Together at last Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Carrie finally arrived safely and not too worse for the wear, on the flight I hoped she would be on. I had spent the hour before she arrived emailing with her daughter Megan trying to get information regarding flights, so Megan was also relieved to hear her mom arrived in one piece.

Our departure from the Dublin airport was trouble free because I had used my free time there to track down all the things we would need to know once we were together. 

We went straight out to the # 16 bus, let the driver know we needed the Skylon Hotel, and found a place to stand with our luggage. 15 minutes later we were effortlessly checking into our Dublin hotel (courtesy of Carrie's husband's motel points)

Our first mission was to purchase Tesco Mobile SIM cards. Tesco is a European grocery store that we frequent when we are here (and they own Fresh and Easy markets in the US). The Tesco we went to didn't  have SIMs so we purchased a few groceries (including a loaf of some terrific gluten free sourdough bread) that we could make into dinner in a hotel room. We dropped off our groceries at the hotel and then went in search of another Tesco. 

We were directed to a mall that had the store we needed so we hopped the bus with our bus passes (another chore I had taken care of at the airport) and headed to  the Omni mall. 

Let me just say "Thank you" to the bus driver that picked us up even though we were apparently NOT at a bus stop  Upon arrival we discovered that the mall had just closed (today is an Irish bank holiday), so we made our way to the Starbucks next door and enjoyed the late evening sunshine (yes, you read that right) still without a phone to use.

Back on the bus, back to our room for makeshift dinner and then to bed... In the late evening sunshine. (More on that later)