The Dubliners

So we haven't been so good about blogging on Dublin... It's been busy. Mark's started at work, of course, and the first wee while for me was spent treading the streets of Dublin trying to find a place to live. It was a good way to get to know the city actually, where you'd want to live, where you wouldn't, where the grocery stores are etc. We eventually found a really beautiful apartment which was ready to move into on the day our short-term apartment had to be vacated. Win win.

So, now we are all set up (apart from the broadband... which may take up to 25 working days...!) in our lovely inner-city apartment. We have the entire second floor of a Georgian apartment building, with spare room. Guests welcome. Although we are booked up for the next couple of weeks.

In between the flathunting, establishment of personal infrastructure (which mostly involves endless tussles with Vodafone) and the all-important search for a Capitol in our new capital, we have managed to see a bit of Dublin. We're trying to keep some of the really good stuff for later, when we have visitors (Trinity College, Guinness Storehouse). One major touristic highlight (although it's not really a tourist attraction, more of a local Dublin kiddies' attraction) is the Natural History Museum, known in local parlance as The Dead Zoo. It's a museum of a museum, if you can imagine that. Basically, imagine what an exotic animal museum would have looked like in the 1800s - thousands of stuffed and mounted animals, complete with little plaques telling you who shot it and where. Then imagine what it would look like if it were in Harry Potter. A massive, massive room, just filled with taxidermied animals (not very PC, but these animals were victims of the last century and surely it's worse for them to have died in vain?). It's actually four levels tall - with mounted animal heads the whole way up - kind of like what the Otago Museum Animal Attic looked like when I was little, before they modernised it, except it's about fifty times bigger. It sounds awful, but it is truly one of the most incredible rooms I have ever walked into - and they have both an aye-aye and a mouse lemur. I wish that I was still four years old, because I can only imagine how much greater the effect would be if you were three feet tall and looking up at it. There was a gaggle of tiny boy scouts marching around when we were there - I looked at what one of them was writing on his work-sheet. It said 'It is really really cool.' I concurred. And even better, it's free entry and about one minute's walk from our house.

We also visited the Taioseach's (Prime Minister's) office and Cabinet room. A really great (also free) tour of the government buildings (see below), where you actually get to go into Enda Kenny's actual office. I was concerned about the stress for poor Enda Kenny having to tidy away all of his papers every Friday before public tours on a Saturday, but the Irish government is apparently an award winner for being an e-government... yup, pretty much paperless. I had some concerns about security, but was assured by our tour guide that it is all very safe. It was an excellent tour - we're very impressed by Irish tour guides. It seems to us that every tour guide must be an actual historian, they give great detailed, historical fact-packed tours (just the way we like them) and they seem to be able to respond to pretty much everything you ask them. For example, after an absolutely brilliant tour around Dublin Castle from Daragh, our very able tour guide, I cornered him to ask him about women's rights in Ireland during the War of Independence and the establishment of the Republic afterwards. He was off and away - he pretty much wrote me a thesis right there and then. You get the feeling the tour guides live for those left-field questions so they can really flex their history muscles. 

Peter, our tour guide at Kilmainham Jail, was no different. Kilmainham Jail, along with the Dead Zoo, has probably been one of our two touristic highlights so far. Kilmainhaim Jail was built in the 1860s and operated through until 1910, and then was used off and on during the 1910s and early 1920s to house, and execute, Republican activists. Pretty much all of the big names in the struggle for Irish independence have found themselves here, including Patrick Pearse, Robert Emmet and (my personal favourite) the kick-ass Countess Markiewicz. Sadly, most of them were also executed here. Many Irish people, including children as young as 5, found themselves here during the Great Famine of 1845-1850, as poverty drove people to petty crime just to try and survive. It's a pretty dreary and cold place, but the 'New Wing', added in the 1890s (I think), is strangely pretty. It has a massive glass roof (so the prisoners could look to God to put them on a path away from their criminal ways) and iron cage work everywhere - a huge open space with cells on the sides so that prisoners could be easily viewed. It's been well preserved and is pretty much exactly as most prisons of the era would have looked, and as a result has been used in many movies, including the original Italian Job as well as In The Name of The Father. 

Also worthy of an honourable mention is Dublinia - the Museum of Dublin's Viking and Medieval history. You get to try on a chainmail hat.

Of course, sightseeing isn't just about tourist spots when you're trying to set up a new life in a place you've never been before. Much of my time is spent hunting out the best supermarket for good deals (Dunnes on Henry Street), the best place to buy those little things you need for a new house, like teatowels (Penney's, also on Henry Street), finding the local movie theatre and trying to find a good coffee (that is probably a whole post all on its own).

It has started getting dark early now - on Sunday evening we were wandering home at 4:30pm. It was already dark, but the weather has been fairly mild. A warm jacket and a scarf and you're fine. The Christmas lights are up, and in the middle of town, with the wee windy streets and pretty old-fashioned frontages, it's  a really beautiful walk. We may feel differently when the temperature plummets and the, as yet, absent Irish rain starts up.

George

Around 200 years ago a chap called George really made his mark on Dublin. He must have been a builder or something, cos a bunch of the houses are "Georgian."

The most distinguishing feature of George's style is the doorways - each is quite unique. This is our one.

The View

Things you don't see at home

Taken at the bus depot next to our apartment.

I guess for when bus drivers find themselves in times of trouble.

The Magic Kingdom(s)

Up and at 'em, on the resort bus to the Magic Kingdom at 7am. This involved getting up at 6am for an energy-packed breakfast so we could attack the parks with a clear focus and military precision. Our trip to Disneyland LA last year was a great success due to our strategic approach to the day, and efficient use of fast passes and power naps. We were hoping to repeat this success this year. We'd bought a Park Hopper multiple park pass, as we wanted to get into the Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom (a fabulous animal-centric park, including some zoo action). The Animal Kingdom was the main attraction for us, but it was only open from 9 til 5, whereas the Magic Kingdom had 'Magic Hours' (official title, I didn't make that up) from 8am until 7pm. We hit the Magic Kingdom for an hour then left to take the Disney 'public' transport to the Animal Kingdom. 

It turned out the Animal Kingdom was kind of the place to be. For everyone. Thousands and thousands of them. Mostly small screaming children. But it was really, really awesome. The park is split into continents mostly (as well as Dinoland) and does its usual Disney-cute interpretation of Asia, Africa etc. While it is a very sanitised and commercial interpretation, like any day at Disneyland, you can't help but be charmed by it and it's so well done. We capitalised well on our fast passes and did all major rides, some twice. The best rides were probably Expedition Everest (not just because of the odd picture of Sir Edmund Hilary around the place getting me all patriotic) and the new Dinosaur ride (since we do love dinosaurs so much). 

We also loved the Safari trip, which is kind of like the Jungle ride at Disneyland, except the animals are real, and really beautiful - elephants, lions, cheetahs, rhinos, crocodiles, hippos, gazelles, giraffes, ummmm and heaps and heaps more. The zoo areas were set up to be un-zoo-like... obviously the fiction for the kids is that you really are in Asia/Africa/Dinoland. So, for example, the Tiger enclosure is rambling and massive and set up to make it look as if the tigers have taken over an old hunting lodge and you're in their space. 

The animal highlight was probably the gorillas - I've never seen gorillas live before. Their enclosure was really big, and there were two pretty much spooning right next to the glass. They weren't fully grown yet, still bigger than humans but not too much and so unbelievably human-like. They were all cuddled up and sleeping and every now and then an insect would land on one's face and it would swat it away in exactly the same way we would. We were super impressed with these two and the ones romping around them - incredible muscle and strength. Then we saw the Silverback. It was like seeing an unbelievably hairy, grey Incredible Hulk. He was HUGE. HUGE. And really really chilled out. Just wandering around the enclosure like he'd lost his glasses or something. 

The only slight downer was the Kali River Rapids ride. We were kind of chilled about it as it looked exactly like the California River Rapids we'd done at LA Disney last year. You get a bit wet, but the ride is quite long and well worth it. Well, Kali river rapids was not. The ride seemed a whole heap shorter than its mate in LA - and what was worse is that one person on the ride got drenched. Absolutely drenched. More drenched than you'd get standing in the shower. And of course that one person was me. It took me hours to dry out. I went into the bathroom and took off my skirt (a nice heavy absorbent cotton) and ringed it into the toilet and half a bucket's worth of water came out. Not happy. I wouldn't have cared if the ride had been awesome, but it was not. I felt like a small child who'd wet its pants, as mine took about five hours to dry. Unfortunately, later back at Splash Mountain the same thing happened to Mark, but of course he's got much more good grace than I do.

Anyway, after we'd bled the Animal Kingdom dry, we headed back to the Magic Kingdom to do the favourites - Pirates of the Caribbean, It's a Small World, Big Thunder Railroad, Splash Mountain, the Jungle Cruise (my favourite) as well as the American Presidents presentation ('now with President Obama!'), which I'd never done before. It was actually really lovely - kind of like an animated Madame Tussaud's of robot US Presidents - Abe Lincoln does the Gettysburg address and George Washington does a wee monologue. The nicest bit is at the end where all of them are on stage, and each has their name announced and acknowledges the crowd - they all move to look at the President being announced, some nod their heads or acknowledge others in some way. It's really well done. Then Obama speaks and everyone listens politely. 

Come 7pm, the Magic Kingdom was changing the guard - all normal pass holders had to get out for Mickey's Halloween party that was taking over the park for the night. People in fancy dress were everywhere - mostly adults, and most dressed as pirates. We got on the Big Thunder Railroad with Mr and Mrs Incredible and their Incredible kids. There was a disturbing number of really flammable looking little princesses - courtesy of the Bibbedy Bobbidy Boutique at Disneyland where, for a fee, your child (I only saw daughters do it though) can be princessified and then pose, rather like Jon-Benet Ramsey, for a photoshoot in front of the Disney Castle. The Pirates League offers piratification as an alternative. That looked much more fun. 

We headed to Disney's Hollywood Studios park, which had Magic Hours until 9pm. We managed to do the Star Tours ride (Star Wars 3D runaway space shuttle trip - good fun) and then Aerosmith's Rockin' Roller Coaster - which Mark was very excited about as it is the only proper rollercoaster at the park and actually goes upside down. We queued for about fifty minutes, did the ride just before 9 and then got the bus back to our hotel room, in time to pack, sleep and wake up bright and early to face the end of our holiday and the beginning of the Dublin Chapter.

Space Monkey

By the time we left the Kennedy Space Center we had been bombarded with literally hundreds of acronyms. I managed to screw up the first one, by asking for two tickets to KFC.

The Kennedy Space Center is home to most of the important NASA stuff with the exception of Mission Control which for political reasons is located in Houston at Lyndon B Johnson (aka Kennedy's Texan Vice President) Space Center. Cape Canaveral is apparently a really sweet place to blast rockets into space because it's unpopulated, flat and right next to the ocean meaning that there's plenty of options for aborted landings.

The US ended its shuttle program earlier in the year and a bunch of NASA types are being laid off (and contracted back at higher rates of course... remember this is the public sector), but there was still plenty to see. A bus tour took us around all the important sites, starting with a view of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Base (not part of NASA, but where all the Gemini and Mercury missions departed from).

The highlight of the tour was a trip to the Vehicle Assembly Building (above) where the shuttles were prepared for launch by dangling them from the ceiling and strapping them to big cans of fuel. The building is deceptively large - currently it's the largest single story building in the world, and when it was built was the largest building by volume in the world. For perspective, the blue area on the flag is the size of a basketball court and the stripes are each the width of a road lane. Basically, it's huge. Tours have only just started going to the building this month, our visit was part of a "soft launch" (pun probably intended) of the new route. Inside we were shepherded around by security guards to see a real live space shuttle - Endeavour.

The shuttles are being prepared for their next launch, which will see them strapped to the top of a 747. Destination: museums in LA and Washington DC. In the good old days, they would have left under their  own steam from the pad below. Again, it looks little and far away, but this thing was massive. The tower on the right was filled with water which was dumped onto the pad seconds prior to take off to dampen the sound. Nearby we saw alligators, turtles, and a manatee cruising about the swamp.

The last stop on the tour was the Saturn V rocket exhibition - a spare Apollo era rocket which is huge and impressive, but we had already seen its twin in Houston last year. Back to the visitor centre and around the various memorabilia exhibits - space suits, boots, bits of moon, launch control, etc.

And finally, a personal tour of the "rocket garden" from a very enthusiastic and knowledgeable chap who told us about the various instances of reckless disregard for safety that eventually led to Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. The best story involved the red tipped rocked in the distance below, sent into space with a chimp called Ham aboard. The mission was a success with Ham pressing a couple of levers before splashing down into the ocean to be rescued by boat later that day. Unfortunately, the system used to reward and punish Ham for good or bad behaviour malfunctioned and he received numerous electric shocks to his feet for doing nothing. Our guide explained that the capsule was about to sink when it was finally picked up and happily declared that "we saved his life". Yeah... that's exactly what you did.

We finished the day with a short drive to Disneyworld near Orlando. We stayed in a Disney hotel, right  in the thick of it, and spent the evening at Disney's version of an Irish pub, preparing our game plan for the next day.

Oh the huge manatee!

We meandered our way up the Keys, starting with a search for Key Deer on the lower keys. Key Deer are tiny, greyhound-sized deer that are found only on the Florida Keys. They are cute, curious and endangered. The numbers of Key Deer left are disputed, it's somewhere between 1,000 and 2,500. Which is very low, when you consider over 100 are killed every year as a result of collisions with cars, but is a hell of a lot better than in the 1950s when the numbers sank to below 100. We spent about an hour driving (really, really) slowly around the Keys' backstreets (which is any street other than the highway) searching for Key Deer - we saw four, as well as an alligator, and lots of lizards.

We stopped for lunch at a road-side diner, staffed by grandma-aged ladies who knew how to make a burger, they called us honey and kept the root beer coming.

Continuing up the Keys, we stopped at the Theatre of the Sea, for the moment I'd been waiting for - swimming with dolphins. After a half hour black-board type session on what to do and what not to do when interacting with dolphins, they let us in the lagoon with the dolphins. Mark and I were in a group with a wee local girl, so there were two dolphins, Kona and Sherry, and three humans. We got to spend about 45 minutes with them in the water. It was fabulous - they followed us around the pool swimming, we dived, the followed us, we went around a corner they followed us gently bumping against us and squeaking at each other under the water. The highlight was probably the dorsal tow, where two of them pulled me across the pool by their dorsal fins.

We finished the night at the rustic marina bar at our hotel, looking out over the boats. The next day was a bit of unfortunate write-off. We went to the John Pennekamp State Park - one of very few parks which are located mostly underwater. There is a protected coral reef which is home for swathes of sealife, as well as the wider park which is home to many other animals including alligators and crocodiles. Unfortunately, the boat trip out to the reef provided seasickness pills. As most of you know, I get really bad motion-sickness. So I took the pill. 

Unfortunately one of the side-effects was drowsiness. So I didn't really see much, my eyes kept shutting. Mark tells me it was quite good. I was wiped out for most of the day (the effects are just starting to kick in, in the photo above) - we went back to the hotel in the late afternoon and I slept for two hours. Some of that was pool-side so Mark could have a swim, but I didn't really wake up until 8pm. So it took about 7 hours out of the day. So much for seeing lots of Key Largo!

We were up early the next day to start our trip towards Orlando. We had hoped to drop into Key Biscayne National Park, but unfortunately it wasn't open on Mondays. This was particularly disappointing, as we'd heard that Key Biscayne was our best chance to see a manatee in the wild. So the helpful park ranger sent us in the direction of the Miami Seaquarium, where we'd at least get to see a manatee, even if it was in captivity. So we were back to negotiating the toll roads and highways around Miami. I'm pleased to say that in spite of everything, we made it to the Seaquarium with no damage done to Dick Cheney, or our relationship. 

The Seaquarium was pretty cool. We saw a killer whale (a first for both of us) called Lolita. Her trainer has the coolest job, swimming around with a killer whale and riding about on her (although subsequent research shows Lolita has a checkered history in terms of dangerous behaviour towards trainers). We were a little bit concerned about the size of Lolita's tank, and the fact that she didn't seem to enjoy her job quite as much as the dolphins seem to. 

We saw a couple of dolphins shows, including one on the actual set of the Flipper TV show (for those of you that can remember that show, it was a hit in our household) with one of the actual Flipper dolphins. The did some awesome tricks, and there was a very cute wee baby dolphin, called Squirt, who was getting a bit of gentle training in a side pool.

The highlight though was definitely the manatees. They are the weirdest looking things I've ever seen, kind of a cross between a walrus, a whale and a really fat mermaid. There were four - all were there because the Seaquarium had taken them in after unfortunate and disabling run-ins with humans. manatees have no natural predators, the only immediate danger to them is humans. Many are hit by boats and permanently disabled or killed. One at the Seaquarium had to have 75% of its back flipper removed (they only have one, and it usually accounts for a large percentage of their entire body) after a jet boat collided with it and mangled its flipper beyond help. Another was hit by a boat and had its back broken. Another was orphaned after its mother was killed and subsequent attempts to release her into the wild have all ended badly. As a result none of these three can ever live in the wild again, so instead they have been taken in by the Seaquarium and help out with a wee baby orphaned manatee, who will hopefully be reconditioned to the wild when she is old enough to survive on her own and fend for herself.

Back on the road for the push north. We needed to put some serious road between us and Miami, to make the drive to NASA at Cape Canaveral shorter the next day.