Day 53: Dublin & Meeting the Uncles on the Farm
Friday, October 5th, 2007
We arrived in Dublin at 7:00am, after a fairly painless (according to Katie who was able to sleep) flight. We picked up our rental car… which has the driver on the ‘right’ side of the car, and headed into Dublin. We met up with Jim, one of Katie’s old friends from California for lunch in the Google Dublin office. He has lived in Dublin for 4 months now, and he is really enjoying Ireland (although, at times, his liver may disagree).
After getting a fantastic tour, meeting some other Googlers, we hit the road for Roscommon, about 2 hours away, to see Mick and Bernie, Dermot’s uncles.
As we arrived in Ballinagare and headed toward Dermot’s Mom’s childhood house, Katie drove right past Uncle Mick—when Dermot says “Wait, that’s him! I think….turnaround!” Katie was not expecting to see Uncle Mick driving into town on his 1985 Universal Tractor, but she made a U turn and headed back into town. We had a celebratory pint of Guinness at the Corner House Pub (one of the three pubs in town, for a town of about 200 people), then made our way back to the farm. We met Uncle Bernie at the house, and Uncle Mick prepared dinner for us- lamb chop and potatoes.
Katie and Dermot were wrecked from their red eye, so they headed down to the ‘little house’ on the farm that Aunt Kathleen prepared for them a few weeks prior. They were too tired to meet up with Dermot’s childhood friends, so went to bed at 10 p.m.