Spring in Dublin

Enough negativity and panic talk - it's time to be positive!  It's officially spring here in Dublin and we have a lot to look forward to in the next 2 months - we/I just gotta take it week by week.

This weekend we're going to Istanbul!  I'm both excited and slightly nervous visiting a muslim country for the first time but I think it'll be awesome.  After we get back, Drew's cousins get here!  That means I'll get to have not just one, but THREE hairy Solomon men in my apartment.  Woohoo!  (I already feel bad for my cleaning lady.)  The following week, Drew's mom is coming for a couple of days!  And then the week after that, one of my high school friends (my bro's age) and her brother are coming for a couple of days!  And then we have a wedding in San Francisco at the end of May, then a week here, and then we're off on the O'Solomon Farewell Tour of Europe!  We're hitting up the Amalfi Coast in Italy for a week (with Evan and Elise!), Greece for a week, and then Northern Spain up into Southern France for a week.  We're super excited about that.  And then we'll probably leave Dubs for good sometime during the first week of July.  So...it'll be a busy couple of months!

And like I said, spring is here!  I've been going on long walks during the day and try to capture the pretty sights I see on my shitty iPhone camera with not much success.  But I'm posting them anyway!  And I'm using a great deal of exclamation points in this post to mark my decidedly positive attitude!  Or something!

I went to Phoenix Park across town one day when it was really pretty out to walk and read.  Figured it might be one of my last times to go there so I spent about 3 hours there wandering around!

This is from another walk along the coast - I have about a million pictures of this beach and these two towers but I can't resist.

Sitting on the River Liffey outside Drew's office.

Walking through a canopy of trees in Herbert Park.

A stroll along the canal with the bench statue of Patrick Kavanaugh.

More pretty purple trees in Herbert Park.

The canal right by our house!

Merrion Square!  I've been going here to read in the afternoons like I did when we first got here and it's just delightful.

More Merrion Square.

This past Sunday, we took a 25-minute train trip to the coastal town of Dalkey for lunch and some exploring.  Bono lives here and we went to his favorite pubs but didn't see him.  Dangit!

Smooches in front of Dalkey Island.

Then we went to Merrion Square to read (Drew's a reader now!  I had to capture this on film or else people not really believe it) and a nap in the sun.

It's sunny out again so I'm going to wander out and see what else I can find.   See ya!

Panic

Enough travel talk.  I'm ready to write about the real issues.  We are staring down the barrel of 1 more month here in Ireland, followed by another month of European travel, followed by our impending move home in early July.  And I'm panicked.

I keep telling myself that I am going to have a positive attitude about moving home and I will stop grumbling about it to Drew - but those are mostly just words, as I literally haven't done a damn thing to try to be positive about the move.

I realize this sounds dramatic, but I feel like....my life is coming to an end.  I feel like before I came here, my life in Dallas was mediocre and blah.  Of course I was happy, I had lots of my high school friends there and a good job, but I didn't really have much 'going on' in my life.

(Note: this is specific to MY life in Dallas.  Not people who live in Dallas.  MY LIFE ONLY.)

But living in Dublin is different.  Even though I'm not working and still technically have a 'blah' life here, it's still...different.  And better.  I also feel like it will feel as though our time here in Dublin never happened.  We'll go back to our regular lives in Dallas and Dublin will be a distant dream-like memory that maybe never existed.  When I studied abroad with 3 of my best friends in college, we grew up and changed - but when we came back to Dallas/Austin, it literally seemed like we never lived in Spain, getting back to the same old college junk from before.  I'm afraid we'll come back to Dallas and be the same people we've always been there, even though...we're not.  I want some things to be different.  (What exactly, I'm not sure.)

I also feel like nothing in my life ever made me different or unique.  But you know what DOES make me a little different and unique?  Living in Dublin with my husband and getting to travel Europe!  I'm living my dream!  And now the dream is over.

This post just took a turn for the dramatic, negative and hopeless and I need a 'tude change STAT!

My brother suggested I make a list of everything I love about living in Dublin and try to see if I can incorporate some of those things back into my Dallas life.  I suspect that this will be impossible, because the things I love about living in Dublin are things that can't be changed or incorporated into Dallas.  But in the spirit of trying to make an effort, I'll give it a whirl:

It would appear that there's more to look forward to in Dallas than I thought, despite what I've been telling myself.  And the good news is that since I made the list this weekend, I've already been thinking of other random things about Dallas that I love and feeling GENUINE excitement!  So that's a good sign.  I've read so many articles on the power of positive thinking and I think it can have a pretty great effect on you if you let it.  And if you actually think positively.  Dangit!

Alright, that's it.  Just a little venting/talking it out/bloggin it out.  Now I'm off to bed to think POSITIVELY about POSITIVE things!

St. Andrews

Drew got to cross a pretty big bucket list item off this past week when we went to St. Andrews for a 5-day weekend!  He and his friend John (and wife Natalie, our pals from UT who live in Amsterdam) have been planning this trip since last September so it's about damn time it got here!

So what makes St. Andrew so famous for golf?  According to Wikipedia, who can always explain it better than I can, it's "known worldwide as the 'home of golf'.  This is in part because the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, founded in 1754, exercises legislative authority over the game worldwide (except in the US and Mexico), and also because the famous links is the most frequent venue for The Open Championship, the oldest of golf's four major championships."  So that means that golf was basically developed here and The British Open is played here every 5 years or so.

The guys played the New Course, the Old Course, and a course called Kingsbarns.   A lot of people have asked how you get on to play the Old Course, and there are several ways evidently.  You can show up and hope that there's a tee time available (depending on the time of year, you may have to get there at 4am), you can enter the Ballot, which is drawn 48 hours in advance, OR you can enter the lottery every September, select some dates you can go throughout the year, and hope they give you a time.  You can click here for more information about booking a time.

Our days consisted of the guys leaving for golf, the girls hanging out at the house we rented with the baby, going on a walk, having a snack, meeting the guys at a pub, eating lunch, more pub time, home to clean up, then out to more pubs and dinner.  It was lovely.  Anyway, here are some pics!

The tiny ass tin can of death that we flew over on.  ANXIETY.  

We walked around the course and the club on our first day to get a lay of the land.  

We did Afternoon Tea at the Fairmont Hotel while the guys played the New Course!

Tea times and tee times.
(Not sure if I mentioned it but Natalie's sister Courtney and her fiance Mark joined us from Houston.)

Friday - Old Course day!!  Drew's warming up.

Maybe the best part of the day: the guys got knowledgable, friendly, Scottish caddies that were a really good time.  Drew's was very handsy and was constantly patting him on the back and putting his arm around him.  I loved it.

Drew and cutie Paul!

John, Nat, and their little baby Carter tucked away in her North Face :)

Now on the tee from the USA...Drew Solomon!
(He said he was shaking and really nervous hitting that first drive, because there are so many people there watching the guys tee off and come in on 18.  Sounds nerve wracking to me!

We walked with the guys for the first 2-3 holes and then I cut over on the beach for some Me time.

And then I sat on a rock and watched the tide come in.
#deepthoughts

St. Andrews is also the home to the ruins of what was the largest cathedral in Scotland: the St. Andrews Cathedral.

It was built in 1158!  That's whack.

There's also a huge gorgeous cemetery on the grounds.  

There are also some gorgeous ruins of St. Andrews Castle, evidently built between 1189 and 1202.  

If you keep going down this street the castle is on, you basically walk through St. Andrews University - really old, really gorgeous, and the alma mater of Will and Kate!!  We got some good stories from the cab drivers about them.

Picture on the Swilcan Bridge, a tiny but important cultural icon for the course!

The bros and their caddies.  The one on Drew's right is the most senior caddie and has been there since 1967!  He also happens to caddie for Bill Clinton when he's in town.  

Drew's takeaway from the trip: The Old Course was everything I hoped it would be.  If anything, it's made me realize that I need an educated caddie on every course I play for the rest of my life - particularly an inappropriate wise-cracking Scottish one.  The Old Course is very wide open and the greens are massive - complete with tons of bunkers with stories behind every one.  Depending on the weather and wind, there's a huge discrepancy with how well you can shoot.  I definitely plan on going back.  

Sounds like this place should be on every golfer's bucket list!  Glad he/we got to do it.  Cheers!  

London Town

We had another free weekend (there are very few left) so we decided to hop over to London to see the sights and visit Surrey, Drew's old stomping grounds.  (If you didn't know, the Solomons lived in England from 1996-1998 when Drew was a wee lad in 6th/7th grade.)  I've heard about his life over there so much that he wanted to be able to show it all to me before we leave!  We managed to fit some touristy stuff in too.

First stop: one of our favorite places in the world, Borough Market!  I've written about this before (and posted pics of the grilled cheese sandwich that Drew took the last bite of that I STILL get riled up about) but this is seriously a food lovers version of heaven.  It's amazing food stall after amazing food stall, all serving up different stuff, selling delicious baked goods and other food stuffs.  We had to go back for the aforementioned grilled cheese sandwich from Kappacasein and we also tried a Chorizo Roll from  Brindisa.  SO GOOD.  I wanted 20.  We also got a chocolate chip cookie the size of my head, no joke. Forgot to take a picture of it though before I ate it.

I'd been to the British Museum before in 7th grade, but I don't remember much except some stuff about Egypt and the Rosetta Stone.  We went back to check it out and learn some things.

My bro and I have a pic in front of this large Egyptian where I look bored and John looks like he doesn't want me near him.  Wish I could find it - but I tried to capture it again anyway.  Without looking bored.

Afternoon snack at The Plough after the museum!

We ran back to the hotel for a cat nap (because evidently we are OLD and can't do super early morning travel without an afternoon nap) and then got ready for an evening out.

We stopped by Buckingham Palace to wave to Queenie.

Pretty Big Ben in the distance!
(We couldn't figure out what all these additional fences were for and we realized the London Marathon was today.  Whoops!)

And we walked down the Mall to Trafalgar Square!

We got a pre-din drink at The Wellington in Covent Garden before dinner at The Delaunay.  I read about this restaurant on an admired travel blogger's website and she described it as an "elegant" restaurant that felt like a "Viennese cafe from another day", and she wasn't lying.  This place was lovely, elegant, classy, timeless, but surprisingly affordable!  It felt like a special evening out celebrating something, even though we weren't!

We both got the Wienerschnitzel with potatoes and broccolini.  Yummm.

Saturday was Surrey day!  But we woke up early and ran by (spent a few hours at) the Notting Hill Portobello Road Market that they have every Saturday.  Tons of shops are open and people from all over come to sell antiques and...anything else they want.  There were SO many people and I don't think we realized just how popular this thing was.  Great people watching and I picked up a pretty set of rings too!

We got some breakfast sandwiches from a cute cafe and finished it all up with a red velvet cupcake from the Hummingbird Bakery.

Then it was off to Surrey!  We took the 45 minute train from Waterloo Station and hopped off at Walton-on-Thames to walk to Drew's old house.

This is evidently the church where Julie Andrews got married, right around the corner from his hood.

His street!

The name of his house!
(The Brits are so great in that they have house NAMES instead of NUMBERS.  I wish we did that.)

The house itself!  (Drew's room was up there over the garage.)  Looked different than the pictures I'd seen but I felt like I was seeing something famous and historical!

Drew's alma mater, ACS Cobham.
(Middle school on the left and the high school on the right.)

The gym where Drew made it rain with 3-pointers.  Hell yeah!

The beautiful mansion that was Bethie's kindergarten.

The Prince of Wales is the local watering hole that David used to hang out in and we stopped by for lunch and some pints!

They had a gorgeous little beer garden in the back and the pub inside was cozy and cute.  I fell in love with it!

We decided to walk back to the train station with a couple of beers in our bellies, but the station turned out to be about 3 miles from where we were/thought it was.  And we couldn't find a cab.  And we had to walk.  And we had to pee SO BAD.  So we may or may not have literally climbed under a fence and gone to the bathroom in the woods behind the train stop.  But I can't be sure.

Next: home to change, out for drinks at the Lamb and Flag (a hole in the wall pub tucked away in a small alley, great atmosphere), and an exciting and yummy dinner at Dishoom, a trendy little Indian restaurant that had good cocktails and Indian "tapas".  So good!  We stuffed ourselves silly.  By accident.

Then we had more drinks at the Lamb and Flag again, where I tried to take a selfie of us but Drew kept ruining the pictures with weird faces.  Ugh.

It was a quick trip, but a good one.  I love London, and Drew definitely loves London, but every time I'm there I feel like I get a good grasp of just how big it is - and it's much too big for us/me.  The train/tube system is huge and impressive but I felt like we were on trains for 50% of the time we were there.  It made me long for the small town of Dublin where I can actually walk everywhere I need to go!  We probably won't be back to London for a long time so we were glad we went and happy to see Drew's hood again, or for the first time.

Goodbye London, we'll miss you!