First day adventureres

So Dustin & I got a rambler pass to use the Dublin bus as much as we like. Thank goodness since it is raining cats & dogs here! We hopped on the bus after freshening at the hotel, making it around noon here. We had about 2 1/2 hours of sleep on our plane ride over but we want to make the most of our day. We headed out to catch the bus & sat up top in the front (double decker bus) right in front & it felt like we were going to hit all of the massive trees the driver down below was barreling us into! We met a nice proper Irish lady who happened to be headed to the same area we had decided upon (Grafton street) and invited us to follow her & she would show us a few of her favorite places. I was surprised at how packed the streets were with a sea of umbrellas as we sloshed through the rain past very high end stores mixed with ancient pubs. After her tour we decided upon the one she mentioned would probably have some "curious old timers". McDaid's Pub. We sat at the bar & ordered our pints & chatted with the very cool bartender about the history of McDaid's he said it was 3 years older than the US itself! Nothing was allowed to be changed even by the owner, the country can "list" historic sites and this is one of them. It had the same windows, the same lighting (used to be gas & at one point was converted to electric). He pointed out that one of the highest stained glass windows was open & filthy but they knew if they tried to get up there & fix it or clean it, it would fall apart & that would be sacralige! Ha ha! Obviously my love of old & interesting was lapping it all in! He did point out (quite seriously) that the 3 Tvs were not original though! (hee hee, I thought that was cute). So 2 pints of Guiness & no lunch & we decide we have to move on when... What? Our bartender opens a trap door behind the floor & disappears underground! I asked a man what the heck was down there & he jokingly said, "go see for yourself!" I don't think he thought I would, but when I realized he was the owner I pressed & he agreed to taking me down if I was careful! There were tiny steep rickedy stairs that I headed down into a dungeon-like store room, he showed me the keg room where he explained that they used an old mattress on the floor & dropped them in down there using a street access hole! I soaked it all in & remembered the bartender had told me that the building had originally been built as a morgue & the ceilings were so tall so they could stack many caskets. It made me wonder what the underground space had been used for, but the owner had no idea... "Creepy stuff I bet! (i said)" Ha ha we both laughed. Time to move on. Next stop was Davy Byrnes. This was a fancier place though still very old. We sat next to two guys at the bar & immediately made friends. Dustin ordered fish & chips & I ordered bangers & mash! Yes we were starving but Let me say.....this food... Was amazing!!! Theses guys had more questions for us about life in the US than we could squeeze in our own questions, but one of the guys Frank told us in 1961 he & one other guy from Ireland were the best tennis players & invited to some big tennis tournament in Miami and up the east coast. He said after the tournament he was invited to the white house to receive an award from Kennedy & when he got there was instead introduced to Lyndon B. Johnson. LBJ told him that Kennedy was swimming w/ a lady that turned out to be Marilyn Monroe. Ha! Crazy, right? So they recommended a couple places to check out & our next stop was John Kehoe's. This place was too busy to make friends. Well, actualLy we did meet a nice guy waiting on his "lady friend" who was super nice, but we were peetering out & ready to head home. We stopped at a convenience type store called Spar & grabbed some sandwiches & orange juice in case we got hungry. I think we got to our hotel around 6pm which meant we had been up for 28 hours aside from our 2 1/2 hour naps on the plane! Ha ha! We took some hot baths & were asleep before 7pm! Around 3:30am we were (well ARE) wide awake! It's 5am now & we are just watching the news as I write to you & Dustin checks sports stats! The howling wind is not getting us too excited about today's adventures! Hopefully it dies down as the sun comes up, which should be soon. Sunrise here is around 5am & sets about 10pm! Can't wait to see what today's adventures will bring! I'll add pictures as I can!