The Story

It was a long weekend in February 2000 in a fair city called Dublin in a green country called Ireland. It was Eileen's first trip to Ireland. We flew in the Thursday and flew out the Monday. The idea was to simply benefit from the cheap and direct flights from Chicago and visit a friend of mine, Sean and his fiancé, Michaela, living in Dublin. Eileen had never met them and we were planning to attend their wedding in France. Eileen had no idea what I was actually up to.

Both were direct flights from Chicago taking less time that it would to drive to Toronto. Although there had been a threat of an airline strike the very day we took off with Aer Lingus it never materialized nor did it cause even any delays at either end. It was the luck of the Irish. The flight was a co-share between American Airlines and Aer Lingus and was a fairly packed both ways.

Sean's and I worked together at Corel and met on the few time he was in Utah and I was in Dublin.

We had told Eileen and Michaela that were at the pub all afternoon while they were shopping but in actual fact Sean and I were busy ring shopping (yes, that looked funny but Sean was a good sport!). Sean's cell phone came in handy to make sure we never bumped into Eileen and Michaela who was in on the plot the whole time.

The day after out night out we went for Breakfast in a nearby Pub - which has some pretty good grub. Afterwards we decided to take a walk in the park. St Stephens Green only a few blocks away from were we were staying on Baggot street.

The Details

First Eileen's first Guinness

Now she's loosening up and having a laugh with Sean and Michael

All systems are GO let's just DIVE right in.

Here's the epicenter. View 1 and View 2 showing the tree by the water where we were.

Here's the aftermath: Picture one, two, three and four where taken by one of the 4 Belgium's walking by when I was down on one knee. They all clapped and one of them went nuts with the camera. Some other friends were nearby enjoying the scene as well but they seemed a little tired.

We captured some of the views this Sunday morning from both the right and left before running out of film.

The End