Week with Kara

It's been way too long since I've blogged for real and I'm sorry for that.  I'm probably losing readers and am boring people left and right.  Ugh. Truthfully though, it's slightly difficult to blog and keep up when you are simultaneously entertaining a guest.  When I'm alone, blogging and ironing and sewing on buttons is my full time job!  When I have guests, entertaining is.  It's a hard life.  First world problems.  

Where do I even start?  My study-abroad friend Kara got here on Wednesday morning bright and early and we had a busy week together.  We had a bank holiday on Monday and Drew and I had already planned a weekend in Killarney, so she joined us.  And we just got back tonight!  Whew.

Kara got off the bus on Wednesday morning and we hit the ground running!  I basically have a loop of all the touristy hot spots and showed her those - Merrion Square, St. Stephen's Green, lunch at Sheehan's Pub for some sandwiches and soup, Grafton Street, Temple Bar, a walk along the river past Drew's office, and then home for a nap!  I forgot that she'd just gotten in and probably wasn't ready for a marathon walking session yet.  Oops.  We had a low key night at home with wine and homemade Chicken Parmesan (I'll post pics another time) and were all in bed early.  Lovely.

Kara is currently trying to finish up her Masters (woohoo!) and had a final paper that she had to complete in Dublin before she felt like she could enjoy herself.  I lounged around on Thursday morning and she busted out her paper and finished!  Masters Degree, here we come!  (Her's.  Not me.)  We wandered over to Dublin Castle and the Chester Beatty Library (which I hadn't been to) to check that out.  It was all quite beautiful and am glad we went.  Dublin Castle was built in 1204AD and served as a defensive work after the Normans invaded Ireland.  Since then, it has served as the seat of the English, then the British government, then again with the Kingdom of Ireland, then the UK, and finally was handed over to the free Irish state in 1922 to serve as a government building.  It's evidently used as a conference center now with quite impressive apartments.  The Queen stayed there, of course.  And the Chester Beatty Library is all part of Dublin Castle - an art museum and library that has an amazing collection of manuscripts, paintings, prints, drawings, and books assembled by Chester himself.  The most impressive thing we saw there was a papyrus scroll with part of the gospel of Mark written on it from 150AD.  Can you believe that?  Geez louise.  It was really an amazing museum that sparked a lot of conversation afterwards.  I'd highly recommend it.  Pics below:

Dublin Castle.

Pretty swirly window outside of the Castle courtyard.

In the Castle courtyard, they were making giant sand sculpture.  We couldn't figure out what they were but they were cool nonetheless.

I believe the artist kept describing his work to a group of people as "ephemeral".  So naturally Kara and I joked about that/described everything as that the rest of the week.

The Castle and it's courtyards.

Kara had the amazing opportunity this summer to do the Camino de Santiago (or the Walk of St. James), which is a pilgrimage route to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia (Spain), where evidently the remains of the apostle Saint James are buried.  I had actually never heard about it before she told us she was doing it this summer, but since being in Europe, I have heard SO much about this amazing journey and actually want to research it more for myself.  She walked for 12 days from France through Spain, and will finish the rest of the walk next summer most likely.  All that to say...she met a beautiful, wonderful friend named Carrie, from Dublin, who we were able to hang out with on Thursday afternoon!

Carrie, Kara, and myself

Carrie is a student at Trinity College so she took us to the Book of Kells and the Library/Long Room for free!  Woohooo.  We then sat on the cricket field at Trinity for a couple of hours, lounging in the grass and the sun, before we headed back to meet Drew for some pizza.  Lovely.

Friday...Kara decided she wanted to take a day trip to the Cliffs of Moher, so that left me to get things done around the house.  More housewifery.  And guess what??  I successfully sewed two buttons on Drew's shirt and pants!  VICTORY!  It's the little things in life.  I felt so accomplished.  And I guess it wasn't that difficult - although the mess of thread on the back of the button would suggest otherwise.  But no one has to see that.  I did some other laundry and made some phone calls and got things situated and then Drew and I went to meet up with our peeps at the Shelbourne Hotel for drinks!  I'd been wanting to go there so that worked out pretty damn well.  We had a late night dinner at Bear (Kara included after I picked her up) with everyone - DELISH - and then headed home to prepare for our trip to Killarney!

Actual COCKTAILS at the Shelbourne!  Not beer!  I couldn't believe it.

Menu and wine at Bear.

My new gals: Autumn, Missy, Kara, and me.

I have 20 more posts about our long, stressful, beautiful, and eventful weekend alone but I will post tomorrow after my guest leaves and I have more time.  And hopefully my blogs will begin to have more content than this boring day to day business - "first we did this, then we did that, and then we went here, and then we went there."  I'm boring myself.  Ah well.  Love you all.