The Irish!

The last night we were in Seville we had one of the best meals of our lives, finally!  I must be honest, the food our whole trip has been just okay.  Maybe my expectations of restaurants in Europe were too high, maybe I’m too obsessed with food, or maybe I’m spoiled by our area having really good restaurants.  Either way, if we wanted good food in France or Italy it was few and far between and once you found it you had to PAY PAY PAY!  Most restaurants that were inexpensive (which would still be expensive in Portland) were rubbish.  However, the last meal we had in Seville changed my whole opinion.  We had a variety of gourmet tapas, a salad that inspired me and the best part was how reasonably it was priced.  Time flys when you’re having good food and the next thing we knew it was time to leave Seville.  A short train ride to Madrid had us on Ryanair flying to Dublin.

               Dublin.  Any stereotype you ever had of Ireland couldn’t be more correct, at least for us!  The hotel we’re staying at has a big show in their pub every night.   People were laughing, singing, clanking their beer mugs together, and dancing to a fiddle.  Next thing I know, two River Dance girls replaced the guy that was playin’ the fiddle.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  It was awesome!!!  The only time the pub went silent is when I walked up to the bar and said “Coors Light please.”  Jared ducked down and pretended like he didn’t know me.  I have to be honest, I so was excited to see a familiar face on tap.  But I was cut short from drinking my favorite beer, literally.  After that first ice cold coors, I wasn’t allowed to order anything else but Irish beer, so I stuck with Guinness, poor me!

Could Laura BE wearing any more clothes?  Piling on to save weight in her suitcase.  BTW it was 92 degrees in this pic!

Last night of Seville's week long Feria

Pub at our Hotel

The Irish.  Everywhere you go people treat you like family.  They are so overly nice you almost don’t know how to respond.  When we landed, our first thought was “Yay! People who speak English!”  Well even they’re hard to understand. They talk really fast and with that accent you’re like “…hu?”  It doesn’t matter because they are a most welcoming culture.  Even the customs and immigration officer was cool and they’re usually worse than people at the DMV.  He smiled with his snaggle teeth and asked if we had Irish roots.  Jared said we did on both sides, so he asked what they were.  Jared replied, “McNulty and Milligan (which is Jared’s birth name)” and as he stamped our passports he told us he had no choice but to let us into the country!