Sandymount

Today Emily and I headed down to Sandymount and strolled along the strand, walked over to Ballsbridge to our (hopefully) new apartment which took forever to actually find when not in the car, ate lunch near the U.S. Embassy, took our first Dart ride and ended up at playing rummy at The Oarsman Pub around the corner from our temp apartment.

DART Station

Dublin Area Rapid Transit

Night Church in Ringsend

A Quiet Dublin Saturday

I spent today walking around Dublin:  from The Moorings down to find my new office, checked out the Dublin Shambhala Center and walked through Merrion Square (on the south side of Dublin city centre). This square is considered one of the city's finest Georgian squares and was completed by the beginning of the 19th century. The park in the square is known as "Archbishop Ryan Park". Next, I visted St. Stephen's Green, another park in Dublin which has been open to the public since 1877. Last but not least I visited the National Gallery and walked through their permanent collection for about an hour and a half. 

Emily walked over to Sandymount and took a long walk along the strand.

National Gallery of Ireland

On Saturday, I had the opportunity to visit the National Gallery of Ireland, which houses the national collection of Irish art and European master paintings. I was able to view the following pieces (photo credits public domain) as well as many others:

1) Caravaggio's "The Taking of Christ"
2) Sisley's "The Banks of the Canal du Loing at Saint-Mammes"
3) James Arthur O'Connor's "A Thunderstorm: The Frightened Wagoner"

St. Stephen's Green

Archbishop Ryan Park in Merrion Square

Google Ireland

Ballsbridge or Bust

Our housing search. We hit the path early this morning to view as many available properties in Districts 2, 4 and 6 as possible. We ended up seeing approximately 20, of which four properties rated 4+ (out of 5) on our personal livability scale. We found one we really like and should have an update early next week.

Dublin Orientation Day

Today, John took us out on an orientation tour of Dublin. We first visited the northern coast and drove/walked around Malahide and Howth before coming back into City Center and the Financial District of Dublin. Next, we visited Sandymount, Ringsend, Ballsbridge, Don Loughaire and Dalkey. Last, but not least, we went to Killiney and saw Enya's Manderley Castle as well as Bono's house.

Tomorrow is house hunting and we have about 20 properties to look at. Both Emily and I like Sandymount best and hope to find a place that we like in this area.

We ate our Thanksgiving Dinner at Madigans Pub (in the Temple Bar area of Dublin) -- Fish & Chips and Bangers & Mash!  The pub, quiet and sparsely populated when we walked in around 6p, became loud very quickly when Emily and I were joined by 15 boisterous welshmen in to watch the rugby matches this weekend. We traded Colorado stories for tales from Cardiff over pints of Guiness for an hour or so and got invited to come watch the Wallabies play Australia with them on Saturday - we'll see...

Hello from Dublin

Emily and I landed in Dublin this morning! We will be staying temporarily at, The Moorings / #53 / Fitzwilliam Quay / Dublin 4, until we find a more permanent place. It's a nice location, overlooking a feeder river running into Dublin Harbour and across from the Shelbourne Greyhound Stadium (also serving as a park for ducks, geese and gulls during the day). We start our orientation and housing search tomorrow (Thanksgiving) - so wish us luck. 

The flight over was great: the most helpful United ticket agent on the planet helped us get our bags over (be sure to ask Emily about her 82 lb bag), napped for most of the afternoon, walked around D4 this evening and ate at Ely HQ (restaurant with fantastic service and food) and are now watching the greyhound races from our balcony.

Pictures Below:

1) The Moorings - outside our temp apartments

2) Emily in our temp crib

3) Shelbourne Greyhound Stadium across the river from our apartment

And we're off...

Just a quick note to let everyone know that we are flying out to Dublin today (Tuesday 25th). We'll be getting settled and searching for a place to live for a few weeks and I'll start my new position on Dec 8th. Updates on our move and new information can be found in the "Ireland Contact Info" section of this blog located in the upper right corner of this page. Bye for now Colorado...

Blog Book

Emily and I created a book compiling all of the entries from this blog since I started it in 2006 right up until we moved to Ireland. It is entitled "McCarley's Blog: Volume 1 "The Colorado Years" 2006 - 2008". 

We made this book so that we would have a backup hard copy of the blog in case anything ever happened to the electronic version. As such, I don't imagine anyone else would have any interest in ordering a copy, but just in case - here's the info. The cost of one book is between $44 - $61, depending on which publishing option you choose (and the costs are the cost for printing - we don't make any money on the sale). You can preview and/or order the book by clicking here.

Denver Cheese Plate

Thanks Randy & David!

Work Visa Approved

Received my Irish work visa Nov 14th. Emily and I will be flying out to Dublin within the next week or two and I'll be starting my new job on December 8th. For updates on our move please click here.

First winter snowfall in Golden 2008