It’s been a busy past few days here in Dublin! I’ve been a bit behind on blogging, with my parents here, so I’ll catch up a bit now. We’ve been having a great time, with a mix of site-seeing and just hanging out and relaxing.

Our house is just half a block from the sea, and from Bull Island, which is a beautiful island/nature preserve in Dublin Bay. The island is covered with marsh grasses and also has a golf course on it, and a large sandy beach (called a strand here) stretches along the whole length of the island. You can access it via a wooden bridge and then walk all the way down a promenade to the sandy beach part. There are people walking and biking along, and even some swimmers! Apparently, a number of older people like to swim in the sea no matter what the temperature! We saw one brave, hardy old man getting in the water, despite the fact that the air temperature was in the low ’50s.

Isaac had been wanting to fly a kite, so grandpa brought one of his favorites from home. On Friday when we walked to Dollymount Strand, we brought the kite and flew it down there! It was a beautiful sunny day, though breezy, but that helped the kite stay up! It seemed like we could have walked really far down the beach and that there were lots of paths to explore throughout the nature reserve, so it will be fun to go back at some point and walk around.

On Saturday, we booked a Viking Splash Tour, which is a super touristy but fun tour around Dublin in an amphibious vehicle (similar to the duck tours in Seattle or Boston). Our driver, who was hilarious, drove us all around Dublin while we wore Viking hats and roared at passerby. Then, we splashed into the water in the Grand Canal basin and floated around there for a few minutes before the boat turned back into a truck and drove us further around Dublin. Isaac had a great time pretending to be a viking. When we were staying in the temporary apartment in town, we had seen a ton of Viking Splash tours pass by and he had been saying he wanted to do one for awhile, so it was fun to get to do.

Another interesting thing we encountered on Saturday was a massive protest through the streets of Dublin. Historically, people in Ireland have never had to pay for water, and now starting in 2015, there will be water charges. Lots of people are upset about this, arguing that water is a human right and should not have to be paid for. It was estimated that there were about 50,000 people — but possibly as many as 100,000 — people marching. Some of the chants we heard were “From the rivers to the sea, Irish water will be free.” Opponents of water charges are urging mass resistance — for people to just not register or pay their bills. It will be interesting to see what happens.

After weaving our way through the protest crowds, my mom and I took the kids home, and Jeff and my dad went to catch a soccer match at the Aviva Stadium. Ireland was playing Gibraltar in a euro cup qualifier match, and Ireland won 7-0! They had a fun time, but it wasn’t much of a competitive game 🙂