The Travelers Return

Luggage intact, we're pretty sure. And we're very happy to be home!

We're home

Arrived at SFO.

The roaring fires

Scattered around Virgin's lounge at Heathrow are only video - but they go a surprising way towards making the modernist environment feel cozy and homey.

The View of Breakfast

His and Hers

A View of the Lounge from the Wicker Swing

View from the Wicker Chair-thing

Here in the new Virgin Upper Class Lounge, I am relaxing in the wicker
swing-chair thingy as Michael visits the deli counter for some Michael-
breakfast. Later, prior to boarding, we are due for massages in the
Cowshed, which is apparently a full-service spa attached to the Lounge.

Cafe Pasta

Phil had enouraged us to dine at Roku, a tremendously good robata restaurant a short taxi ride from here, but by the time we got to our hotel (and made our obligatory Forbidden Planet trip) we just weren't up to it. Instead we went to Cafe Pasta, the reliable little Italian place we always wind up at, a few doors down from the hotel.

Kristiana's grilled chicken salad went over well, and I had a salad with a grilled swordfish steak dabbed with a little pesto that was just wonderful. It's no Roku, I'm sure, but they always serve something that really hits the spot.

Forbidden Planet

This is just a small slice of the top floor of the best sci fi store we've ever seen, and a required stop any time we visit London.

At hotel

Hooray, finally checked in to our London hotel. We left our suitcases at the airport, so this will suffice for unpacking.

Arrived London

Delayed a while in DublinN but we're here.

We're off to the airport

Leaving Dublin for London.

Madelyn made chocolate chip cookies

We suspect that a fair percentage of the cookie dough went into her
tummy instead of the oven, but that is certainly de riguere when it
comes to cookie dough.

Sorry about my spelling. It's hard to type with a mouthful of cookie.

How many Irish vacationers

End up in a Yacht Club with a crystal chandelier? I ask you.

We're in Dublin

Sorry for the late post. We arrived Saturday afternoon, and Phil, Kristi, and Madelyn have been taking excellent care of us ever since.

Saturday night we had an all-hands-on-the-cooktop dinner party for Phil's business associate Zizi from Morocco. Kristi had anned to make seafood, but upon arriving at the market she found a note that the fishmonger was out due to a death in the family. So we improvised. I oversaw some chicken (a variation on my usual chicken-under-a-brick recipe with some very nice fresh thyme), Zizi supervised broiled lamb chops, and we all whomped up some salad and wild rice and who knows what else. Dessert was fruit cooked in a scary amount of Irish butter, with Irish ice cream, and it was wonderful.

And the company was as well. It is always a pleasure to spend time with the Thompsons, and the erudite Zizi ("the smartest oil consultant in Morocco," whispered Phil) was cery interesting and charming as well.

On Sunday we and new next door neighbors Stefano and Paola from Milan piled into two cars and drove to the extraordinary Powerscourt Estate. It's enormous, beautiful, and as we discovered, tremendously crowded on Mum's Day, which falls in March here.

We explored until it got cold - well, colder and less sunny, then drove down the road to a ace less crowded for a snack. As this snack was all we'd had since breakfast and it was late afternoon, it wound up substituting for both lunch and dinner for us. Phil and I both had the Guinness stew, the perfect restorative at the end of a chilly and hungry day. Stefano and Paola treated us all, and we are going to have to work hard to think of some way to repay their kind generosity - as wrll as to spend more time with them, as they were a very enjoyable couple.

Overnight it grew shockingly cold, and more is threatened for today. But so far it's sunny and calm, a great day to go out for tea at the luxurious Dylan hotel from which Kristiana has just blogged a photo.

Irish for Lunch

Afternoon tea at Hotel Dylan, in downtown Dublin.