So Long, Farewell!

On 8th October 2011 we boarded a plane headed back to the States for good. We had spent 5 years on the Emerald Isle. Well, actually, 4 years 9 months and 16 days which is also 1727 total days. That was a lot of days to be away from out families and miss out on birthdays, funerals, holidays and other celebrations.

We saw most of Europe. It is easier to count the countries we did not make it to. At the time of our departure I was 32 years old and had been to 32 countries. In the year 2011 I went to 12 different countries in 12 months. It was a busy final year in Europe.

Of course I had to keep traveling once I got home, but that is for some other place and time to tell those stories. So this wraps up our Operation Dublin.....thanks to all that have read this over the years! Raibh maith agat as léamh! Slán!

(The purple countries are the places Ben and I went together and Red are the ones that Mariah went to on her own)

As inspired by Dr. Seuss

One door, two door, red door, blue door.
Black door, blue door, old door, new door.
Big door, dinky door, purple door, pinky door.
Dirty door, clean door, yellow door, green door.
Fancy door, Orange door, black door, strange door.
Brown door, faulti door, white door, multi door.
Say! What a lot of doors there are.

The history behind the brightly painted colourful doors is that after the death of Queen Victoria, England ordered the citizens of Ireland (which was still under British rule at the time) to paint all of their doors black in mourning of the queen. The Irish rebelled and painted their doors bright colors, and the tradition has stuck.

But I like this story even better: Women were tired of their husbands going in the wrong doors when they were drunk, going up the wrong stairs, into the wrong bedroom and sleeping with the wrong woman so they painted the doors different colours to help them distinguish between them.

It may seem like I may be a little obsessed with doors, but they are all different, and each on has great personal touches. Even the door hardware is beautiful and interesting. They have knockers, clangers, pullers, glangers, huge doorknobs, and my favorite of all; Lion Headed Door Knocker!

Final Goodbyes

With our last week coming to a close it was time for final goodbyes. Along with some of those goodbyes were great gifts, like Dublin jumpers, friendship shamrocks and announcements of pregnancies. Three of them! We treated Sean and Celia to our favourite Korean dinner place where they told us they were expecting their own little bundle of joy! We were so excited for them! So come April 2012 their little one should make its first appearance to the world. Vinny drove me home one last time and let me know that him and his wife were expecting in March.

I also got to have a great dinner of fried chicken with Catherine and Edell at one of our favourite pop-up restaurants Cracked Bird. Yummy. It was great to get together one last time. Ruth was not able to make it since she got a job in Bristol and had started that day. Which was fantastic news!

Although it sucked working on 4 days a week from a pay standpoint, I loved working a 4 day week. One thing I will miss terribly was my nearly weekly coffee get togethers with Paul either in City Centre or out at the sea. I took it for granted that I could talk a stroll next to the sea anytime I wanted. I will also miss my chats with Paul.

With our time off, I also made Ben do all the touristy things I had left to do. We did the creepy wax museum. Good for a bit of history, but all wax museums creep me out. I keep expecting them to move and walk towards me. We also managed to do the Viking Boat tour in the pouring rain. We even wore the viking hats! We ‘ROAR’ed at the poor passerbyers, scaring a few Italian women. I felt bad about that one. The best part was when our DUKS went into the water in the Grand Canal Basin to see all the buildings there from a different point of view.

Ben has his own leaving party and lunch with his co-workers from his office. We got to pop in one last time so I could say goodbye to his team. His office was always cooler looking than mine!

I had one last meal with my Polish girls where I showed off my extensive vocabulary of a whole 8 Polish words. The word for yummy of course was the most relevant since Ania made another awesome meal! We shared a few bottles of wine with Daria, Ania and myself and had great chats late into the night.

I also hit up Cathy’s daughter’s, Lily Rose, first birthday. She is only a few weeks younger than Abe so it was great to see her and all her little one year old friends to try and gauge the size and development of the nephew I had yet to meet. I was the only one there not pregnant, with my child, or pregnant with my children. It was unlike any party I had ever been to, I was just glad there was some wine there since there was a lot of little babies!

Our final dinner was with Tori and Andrew along with his brother and a surprise visit with Tori’s friend Sue. It was a nice Cuban dinner. I know that is was not a forever goodbye since hoepfully we will see them down in LA.

I will miss my girls! I will miss my buddies! I will miss Ireland! Don’t worry, I did not see it all while I was there, so I will be back to see more. And to see some of those babies due in 2012! It may take me a while, but I will make it back.

OMP last hurrah!

The day after we moved into Sean’s was my final OMP Leaving Do,

and sadly it was for me and for Niall. But I know I can see Niall again since he has a brother who lives in Portland and hopefully will come and visit! It was probably our most subdued event at Hogans but it was great to get the old gang back together. It was a great turn out and was happy and sad to say a final goodbye to my co-workers.

Hottest Day of the Year

After putting in our notice to move back home, we decided to give them a couple months head’s up and end on the September paydays. Ben had a whole week off before me to clean and get things ready to move, and I only had the one day to help pack before moving. And wouldn’t you know it, the two hottest days, ALL YEAR, happened to be the two days we were moving. Mid 70’s may not seem that hot, but they are! Especially when there is no cross ventilation and we had to scrub every surface in our small 300 square foot apartment. We managed to fit all of our things to take on the place with us into 2 large suitcases, 2 medium suitcases and 2 duffel bags, plus our carryons.

Tullia took a few little bags of stuff as well as my pirate chest, Edell took a full car load of items since she was doing a kitchen extension and a few miscellaneous spices and whatnots for Sean and Celia. The cost of shipping was ridiculous so we had to fit it all into the maximum suitcases. Sean picked us after work and after a full car load to his house, we dropped off the big screen TV to Andrew and Tori as a parting Moore gift and that was the last of our stuff. Sort of strange to think our lives fit into just a few suitcases. And after all the moving with the hottest days of the year, we were in desperate need of showers to not offend our new housemates. Sean was nice enough to let us finish out our last week in Ireland at his place!

Strange Anomaly #75

Hurricane Katia hit Ireland and England this year. I know, hurricanes, sounds like something that should only be in the Caribbean, but apparently ever 25-50 years or so a hurricane can loop back up and hit Ireland. The winds were crazy that morning. Why I even bothered to brush my hair, I will never know. The wind was so strong that I had to stand and lean into it to keep from blowing me over. ME! And I am not so tiny. Kids flew past my on their bikes being pushed from behind. Hurricanes, in Ireland, I never would have guessed it.

Portugal One Last Time

For our last European trip, for a very long time, we had to visit Bruno and Marta one last time. They were spending their holidays down in the Algarve in Albufeira. Bruno’s family condo is near the Club Med da Balaia, so the beach was full of tourists, but with it being so late in the season, the beach was not as crowded. Bruno and Marta were shades of brown that I only achieved when I lifeguarded every day in the sun. Our lily white skin stood out in the crowd, that was for sure. We knew before heading over that it was going to rain, and boy did it! We played Catan (the board game), enjoyed some chats, went for walks between the showers and ate ourselves silly. I love seafood and we super-indulged with prawns, clams, crabs, “sea dinosaurs” which is the translation but we would call them Goose barnacles and fish. The best was the little snails cooked in a little garlic, oregano and olive oil. Yummy stuff! Of course ice cream was a must because even though it was raining it was at least warm. On our last day in the Algarve we got up early and lo and behold there was sun. We slathered ourselves in sunblock and headed down to the beach. As I have said before, they were brown, we were ghost white. After a few hours of laying in the sun, splashing in the Mediterranean, walking up the beach, we decided to move to the swimming pool since there would be less wind. That was when I noticed how red I was getting. Even though I had reapplied, I had originally missed a few places. My stomach, the tops of my feet and my knees were burnt to a crisp. Ben also burned in spots where we missed the cream. We headed back to Lisbon as the sun was setting to see their new apartment.

Any trip to Lisbon is not complete without a few pastéis de Belém. Luckily their new apartment is in Belém. After dinner we took a stroll down to get a few cakes before his family arrived to say hello to us. Their apartment is newly constructed in an old building not far from the President’s residence. They are placed very central! The following morning we went out for breakfast at Pastelaria Restelo which is known for its sweet and savoury croissants with ham and cheese covered in powdered sugar. Sounds strange but it worked! After filling ourselves we headed to the Large Jesus, like the Holy Redeemer in San Paolo, Brazil. We went up to the top of the base, to his feet which overlooked all of Lisbon. We even got to drive over the San Francisco Bay bridge twin. While on that side of the river we picked up more seafood for a final lunch feast with Bruno’s cousin, Daniel, whom we have meet on several occasions. Bruno made sure to teach me how he makes all his creations, so I can recreate them again! It was sad to leave our friends in Lisbon, but hope to see them in Portland next year!

Strange Anomaly #74

I know that everyone must relieve themselves, and all over the world people will do it in the street, but then men here seem to do it more than anywhere else. The stench of urine in the mornings is not cool, on a daily basis in city centre. The worst recently was we were getting out cash at the bank machine and some guy pulling out his cash decided to pee right there. He was well dressed, on a very busy road, and had a queue of people behind him waiting to pull out cash too. Karen nearly stepped in it. We were in shock! Another time I have even seen four lads lined up together doing it in front of our neighbour’s door late at night. Wrong! If women have to hold it, why can’t the men. They seem to manage to do it in other cities?!

Happy Arthur’s Day

Catherine and I each year celebrate Arthur’s Day with at pint at 17:59 (or as close as we can get) since Guinness was founded 1759. This year we had to celebrate a bit early and went to a secret little pub, Fallons, for some of the best Guinness in all of Dublin. The pub is one of the last that clean their own draught pipes and since so many customers order Guinness only, it tastes the purest and best. Catherine’s sister owns a pub, hence that little gem of knowledge. It was great to have one last Dublin celebration of Arthur’s Day!

My Fancy Architecture Project

The Celtic Tiger ran away a long time ago, which is why as an architect, most of the projects I have worked on over the last 5 years have been put on hold, completely disregarded, or have been tied up in planning appeals for years. The one beast of a project I have been working on, which has been highly controversial, finally made it through planning after countless redesigns, changes, additions, alterations and clarifications. The links below best explain the history, with the RTE (the national news station) showing it on the 6 O’clock news! Ben may have had his project show up in fancy magazines, but mine was on the news! Not sure if or when it will be built, I am not going to speculate there, but there is satisfaction in knowing that I made something through planning and it has potential of being built!

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0916/dunnes.html

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0917/1224304267437.html

http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0916/dunne-business.html

http://www.newstalk.ie/2011/news/permission-granted-for-re-development-of-ballsbridge-site-in-dublin/