It's Me, Sara Louise

I forgot how cold and damp Dublin could feel. I’m not sure how I could have forgotten that, I spent six years living with it and countless holidays as a child shivering to the bone, but I guess living in Le Petit Village has made me delicate. It’s not the cold that’s bad, it’s the damp. The air feels wet, and not in a hot, humid way. And another problem with the damp, it tends to come with dull grey skies. Fortunately, Dublin is a pretty festive city and that makes up for it some, and on Heineken Cup weekend, it was extra festive.

Now you know that I get like a D- in the photo department,I try to remember to snap photos, but then I get so excited just being in the moment that I forget, and then the moment passes. I should have taken loads of photos of the city, because 1. it was full of Clermont and Toulon supporters walking around in head to toe team gear (lots of yellow and blue, or red and black) and 2. loads of pubs had red & black and yellow & blue balloons decorating the outsides. Dublin certainly did roll out the rugby red carpet and I failed to capture it, I apologise.
This is the one that I got…

At least the banner is there and the Clermont supporter. How cute is he in his petit beret by the way? Cute.
This photo is better, but I didn’t take it.

via And I’ve looked and looked for a photo of a pub with the balloons outside of them, but I can’t find a single one. Please make due with this photo of Dublin Bus decorated in it’s Heineken Cup finest…

via

Bonus… the bus is parked outside Toddys. I meet one of my uncles in Toddys everytime I go back to Dublin (I got a two for one with that one).

Back to shivering through Dublin… Friday morning (Dublin Day 2), The Husband, Mrs. London and I were heading into town for some shopping. Normally we’d take the bus (€2.40 the bus costs now!) but my Uncle said he’d give us a lift in. If I had been the only one in the car, the lift would have been straight in on the N4, ten minutes, tops (who am I kidding, if I had been the only one in the car, I would have had to take the bus), but because The Husband and Mrs. London are ‘guests’, they got my uncle’s ‘tour’…

The tour that brings us through Ballyfermot (“That small building is where my father went to school”), and Inchicore (“See that pub there, the Black Lion, I had my first pint of Guinness there when I was eighteen”) and takes twice as long. It did turn out to be lucky though because as we drove through Inchicore, Mr. London called to say that he was free that morning and could come into town with us, and as his hotel was in Kilmainham, we were right down the road (“That’s Kilmainham Gaol there, your great-great grandfather was in there. It’s where the English executed everyone. If you were injured, and couldn’t stand up, they’d tie you to a chair and shoot you like that”… the tour took a morbid turn quite quickly).