nice turnout but no takers
UK&Ireland Peering Forum in Dublin this morning. Follows on from a terrific, if wet, day out with Hannah yesterday. The Trinity City Hotel is very central and we could walk everywhere.
We started with a stroll around Trinity College which was close to the hotel. There was a huge queue to get into the library and to see the Book of Kells so we didn’t. There is an option to queue jump by booking online. Unfortunately there was no open internet access and wasn’t sufficiently bothered about it to go elsewhere and find it.
Worth observing that the place was heaving with tourists. You wonder how students get any work done.
Following Trinity College we wandered around and found ourselves at Dublin Castle. At midday bought tickets for the one o’clock guided tour so we had a little time to kill. Chester Beatty library nearby was closed until 1pm. No good. The Terrace Cafe did the job especially as it had wifi which allowed us to catch up and to contact Mara from LinkedIn who we were meeting later that afternoon.
The tour was interesting both for the historical stuff but we also learnt that the Irish national emblem, the harp did not have an easy initial “life”. When they decided to adopt the harp as a national emblem they found that it had already been claimed as a trademark by the Guinness company. They got around the problem by turning the harp around and making one effectively a mirror image of the other.
Late lunch in Falafel and Kebab.
Met Mara and Barry O’Donovan in a pub called Slattery’s which was near The Old Spot, our final destination for the day and also near Lansdowne road, fwiw. The rest of the party, Andy, Will, Mark, Rich et al finally found us having gone to the wrong Slattery’s. The Old Spot was good – Oysters, chilli prawns and ribeye.
The Peering Forum has filled up nicely since I started writing. They have an interesting selection of juices at the refreshment stand. Carrot, kale, apple, beetroot and so on. Nobody seemed to be taking them and there was one fluorescent green looking bottle that had been sampled and left. I don’t think that network engineers are into healthy options:)