This all started after we tried to convince Megan's parents to travel with us as part of our Honeymoon; they declined on the basis that it was our honeymoon, but Megan couldn’t drop the idea of coordinating an international family trip. When we were on a cruise in Australia, one of our fellow travelers suggested buying them plane tickets and not giving her mom a chance to come up with other excuses to try to avoid traveling with us (maybe Megan should have taken the hint). And that’s what we did - as a gift from us, Megan's brother and dad we forced her mom to travel to a different country.
We were able to get perfectly coordinating flights - all 3 parties would meet in Toronto and travel together on the long leg to Dublin. After our flight from SFO to Toronto was delayed for an hour leaving us only 50 minutes to make it through customs and get to our gate we were quite worried since the car and hotel were all in our name. There was some frantic emailing of itineraries and confirmations before we took off and luckily there was cell reception in Toronto (granted at $15 a megabyte and .79 cents a minute) so we were able to get a hold of people and have them get food and hold the plane for us if necessary. We managed to just make the flight after an idiot trip though customs that was needlessly complicated and slow. After meeting up with Mark and Megan's parents we immediately boarded the flight to Dublin. We took a fairly sleepless (for me) 8 hour flight and then wham! it was go time.
Irish customs is the easiest ever - no security or anything. They were basically like “Bring whatever you want into our country, we don’t give a shit. In fact, we welcome you with open arms just how you are”.
We got our rental car (manual enormous SUV and the wrong side of the road - booyah. Megan's family was more stressed about it than I was.) we had loaded up our GPS with Ireland maps and Megan has taken the time to pre-program all our destinations so all we had to do is punch in the B&B and after only a few mishaps with the left side of the road we were there. The best one was when I decided to 3 pt turn in front of the hotel and got stuck in the middle of the road when I couldn't figure out how to put it into reverse; turns out the stick has a little pull switch to reverse. Woohoo!
We dropped off our bags and got some suggestions and walked into down town Dublin. Dublin is a pretty small city and we easily got to the St Stephens Green area which is a mini central park and centrally located around a lot of bars and shops. We stopped to get lunch at Bruxelless, a pub which is just off the main strip in the St Stephens Green area (the general touristy downtown part of Dublin). I had coddle which was a cream based sausage and bacon soup (no cuttlefish included in the soup, despite that Megan wanted it to). The soup was okay and I got my first taste of Irish Guinness and sampled some soda bread. I'm a big fan of both. Regardless, it seemed appropriate to have our first official meal in Ireland at a pub.
On the way to the pub we had seen two city tour options: a hop on hop off bus around Dublin or a water/land car/boat that was Viking themed. They wore viking hats and yelled aaaargh to scare people at intersections. Sadly we picked the red non Viking bus (but Megan still randomly yelled ARRRRGH whenever possible). We took it up to the Kilmainham Gaol on the west side of Dublin and we got a good tour guide who talked us through a lot of history and took us through the very impressive jail. Unfortunately we were quite tired and jet lagged but not quite as bad as Perth when I fell asleep during the candlelight jail tour. [In Perth, it was a ghost tour and they had a bunch of people trying to scare you. They actually drop a body off the roof and it falls down to the floor right above you. We were so tired then that we didn’t even flinch.] I did however pass out once we hit the red bus again (see pictures). 
we got off and started back towards the hotel and along the way took a detour by O'Donoghue's bar, which was a variant of Megan's families namesake. After a drink there and friendly chat with another local grabbing a pint (check off Irish stereotype #1 - chatting up a friendly local at the pub), we headed back to our hotel and promptly passed out for a few hours - worst idea ever. It delayed my adaptation to Ireland time at least a few days (Megan disagrees and enjoyed the nap).
We woke up and all showered and decided to head out to dinner. we had gotten some suggestions from the woman who checked us in at the B&B and we headed into Temple Bar area (super hip hangout location of tourists and locals) to find some food. Our first choice, Fallon and Byrne, was full (B&B lady said they don’t take reservations but they do) but on that same street we found an Italian restaurant on the same street with only a thirty minute wait named Boulevard Cafe.
We got a bottle of wine at the nearby wine bar, Olesya’s Wine Bar and Bistro, while waiting and ventured back in for a delicious Italian meal before heading home. The staff at the restaurant were super friendly and we felt really welcomed.
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