Sunday, May 31, 2015
Clay was up, walked on the treadmill and came back in the cabin
before I ever woke up this morning. Of course, he slept through me getting up
around 2am during what felt like a gale and retrieving the balcony furniture
from against the railing where it was banging in the drainage ditch along the
edge. I don’t have any idea how he could have slept through all that noise or
the wind sweeping through when I opened the door! I had to get up again to take
more meclizine and put on sea bands. By the time, I was ready to go for
breakfast, we were docked and cleared. Since it was Sunday, we tried the Grand
Dining Room again. Still not loving it. There were only 3 other couples in
there while we ate and probably 15 waiters. Service was not stellar,
regardless. Clay asked what was missing from the Regent dining rooms where we
almost always had Sunday breakfast. I was like, really? He meant it. Um,
champagne, mimosas, caviar, caviar even on the Eggs Benedict unless you asked
them not to put it on. Oh, right. He remembered. I’d just as soon eat at the
Terrace buffet and not try to imagine this is a luxury experience.
We spoke to the solo Dublin tourism representative onboard and got
the shuttle schedule and a map. We asked him about our plan to visit and tour
Dublin Castle since it was closed for a diplomatic event the last time we were
here and we missed it. He immediately impressed on us the importance of going
today because tomorrow is a bank holiday as well as a women’s half marathon in
Dublin and it would be closed as well as a lot of other museums, shops, etc.
and that it was going to be very hard to get around with over 10K race
attendees expected. Clay went to the Destinations Desk to see if he could find
that they had put on anything especially for our extra day here on Monday,
preferably something out in the countryside. One, the destinations person had
not heard the first thing about the bank holiday or the race and two, they had
not put on any special tours for the additional day.
We are docked at Berth 33 Ocean Pier. We are docked on the
port side but our starboard view is scenic again. Not as scenic as Belfast, but
okay for a big container port! There is no cruise terminal here. There is a
trailer at the entrance to the port area, maybe a quarter of a mile away that
must have free wi-fi since we saw crew clustered around it outside in the
weather!
We studied the map and had more questions about
possibilities for Monday. It is difficult to do any research or find any
information with no Internet. Which raises the fact that this port is worse
than yesterdays’. At least they had put up a big tent. Here there is nothing
whatsoever to serve as a cruise terminal. There is a trailer parked across a
parking lot where the shuttle buses come and go and it is a tourism office. We
went there when we found the sole guy onboard surrounded by a crowd when we
went back down. There were 2 guys outside, but they also had a small souvenir
shop in there. Since we were the only passengers, we got to ask a lot of
questions, but he didn’t think any of our plans for Monday were feasible. He
too advised us to stay away specifically from Merrion Square and the area south
of it because of the race. The problem is that the shuttle drops off a block
from there, so if you take the shuttle then you’ll be in the thick of it
anyway. We still don’t know what to do with our extra day here. When we took
the shuttle back today, it drove right past Merrion Square to return and we got
a bonus look at the Oscar Wilde statue there.
Today we thought to walk since we were off on the first
shuttle bus and as it was Sunday either things weren’t open or didn’t open
until afternoon. The shuttle drop was on Kildare Street which was convenient
for us as it was the first place we stayed the first time we were here. We
walked S to St. Stephen’s Green and saw cygnets! Bonus. We walked down Grafton
Street where the first thing I spied (since I had forgotten my gloves and ear
muff!) was a Butler’s Chocolate Café. The other day when we were trying to
remember countries where we had had submarino-type hot chocolates I had completely
forgotten buying Butler’s Hot Chocolates in Ireland! We went in and bought a
box of 10 Hot Chocolate disks and a hot chocolate to go. It was delicious! I
went in a souvenir shop and bought a Dublin patch to match my Belfast patch. We
thought about seeing instead St. Patrick’s Cathedral but realized it was Sunday
morning and that wouldn’t work. We found another, larger Butler’s Chocolate
Café on the way to Dublin Castle and it had seats inside where you could have
had a real cup and a sit down out of the wind. Oh, well. I was just happy the
sun was shining. Clay picked today to leave the umbrellas in the cabin. You can
probably guess how this story ends…
We got to Dublin Castle about 11:20am. The ticket office
opens on Sundays at noon. The tourism guy knew it would be opened today and not
tomorrow, but didn’t warn us about the noon opening. We found the door where
the ticket office was and I stood in front of it. People would come up and
brush me aside or try to get in front of me, but I’d just stand there and tell
them the office opens at noon. The first employee to arrive about 20 minutes
early, told me that they don’t open until noon and I told her, OK I’ll be here.
Clay was annoyed but as I told him, go sit down and come back. I’ll stay. This
is what I want to do today. A guided tour. If I leave and come back at 10 of
noon there will be a mob scene. It pretty much was. Eventually as the later
arrivals came, they did join the back of the line, but not at first. We got in
first and got our tickets. They were 15 Euros for the 2 of us. When I got back
to the meeting point, the first person I overheard talking said that the couple
behind her were the last 2 to get tickets for the 12:15pm guided tour. The tour
lasted 1 hour and 10 minutes and I enjoyed it. It gave a good history of Dublin
and Ireland. Not to mention it is still a functioning government complex. We
walked back by a different route to look for 2 pubs that the tourism guy had
told Clay were good places for a bite and a pint. We found The Porter House
first and went in. Clay had a half dozen huge local oysters on the half shell
with a Porter Red Ale that is brewed for them. He also had a very hearty bowl
of chicken noodle soup with something like McCorkle’s brown bread. I had
bangers & mash with Yorkshire Pudding. The Porter House did not serve
Guinness, so now we had a problem. It started pouring rain as we were walking
back. We ducked into a few stores but eventually we just had to bite the bullet
and buy umbrellas. It was probably the most expensive store we were in by the
time that happened. I was willing to get
the shuttle back now or to go up the street to the Museum of Ireland which did
not open until 2pm on Sunday. Clay decided he wanted to get on the shuttle. We
walked up and got in line. It looked like at least 100 people were in front of
us and I guess that was about right because those double decker buses held at
least 70 people. We got left about 20 from the front of the line. The buses at
that point were running every 30 minutes. I suggested going back to the Blarney
Inn that we had stayed over before and he could have his Guinness. We did since
it was raining again. He had his Guinness and we shared a warm brownie with
chocolate ice cream. It was good. We went back and got in line again an hour
later. This time there was a woman with a sign policing the line and keeping
people from cutting the line, or she was trying. She was keeping count. When I
got at the back of the line she told me I was 42, when I started to board the
bus I was 49. Go figure. Anyway, over 70 people fit on the bus, but there were
staff/crew in line an hour earlier and they still didn’t make it on this bus.
We saw them unload out of a packed taxi van as the bus arrived at the ship and
they were running. I am guessing that the over 1 hour they waited to not get on
a shuttle bus made them late back for their shifts.
We got a phone call shortly after returning. It was the 5th
floor concierge. He was calling us because we are cruising back to back cruises
and there is a Code Red condition onboard right now with the GI outbreak. He
said that the CDC rules required all passengers to disembark the ship no later
than 9am for the special deep cleaning between cruises. I asked him if he meant
we had to actually pack up and fully disembark. Mercifully, the answer was no.
He just meant we had to get off and leave the ship and not return before noon
at the earliest. He said he wasn’t actually sure they would be able to allow us
back onboard at noon, but that was the earliest the rules allowed us and that
only because we were continuing cruisers. I stopped him and told him that we
had plans to leave early and spend the day going to Stonehenge and we would be
gone until late in the day and he was very relieved.
We spent some time looking over the maps we had been given
today to see about what to do tomorrow. The bank holiday and hopefully miss the
race area. The guy on the bus outbound had handed me what turned out to be a
different map when I boarded. Since I already had a marked up map and I didn’t
realize his really was a different map, I just stuck it in my purse. Anyway, I
was looking at the back of it and it was covered with box ads. A yellow box was
for Butler’s Chocolate Experience which was an enhanced hands-on factory tour! How
did we not hear about Butler’s in Dublin the first time we were here? We didn’t
hear about Butler’s at all until near the end of a 2-week tour of Ireland and
didn’t know they were in Dublin. So, we weren’t sure how to get there so Clay
went looking for a tourism rep. He wound up back out the trailer. The same man
looked at the map with the ad that Clay took with him and scratched his head.
He said he lived right by that Clonshaugh Business Park that the ad listed as
the address and that he had no idea there was a chocolate factory there or that
it was where Butler’s was located. He checked online with his phone and
confirmed. He was surprised and only warned it would be expensive, perhaps $100
roundtrip taxi. Clay forgot the map and left it with him. So we lost one of the
few resources we had. Clay tried to book tickets online since we remember the
ad said by appointment only. He could book for 10am or noon tomorrow, but when
he reached the payment screen there were T&Cs and conditions and one was
that the factory was not in production on bank holidays. I had argued that the
price of the tickets and cab fare would not be any more money than O was
charging for walks you could do alone and we wanted to do this, or that it
wasn’t more than the lost Holyhead excursion. But, that was before I learned
the factory would not be in production. I don’t want to tour a factory that is
NOT producing chocolate! So, we’re back to square one. We have no plans again.
We could go inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral but neither of us really seem to
care about doing it. I found the National Leprechaun Museum on the map. I am
not sure that is PC. Unfortunately, their website is not mobile-device
compatible and with the Internet shutdown all we have is Clay’s phone. The
tourism people have left for the day so we will start out from zero again
tomorrow.
What is up with all the bank holidays? This is our 3rd in 4
weeks, right? One in Canada, one in St. Pierre, France and now one in Ireland
tomorrow. What are the odds? You have to wonder if the decision makers knew
about this when they decided to extend our stay here. Certainly, when Clay
asked the destinations desk person, it was the first they had heard of it. Poor
planning.
In other news, tonight there was a DVD order form on our
bed. I don’t think I had mentioned this before. We did get one of these at the
end of the last cruise in Montreal too. Evidently, Oceania produces a DVD of
cruise memories on every cruise. This is not unusual. RSSC did this. RSSC provided
the disk to disembarking guests at no charge. When we ended our Alaskan Dream
cruise, they gave every disembarking passenger a complimentary DVD. I am pretty
sure that also happened on Le Boreal to Antarctica. It may have happened on
other lines as well. Oceania is charging $40 for their DVD.
There is a new performer onboard tonight. Craig Owen,
virtuoso violinist. We will not attend. There is another late night cabaret
tonight with Edward Garth and we will not attend. I will hope for a good
night’s sleep since we are docked. It would be nice if there were some upside
to this change in plans. Since there is no Internet for 2 days and nights, I
will get this posted as soon as I can after that!
