In Dublin For Good Friday

Lisa and I are safe in a hostel in Dublin for the next three nights. Between my last post and today, we spent three nights in Paris, taking the Metro (subway) and visiting the Louvre and Notre Dame the night before Palm Sunday and found a mass in progress. The service was beautiful, even though there were hundreds of tourist shuffling through the catedral during the mass.

On Sunday morning, we attended mass in a small Catholic church across the street from our hostel. It was all in French. I am still carrying around the branch they had available for those filing into the service.

We took a train to Mannheim, another train to Heidelburg, and then a bus to our hostel in Heidelburg. We found access to the Internet in Heidelburg, but had to spend our time making travel arrangements and dealing with a German keyboard. Heidelburg was pretty and the weather was great. We rented a car in Heidelburg and drove out to the little village of Berwangen, where my great, great grandfather, Johann Georg Mayer had been born and was christened in 1826. We met a wonderful man and his mother-in-law. He has been watching a language program weekly to learn English. Between his English and my German we communicated fairly well. They made lunch for us -- and the dish turned out to be cow's stomach!

We drove from Berwangen to a little town on the Mosel River called Zell, where we had an apartment reserved. While in Zell we drove up to the Burg Eltz, a castle belonging in the Eltz family. Back at the apartment, the owner, who also had a wine cellar/winery, gave us a quick, personal tour. The next morning we drove to the Frankfurt Hahn Airport and flew to Dublin.

Once in Dublin, yesterday midday, we took a train to Cork where we found a B&B with a nice little bedroom for the two of us. This morning we took a bus to Blarney to see the Blarney Castle and kiss the Blarney Stone. We took the bus back to Cork, walked around some and returned to get our things from the York House B&B, and headed back to the train station. On the return ride we saw lots of Irish countryside -- nice and green. The weather was both sunny and drizzly.

Back in Dublin this afternoon, we walked to another hostel, which Kevin had booked for us. We arrived at about 7:00, moved our stuff into our room and headed out to find dinner. Lots of places were closed because they aren't allowed to serve alcohol on Good Friday, but there were lots of people looking. Instead of eating Irish food, we found an Italian restaurant, but at least we had a table.

Tomorrow we plan to take a ride on an on-and-off Dublin bus to see what all is here.