Ireland and France

Basically Wed and Thursday in Ireland with Emilie and Thomas was a lot of fun. Wednesday the 29th was spent hanging around town, finding all the Irish factories like Jamesons... but not paying for any tours.
In the morning we found the old reform jail that was closed in the 1920s after the Irish Rebellion and many of the leaders were shot by the British in the back of the jail. It was very interesting and hard to see inside the cells where people had hard, cold concrete cells, yet preferred that over outside during the famine because by law they had to be sheltered and fed in prision. We heard a lot but not too much sank in because it really was forecasted snow and we were in a cold concrete building, wet from rain... Needless to say a warm lunch was our next stop.
We found St. Patricks Cathedral, Thomas St., and just walked around Dublin as a town. That night we found a little bar where the 4 of us could just sit and hang, talking to the bartender and such. The boys had fun esp hearing the Irish drinking perspective and found out they did not know what an Irish Car Bomb was.
Thursday we took the train to Bray, about an hour south on the coast in Wicklow County. A cute small town, but when we found the tourist office the lady strongly suggested we find a pub and just have a long lunch because most other attractions there were outside. I am sure we left her shaking her head about stubborn Americans because we got the map and went for the hike to the next town, Greystone. Not a hard hike, but in the 2 hours or so it took us to get across we arrived cold and soaked completely through. It was fun to puddle jump and we took time to enjoy the view until the last 30 minutes or so when the rain and wind picked up and our goal became to just get there. Again, another hot and long lunch afterwards.
That night we went to the Arlington Hotel for a free Irish music and dancing show. It was really good, but went from 8:30-11:30! Lots of riverdance style and people...

Friday the four of us had the same Ryan Air flight from Dublin to Paris. Good timing for Josh and I to fly in with them since Emilie knows French and figured out how to get us on the bus, metro tickets, and pointed in the right direction :) We left them there at the station and only saw them one other time passing in Paris!
By the afternoon Josh and I found Jaqueline, Martins grandmother, house. So cute and felt a little bad walking down the street in dirty jeans and big backpacks past the super nice cars and obvious money of the area. We dont know if it was because of us, but a few minutes after we got in the house police were patrolling the street!!
Met by her nephew, Pierre who speaks English, we set our stuff down and saw the house. Such an art lover with a 6 bedroom house in Paris, ooo la la - which we realized they actually say...at least in this family a lot. Pierre took us for our first car ride (more like a roller coaster ride) throught a roundabout in the craziest traffic in Paris, where there are no rules...you hesitate and you die, and dropped us off at the Champs Elysses (be careful how you pronounce this because it took us about a 10 times listening to figure out what french people were talking about and a week to say it right).

Some things we noticed about Paris:
CRAZY drivers, you could not pay either of us enough to drive in the round about around the Arc de Triumph. Basically a 5 lane circle with no lines and no rules.
Everyone knows some English even if they say they dont- they just want you to try French first
The pasteries and crepes are to die for- we got a chocolate banana crepe made by a street vendor that only ended in arguments about who got the last bite

Careful of ¨Typical French¨ food- we are learning this more in Boredaux when we eat with the family 3 meals a day and they order for us. We have tried: oysters, raw beef, raw salmon, stuffed duck liver, incrediably stinky cheese, and other foods we did not try to understand what it was. My personal favorites- wine and bread. It is fun to try these though, nice to have a family around to translate the things we dont know.

In Paris on Saturday we found a New Europe free walking tour like what we did in Berlin. Main points we saw were; Notre Dame, the Louvre, Pont Neuf, Palais Royal, Musée d`Orsay, Pont Alexandre III, Napoléans Tomb, Arc de Triomphe, Champs-élysés, and Place de la Concorde. Our tour guide was a 25 year old from Texas who moved to Paris to get his Masters and obviously loved the job- gave us all the information and background facts mixed with jokes. 4 hours of tour walking around and we ended at Eiffel Tower.

Found out it is only about 7 Euros each total to get to the top of the Eiffel Tower if you climb the stairs for the first 2 levels. It was a beautiful, windy night...
time for dinner here- more typical food :)