris until Sunday morning.