The most interesting part is his crate. His crate is full of stickers from various place. It’s like steamer trunk full of sticker that people used to use for travel.

Here is front of the crate, it’s got our information in Dublin. Under it there’s another set of labels for JFK.

The inside has 2 big bowl for water and a fennel out side to fill out the water. When we let him out there was newspaper in the crate in case he had an accident. He had no accident, that dog has bladder of steel.

A cute little tag with his name!

This cracks me up. One live dog! They should just circle the dog picture.

More live animal sticker photo, with arrows!

His inspection sticker:

The pick up was pretty easy. We went to Lassen Hall at the appointed time (his flight was early!) and just picked him up. Over all if I have to ship him anywhere else, I would totally use this agency again.

It was nice to see Oskar again after all these month. Here he is greeting me at the door.

I really like this photo, it’s as if he’s saying whatever your selling I don’t want any!

For moving Oskar, we hired a company called ‘Pet Express.’ It was pretty painless, they took care all of the airline booking and let us know that he made the connection flight. He left on Tuesday and got in today. He spent all day sleeping, I guess he got jet lag too! Or maybe he’s just lazy. Hard to tell, he won’t tell me!

Here he is looking out our front door watching Mr doing yard work.

The weather was wonderful! It was hot for the first few days but cool down for the rest of the time we were in CA. I only wished I stayed a bit longer so I can meet more friends and eat more food.

Got wordpress to work on my new droid phone!!  I can mobile blog once agan!  All I need to figure out now is why my phone think I need the Japanese  IME….

Yay!! 

My sister in law gave me a Irish cook book when we moved here. The book had all sorts of recipes Irish. I was particular drawn to dandelions. I didn’t know they were editable! Apparently the leaves can be used for salad and flowers can be eaten. I was fascinated by the fried flower recipe. Any recipe with the word ‘FRIED’ is by default is delicious in my book!

So today we went out to gather dandelions. I wonder if our neighbors think we are insane!

Surprisingly it was hard to find. I guess people really hate them!

Anyway, feast your eyes on these wonderful dent-de-lions!

Before :

After:

Mr said they taste like bland fried vegetable. I will have to tweak the recipe next time to see if I should change the herbs or more salt. It smelled delicious as I was cooking them!

If you want to try it out, here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 20 to 30 dandelion – or how ever much you can find in the garden
• Vegetable Oil for frying (you can use olive oil I just had vegetable oil handy
• 2 tablespoon of flour (you can use cormeal if you want)
• Pinch of salt
• Pinch of black pepper
• Pinch of dried thyme
• pinch of dried oregano
• 1 egg, lightly beaten

Directions:

• Rinse the flowers and dry them gently. I left them on a plate on top of some paper towels.
• Mix the flour, salt, black pepper, dried thyme, and dried oregano.
• Heat frying pan over medium heat with the vegetable oil. You don’t need that much just enough to cover the flowers.
• Dip the flower in the beaten egg and then in the seasoned flour mixture.
• Fry the little flowers in batches, stalk side up until golden.
• Serve

You really want to cut as much as stalk off as possible without breaking up the flower. It’s pretty tricky, but if you cut too deep you just end up with petals. It’s kind of cool but hard to fry.

So I decided to strike out on my own and do a little of Dublin tour by DART. Once a week, weather permitting, I’ll take the DART to a station and walk around the station and see the sights. One thing I noticed about these stations is that at each station there’s a little sign that says 15 min to blah, 10 min to blah, so this should be fun.

So today, I am starting with the Malahide Station. Why you ask? Because this is where I live and I am too lazy to hop on the DART today. The weather is pretty overcast today so this is what you all get today!

The Malahide Station was built in 1844. That’s pretty darn old! The top of each station column has these decorative writing. Mr says it has something to do with the Royal Family. I don’t know, I can’t read it. If you can let me know what you think it says.

The station also has a waiting room. I took a peek inside, it looked like it once had a working fireplace in it! But I didn’t take a picture. Next time I go there I’ll fill it in here.

Malahide is a nice working village. I took some photos but I can’t seem to find them. It’s got a butcher, few grocery stores, clothing stores, etc. Of course there are lots of pubs as well. In addition, the people of Malahide must really like Chinese food here because I counted 4 Chinese restaurants!

The main attraction here would be the Malahide Castle. I have not been there for many many years now. I probably will hit the castle when my brother comes here for a visit in a few weeks. The land around here used to all own by the castle dude. We saw a fantastic apartment next to the castle grounds, but it was not meant to be because Mr didn’t want apartment living. (It WAS nice though.)

One thing that’s a bit scary here is the lack of parking space. Case in point, the following picture shows a car in the correct parking space. But like it’s in the middle of the street!

By the way that’s not a one way street!

The drivers here are like nutty too. This morning I almost got ran over by a old dude driving an SUV. He was making a turn and didn’t use his indicator and maybe I am invisible here or whatever he just like ran through in front of me. If I get hit I would get money, but seeing I don’t have health insurance right now, getting hit is probably a bad idea. And plus if I get hit I won’t be able to get on this little DART adventure. So I think I did the right thing by not getting hit.

It’s the little things in life!

I got off the Tara Station and the Mr (he was there to meet his brother for lunch) pointed out where south is and off I go. I never understood why directions say south, north, or whatever. What happened to good old turn left on the street. How does one know where south is? At least you will always know where left is because you can always look at your left hand!

Anyway, the journey started out pretty badly. I went the wrong way, though it was south it was south on the wrong street. I was able to correct myself and find the right streets.

Dublin should coin itself as where the street have no sign because the street signs are pretty scarce. I guess it’s the American in me where every street corner has a sign that tells you ‘hey you are here!’ like the giant red X on a treasure map.

I was able to successfully navigated myself to the 3rd street (College Street), and I was able to go no further. The street just ends, there is College Greens Street, but no Sutton Street (the 4th Street). I know I could have asked someone, but what fun would that be? That would be admitting that I have failed! I will not let Dublin be my Waterloo!

After a few hours (it seems like a few hours it’s probably like only 40 min or so) I waved my little white flag in defeat and pray that I still remember how to get back to the station.

The lack of street signs threw me off once again, I went in to the wrong entrance. It seem like a legit entrance because it said ‘Entrance to Tara Station.’ But it also said it was closed at certain times, and it should have been open! I read another sign and it said to go to Charles Quay Entrance but it doesn’t tell you how to get there. After some trial and error I found the station and got on the train and headed out of the city centre! I end up taking the train until the end of the line and came back just to see what’s out there.

You might think from reading all that I had a horrible day, but I really enjoyed my day. It was nice to get out of the house and look at the people. Dublin has gotten very diverse since I was first here in 1999. You hear all different type of accent and language being spoken or maybe I still can’t Irish accents.

Anyway, best thing heard on the train today:
High School Girl 1 : .. like War of the Worlds.
High School Girl 2 : What’s that?
High School Girl 1 : You know, the Tom Cruise movie.

Orson Welles probably is rolling in his grave.

Anyway, this morning we walked down to the Londis and got all the ingredients.

Shopping in a foreign grocery store is a treat. Everything is just a little bit different but the same a the same time. They also have exotic items like sultana aka grapes.

Part of the recipe called for rolled oats. I looked at all the oats (and there are so many different brand and kind of oats.) and had no idea which one is roll oats. I mean everything there says it’s oatmeal. So I end up picking some organic none quick oats (but it did say you can make it in oatmeal in the microwave with it) and hope for the best.

When we got home I read the back of the package and it had instruction for making home made museli. So I guess I got the right one! YAY!

Anyway, making granola is surprising easy. This is what you need:

• 4 cups of Rolled Oats
• 1 cup of Flaked Almonds (for you Americans it’s Sliced Almonds)
• 3/4 cup of vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup of good honey

Pre heat oven to 175 C (for you Americans that’s 350 F)

Mix the Rolled Oats with flaked almonds and sit aside. Whisk the vegetable oil and 1/2 cup of honey together. Pour into the oats mixture and make sure to coat all the oats. Put it in a baking dish and bake in the oven for about 40 minutes or until golden brown.

Make sure to stir it every now and then in the oven.

Take it out of the oven and let it cool. Make sure to stir it other wise you will end up with granola bar. (Happened to my first more brown than golden batch!)

You will end up with something like this:

After all that you can mix it with whatever dry fruit and nuts you want. I end up getting some dry figs, dry apricots, and raisins.

And say SUCCESS!

Regardless of people’s opinion of authenticity, it is still a piece of great history. It also are not out on display very often. So when I heard it finally came out on display last winter I had to make reservations to go see it! You only get 15 minute to look at the Shroud so I am hoping we don’t miss it!

Booking holiday on line in Ireland is n very difference experience for me. I don’t have a list of my normal on line booking agencies I can use so I have to do some research. I also am bad at geography and don’t know much about European airports and streets. Makes booking the holiday just a bit harder but learning a lot as well. New experiences!

We opted to fly to Milan and use Milan as a ‘home base.’ We’ll train it to Turin on Saturday and spend Saturday there looking at the sights. But the rest of the trip we will be in Milan. I have never train it in Europe before so it should be a treat!

It was fun and brainless but still managed to mess up like 10 million times.

It’s a bit heavy for my liking but hey, it’s something that got done! Whoo hoo!

Now I am ready for the summer!

I have been wanting to go to this yarn store in Kildare since we got here. So we got up early today to go to the yarn store!

The address of the place simply consist of The Mill, Johnstown, Naas, Co. Kildare. Hum. Well, good thing Mr is a native, because I don’t think I could find this place even with a GPS. Maybe in time I too can decipher address such as this!

I forgot how I heard about this place, but they spun their own yarn with native sheep! How cool is that?

The man manning the shop was super nice. While I was browsing he offered Mr a cup of coffee and a news paper. How cute!

He didn’t have a lot of ‘brand name’ yarns but that was fine with me. I mostly wanted to see the home made yarn. I end up with 2 cones of cream yarn and 2 cones of cotton turquoise yarn. Over all it was a very pleasant shop! I would go back again now I know where it is!

There were also this awesome car parked outside! I think I found my dream car!