Teachable Moments

Any educator with experience will tell you that the most valuable lessons are those you don't plan. I'm so fortunate that this trip is offering so many opportunities, and trust me I'm making the best of them.

Rewind on the Dublin trip:
One of the reasons I love Dublin is that it's a great theatre town. Saturday night, I decided to see "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" at the Gate Theatre. I figured it would be interesting to see what a classic American drama would be like when an Irish cast made the attempt. After all, "American" is as much an accent as Irish. I'm glad I went - although the actress playing Maggie was a complete train wreck (which made Act I particularly painful), waiting it out until Act II was completely worth the wait. I was completely taken in by the rest of the cast and they did an admirable job with the accent (Southern, 50's, Georgia-ish). The quality of theatre in Dublin never ceases to amaze me - and as long as the actrees playing Maggie never EVER appears on a stage again, I will happily continue enjoying Irish theatre!!

I ended up spending most of the evenings (and at least two of the days) to myself - Zach found a group of cronies almost immediately and spent the entire weekend with them. That was fine with me - part of the point of this trip is to give him some space. I spent Friday evening at a cocktail party with my old Dublin office team, and Saturday night first at the theatre, then out with my dear friend MJ for coffee and then a beer at the local gay bar. We must have talked for three hours!

By agreement, Sunday was a "down" day - gathering our strength, doing laundry and (in Zach's case) spending a few last hours with his new buddies. They were all so tired from the weekend's running around that they spent most of the rainy Dublin afternoon sitting in the TV room at the hostel chatting and dozing.

After a WONDERFUL weekend in Dublin for both of us, we got up EARLY this morning to head to Amsterdam. Zach is most definitely not a morning person, although he understands we have to travel early flights to get good prices and is willing to do what's needed, even when it runs against his normal internal clock. He's upstairs napping now. I won't ask him to get up early tomorrow. We have plenty of time to do a basic tour of Amsterdam tomorrow. Interestingly enough, Amsterdam is starting to be less "edgy" than it has been. Seems the new mayor has decided that it's time for Amsterdam to shed it's reputation for a red light district and cannabis cafe's. Too bad, really - the city is unique in it's approach to both, but evidently it's overshadowing everything else about the city in the eyes of the world. It will be a loss, I think, not to have one place on the planet that lets adults handle their own decisions without a nanny-state looking over their shoulders. My two cents.

I still need to book the last leg of our trip. Will probablay tackle that this evening later. Just the flight to Pisa, train to Viareggio, hotel in Viareggio (our one time not in a hostel), then train to Pisa and flight to London to catch our plane home next week.

I'm tired, but happy. Life is good.