Leaving Dublin!!

We will miss this wonderful city. The kids and I have spent many days exploring the city as Aidan and Cullen lead us with confidence through alleys and narrow streets on our favorite route over the River Liffey into Temple Bar, Grafton Street, St. Stephen’s Green and the grounds of Trinity College. This city is steeped in history and we have experienced most of the highlights. Our latest adventure was to the Georgian district - a beautiful area of town with distinctive red brick Georgian row houses. Merrion Square is famous for the many different colors of doors on the houses - red, black, yellow, green and even pink. We toured 29 Fitzwilliams Street - an 18th century house that has been preserved with period furniture. The guided tour describing life in that era was fascinating. We decided that although it might be nice to have 3 servants per household, we wouldn’t enjoy the chamber pots and lack of bathtubs. We also visited Christ Church Cathedral and the Viking/Medievil Museum - both fantastic and well worth the tour.

Today, we went to Trinity with Marc and wandered around the campus thinking about our nephew Brendan who recently graduated from Trinity and our nephew Kieran who is hoping to be accepted for admission in the fall. The campus oozes a feeling of academia and history. We learned that the Vatican considered it a cardinal sin for Catholics to attend Trinity until the early 1960s - a fact that astonished us. Ireland is a country with a fascinating blend of rich and varied history, as well as conflict and controversy that is quite recent by comparison - an interesting contrast. There is something exciting about conflict that occurred during our lifetime in a city that was invaded by Vikings in the 800’s.

This afternoon our focus turned to family as we met up

with the California contingency and enjoyed an afternoon and evening of the Irish/California blend. The wedding buzz is upon us and time spent with Patrick and Joanne is precious as we know they are wrapped up in the details and emotions of the wedding. The kids were overjoyed to see their cousins - Cullen begging to have dinner with someone other than me and

his siblings! We hardly saw Ava all night as she was much more interested in Cielo and Lola than us - ahh...girls to play with!

Tomorrow we leave Dublin and drive to County Monnahan and Castle Leslie,

the location of the wedding

and where we will stay for 3 nights. We are really looking

forward to seeing the Irish countryside and venturing over the border into Northern Ireland for the ceremony. This will be a traditional Irish wedding - from a full Catholic mass to dancing into the wee hours of the morning...we can’t wait! We are all so happy for Patrick and Joanne - they really are a wonderful couple. We have spent several days with Marianne’s family and we will be very sad to leave Ireland. We see them frequently enough to have close relationships - so much so that when we are together it is easy to forget the long distance between us. As we left their house tonight, I stopped and pondered the thought that it could be many years before we see it again. We will miss them all very much. After the wedding, it is off to Morocco and Spain!