The Holidays

[same_difference]

So right now (as of Thursday) I'm firmly in stage 3 of the holiday relaxing at purplegirl23's parents in Porth. Stage 1 was the trip to Dublin, and Stage 2 was a visit to Brighton to see caylithe, gunstarvixen and lil_silver. To be honest I could probably use additional holidays 4 to n in order just to get the whole pile of different things I need to do done. Still you make do with the time you have, just probably means lots of busy evenings after work for the next few weeks.

Work is going OK, though amusingly enough both myself and my boss took the same two weeks of holiday off (his fault, I booked my first so he'd know when I wouldn't be around for) about a week after the project finally got itself into an integrate-able state. So I expect things to be very busy when I get back to work on Monday.

So the holidays, cut for the sake of your friends pages.

So we went out to Dublin Sunday morning, and got back Thursday evening just in time for my Grandad's 91st birthday celebration. We were staying in the Arlington Hotel on Bachelor's Walk right in the centre of Dublin. For the price we paid it was a perfectly reasonable hotel, the room was a nice size and the location was great, but the whole place could really use a proper renovation before I'd recommend anyone else go there. We only had one bad night which was the first night, as they had a club in the pub on the ground floor playing loud music to the early hours. Not what you want when tired from a days travel.

Sunday was spent wandering around Dublin and trying to get an idea what's about. We failed to find the recommended pancake house by one of purplegirl23's course mate, but found somewhere else in the end to keep up the first of the month tradition. (We ended up finding the place later discovering it had moved and resolved to go there on the last day which we did). We had a nice meal in the evening, but the restaurant had totally failed with their set menu. Even if you went for the expensive options it would only be 50c cheaper, if you didn't it would be more expensive and on quizzing the restaurant staff they admitted the set menu portions were smaller too.

Monday we got up somewhat late after the night before and went and explored Dublin, eventually taking a tour around Dublin Castle. Which aside from a little bit of surviving Norman stonework is more manor house/palace than castle. Though the mix of developments around it certainly weren't sympathetic, but that applies to Dublin as a whole really. The history was interesting though largely based around the Irish struggle for independence.

Tuesday we went and visited Kilmainham Jail largely because purplegirl23 wanted it as inspiration for her writing. Once again the history was largely focussed on the Irish independence, but it was definitely interesting. From there we went to the Guiness Storehouse which is basically a large marketing exercise though was definitely interesting in places.

Wednesday was spent going to Dublin Zoo, via the open top tour bus. It was a good zoo, generally a couple of things you wouldn't see at Bristol for example. I think personally my favourite creatures were the Orangutans, there is always something recognisably human about the great apes. The one creature we didn't get to see was the Artic Fox (excluding the Jaguar which had died the previous year, but they hadn't yet removed from all their maps). It was allowed to enter the wolf enclosure and so the chances of spotting are slim. That was my main complaint with the zoo really, a lot of the enclosures due to landscaping and plant height gave very limited views of the creatures inside. Oddly enough the creatures that were probably easiest to view were the Gorilla's and that's to say they'd painted the glass of the enclosure except for a series of viewing windows to give them more privacy.

On Thursday before getting our late afternoon flight out we went and visited the natural history museum. A fair few exhibits over only a couple of floors. Did seem like they'd had stuffed examples of most of the birds, and a fair portion of the animals you can find in the British isles, and a few from further afield. On the second floor they'd managed to cover any available wall or column space with mounted heads of an assortment of creatures. There was also a couple of fossils, and skeletons as well as a moderately sizeable insect collection. Though the size of some of those insects they'd managed to stick on pins were incredible, some of them were barely larger than the pin heads they were mounted on.

Overall Dublin was interesting if tiring; it feels a lot like Bristol in terms of the cultural mix and busy-ness, just smaller and with an actually pleasant atmosphere. The current dire straights of the Irish economy were fairly obvious throughout, with almost all the restaurants noticeably empty. Listening to a bit of the news only confirmed that as the first reports from the enquiries came out and blamed pretty much everyone involved for completely fecking up. Did notice that there were a lot of beggars around, though largely women with babies, and exclusively immigrants as well. The only other noticeable thing there was the attitudes of pedestrians to rode crossings, regardless of age, mobility or frequently pushing a pram complete with young child everyone tended to step out into roads in front of cars, lorries, and trams and generally be unconcerned as they weaved through traffic. I'm surprised we didn't end up being witness to several accidents.

The time in Brighton was fairly relaxed and we had a nice time from Sunday till we drove back Wednesday. Drove down taking the A303->M3 route which is a nice fast pretty drive. Took us about 2hrs 40 to get down, and (3hrs 10 to get back as I missed the turning back onto to the A303 after Stone Henge). The time was mostly spent just hanging around with the girls and ambling around Brighton. We got to meet both Paul and Kyle which was good. Though it was funny that purplegirl23 noticed the same sort of weary looks on Kyle face when caylithe was being silly as I often get when purplegirl23 is messing about. With the girls working we got to see them at different points. Sunday met all three of them and Kyle in a pub, Monday spent a bit of time with lil_silver in the morning before meeting up with gunstarvixen for lunch. We went to an excellent little Japanese restaurant which we'll have to go to again should we go visit Brighton in the future. The evening was spent with Kyle and caylithe happily chatting away. Tuesday we met up with gunstarvixen in the morning as she showed around more of Brighton and spent some setting the world to right between us. Once caylithe met us it was in to the Brighton sea life centre. There were sharks and rays, including some very cute young ones, which was of course excellent. We went on the glass bottomed boat which basically floats out over the main large oceanic tank. Thankfully the normally incredibly sleep and inactive loggerhead turtle decided to pick that time for her daily bit of non food related activity. We also got to catch the shark feeding which was great. The evening was spent at caylithe and Kyle's flat, we met gunstarvixen's Paul and chilled out watching the IT crowd which is a comedy I feel silly for having missed. Before heading home we stopped buy the "Aladdin's Cave" of fabric shops where I finally found some suitable fabric for the Baralai jacket, and also bought some expensive buttons that'll make good larp item props.

Thanks to all three of you for the lovely few days, would like to come down to Brighton again if we'd be welcome.

So far all I've done here is lazed. I'm actually feeling pretty good today, though it took a good couple of days of doing nothing at all to stop feeling completely exhausted. It's good being somewhere where I can't be doing something on the house, because it means I at least don't feel guilty while I'm having a break. Tonight I'm making southern fried chicken from a The Spicery spice box. Should be interesting.

I've got some photos to upload and a couple of videos too so there might well be a follow up post with those in sometime once I'm back home.

Comments

[lunarkittenlj.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you had a great time :-)