We slept in for once, so we only had to wait 3 hours to get breakfast instead of 4. Because we'd never actually had breakfast at Bewley's we decided to go there and try out more of their excellent tea. Susan got eggs benedict and I tried my first proper scone. We sampled their green tea, house blend, and Earl Gray, but my favorite is still the Irish Afternoon I tried the other day.

After breakfast we stopped at the post office to send off a batch of postcards. We only found a few we liked at the shops here, but we have a whole trip to find more good postcards to send home. We took a final walk around the Temple Bar area (Dublin 2) and started packing for our flight to Edinburgh.

We'll definitely come back to Dublin on another trip to the UK. This city is very walkable, and even though some areas are crowded and touristy it's easy to find a route that's off the beaten path with tons of hidden gems along the way.

Aer Lingus

...is just fun to say. They have their system way more figured out than British Airways. Almost everything about the checkin process was automated, and other than our bag getting stuck on the automated bag drop, we didn't have to wait on anyone.

Despite the automation, Dublin International was significantly more human than Heathrow. We got our final authentic Irish Guinness in the airport while we waited for our flight. We have been chronically early to everything this entire trip, which is a nice way to reduce my stress and build in a little downtime.

The downside to being early in Ireland is that the Irish apparently go by GMT-2 without officially recognizing it. We found ourselves stuck in a weird basement purgatory waiting for our flight to be ready. Several Scots came to the gate at a full sprint (30 minutes after our scheduled departure) only to be told we hadn't started boarding, so who knows what time zone we're headed to.

Our flight was very scenic. I thought the distance from Ireland to Scotland was just one large channel, but there are tons of little islands between the two. I was also surprised to see that Ireland is flat as a pancake (at least where we were).

Scotland has much more interesting topography. That probably means it's slightly less walkable than Dublin was, but after sitting down for so much today we'll be fresh for tomorrow's death march.

Our cab driver gave us a bunch of great tips on local restaurants and things that weren't big tourist attractions. He also asked us about Trump, so we are now 3 for 3 on talking politics in cabs.

We're staying in the Raeburn, and it might be the nicest place we've ever stayed. The room is simple but everything in it is beautifully decorated. There's a cool walk in closet with an entrance that looks like a wardrobe.

We got dinner and drinks at the hotel rather than try to find something else. We have a few days here so we have plenty of time to explore other options.

Whisky is very cheap here. I ordered a beer for £5.2 and apparently just threw my money away. Look at these prices:

With prices like those we couldn't say no to another round.

We were surprisingly tired from a day of doing absolutely nothing. We tried to take a short nap and then do an after dinner walk around, but ended up just falling asleep. A fittingly boring end for a day spent sitting down.