On the Subject of Plans

Day four in Ireland. Day one turned out to be all about visiting one pub and then slowly but surely succumbing to jet lag backed up by two nights of bad sleep. Day two was a day trip through the countryside. Day three was getting a Hop-On-Hop-Off bus tour and hopping off when I saw something neat (primarily the Teeling Distillery, the first new Dublin distillery in 125 years). Now day four… I had a plan.

1. Up at 8:00.
2. Exercise?
3. Breakfast at the hotel. It’s included with the room, after all.
4. On the hop-on-hop-off bus by 9:00. Ride it to the Dublin Zoo.
5. Check out the zoo. It’s included with your three-day Dublin Pass, after all.
6. Back on the bus before your 24 hour ticket expires at… 12:10? Hoo. Thought it was later. That’s fine, that’s fine…
7. Ride the bus back to the core, find a pub for lunch.
8. Hit some other attractions covered by the Dublin Pass. Cathedrals?
9. Back to the hotel by 7:00 for the Dublin by Night tour.

How things actually went.

1. After a prolonged and unknowable amount of time, give up on getting back to sleep. Check the time. It’s 6:45? Damn.
2. Instead of, I don’t know, starting the day early and ensuring the success of your timeline, stay in bed and watch another episode of The People V. OJ Simpson on Irish Netflix.
3. Yeah, exercise.
4. Breakfast at the hotel. It’s included with the room and lunch might be a ways off.
5. Back up to your room to use the washroom.
6. Remember that there’s a new Cracked After Hours this week.
7. Get briefly sucked into a Cracked hole. Pull yourself out of it before you get too deep.
8. On the bus by 9:30 and away. Not so terrible.
9. Spend a lot of time hearing the guide complain about construction and traffic because this route has plenty of both.
10. Arrive at the zoo between 10:30 and 11:00. Being back on the bus by noon is… problematic.
11. Monkeys! Penguins! Lions!
12. Yeah, we’re not making that bus. But on the plus side, red panda! Cuuuuuute!
13. Leave zoo. Realize that you’re in a lush green park, the weather is the best it’s been since you got here, and maybe a walk back into town isn’t the worst thing in the world.
14. Reach central Dublin faster than you would have on the bus.
15. Lunch, later than planned.
16. Other attractions, as planned. No cathedrals. Line was too slow.
17. Back to the hotel in time for the Dublin by Night tour at… 9:30? God damn it. Look at the itinerary once in a while, man.
18. …Italian for dinner?

As Captain Cold put it on The Flash… “Make the plan. Execute the plan. Expect the plan to go off the rails. Throw away the plan.”

I guess I did offer whiskey facts last time. Here’s a few.

• Spelling “whiskey” with an “e” is something Dublin distilleries did to be snooty and superior.
• Irish whiskey held 60% of the market share until a few small snags in the early 20th century… refusal to adapt to modern technique, warring for independence costing them the Commonwealth, and Prohibition costing them the US. If only Irish distilleries were as willing to work with the mob as the Scots.
• In order to make whiskey, you must first make beer. So one could say that beer is just whiskey that someone gave up on.