For dinner we headed down into the Temple Bar area. This is the part of Dublin just south of the River Liffey that’s sorta the “Soho” of town. The bars were all packed with people still celebrating Ireland’s 4-0 victory over Cyprus that day. Snookums and I weren’t interested in more beer though, just food. And I knew right where to get it.

My friend Erin Fair had a poster from the Bad Ass Café on her dorm room wall all through college, and I always wanted to eat there. So that’s where we went. It’s a big, friendly, pizza-steaks-and-beer type of place. And apparently Sinead O’Connor worked there when she was just starting out. That concludes the music trivia portion of the photos.

In fact, that concludes our first day. We got up fairly early on Sunday to see as much as we could before the promised rain hit. The first item on the day’s agenda was the famous Viking Splash Tour. (Joe had strongly urged us to do this one as well.)

Isn’t that cool? It’s a reconditioned World War II amphibious vehicle called a “DUKW” (pronounced “Duck”). The idea is that the guy drives you all around Dublin telling you about the ancient Viking settlement, and then you drive straight into the Grand Canal for a short water ride as well. I couldn’t wait.

Oh yeah, it’s Kris the Red. Most of the people on our tour bought the hats as well (just so you don’t think I was the only one looking stupid). Snookums, however, refrained.

The Viking tour leaves near the famous St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which is where Jonathan Swift is buried. I took this picture while waiting for everybody to get strapped into the DUKW.

Our tour guide, as you can see, was dressed as a Viking. He taught us all how to do a Viking war shout (sort of an “ARRRRRRRRRRRHHHHH!”) that he would lead us in whenever we passed a big group of tourists. The little kids (and I) really liked it.

Our tour guide informed us that the DUKW weighs over 9 tons, and “it doesn’t have power steering”. We drove all over Dublin in that monstrosity. Here we are crossing the Liffey near The Four Courts. Dublin’s got some lovely architecture.

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