Eurocon/Shamrockon

     Sitting in Operations (Ops) for the second convention in two weeks.   Something, I don't know what (a cold, flu, pleurisy, pneumonia, creeping crud) grabbed me my last day in London and has hung on with commendable (for it) persistence.

      Now on my second day in lovely Dublin.   My hotel is around a quarter mile from the Con hotel.  There is a multiplicity of neat looking restaurants and pubs on the way to and from.  My nose has been titillated by the smells of cooking as I walk from place to place.


I arrived at Heathrow the day before I was scheduled to leave London.   Whatever has hold of me, obviously was interfering with my mental processes at the time.

Since I was there, I booked a room in the airport Sofitel.  The room and bath were spacious.  The breakfast was complimentary and had all kinds of ethnic foods as well as an English breakfast.

But I finally managed to get aboard the correct flight to Shannon.  I mostly slept through the journey and collapsed in my hotel when I arrived.

When I was slightly refreshed I headed for the con hotel.  Alas, none of my hotel staff knew anything about Dublin.  There may be an Irishman in the Clyde Court, if so he is most likely a guest.  Thanks be to Heaven that Dubliners are friendly.  By asking a person per block, I managed to find the Double Tree.

As I mentioned above, there are lots of eating places on the route between hotels.  There won't be time to eat at all of them.  If the decision tree didn't have enough branches, there is also a food court and floating restaurant along the canal next to Mespil Street.










HB ice cream was passing out free treats, which I had to regretfully refuse due to my delicate condition.  Aren't they cute?

One of their fathers arrived as I was chatting them up.  Neither she nor he recognized the joke based o Newton's law of inertia....   What is Irish education coming to?  Or maybe my joke just isn't that funny.




Dublin is a charming city.  I was particularly taken with the multiple chimney pots on each building.

 Katie, a fellow fan mentioned that Dublin boasts a Museum of Leprechauns.  Five of us trekked as a group across Dublin and found the museum.  It bills itself as interactive.  There are docents who accompany visitors.

Mary, our docent told several Irish legends in the appropriate venues.  She is a very good  story teller and kept us and the younger guests amused.   We gave a round of applause at the end of her second telling.











 Since leprechauns are small, there was, of course a giant's parlor.












Katie found some excellent posters for visiting Ireland.

















After the museum, we marched across this delightful bridge over the River Liffey

and adjourned to a pub where we had a fine supper and began to separate on our various ways to hotels.

Thoroughly nice day.  I can recommend Shamrockon to all as a friendly, relaxed con.

Oooh, ouch!

   Checked out of the Fox Connaught this morning and discovered that the route given me by Nigel Furlong was perfect.  I had a round trip ticket from Heathrow to Paddington Station.  Nige gave me the tube lines to take which resulted in a far of ￡4.70 instead of ￡65.   WONDERFUL!

     What was not so wonderful was that I did not read my calendar carefully.  My flight to Dublin is tomorrow.  I checked into the Heathrow Sofitel for the night.  The choice was easy.  To change my flight cost 💲400,00;  The hotel is ￡160.  Easy peasy.  There is a huge difference between the Sofitel and the Fox.  My room here is spacious; the Fox was cramped.  The bed is larger and more comfortable at the Sofitel.  The most important differences are the bath witch is large and has room to move around and the fact that the breakfast is complimentary and contains all the things in an English breakfast and other countries, sushi, curry, and selected Chinese dishes.

We had people, not just children playing on the Fan Village green.  I thought it amusing that these three had gathered to game electronically together.









Someone brought a haul of bubble wrap.  There was a sudden noise like a fireworks stand on fire and it was a feeding frenzy of fans stomping on the stuff.  I managed to get my camera going to catch the very last of it.  Not just kids, everyone!










It was not just sedentary games being played on the green.  There were hula hoops available.  The quoits set had been broken by Monday.  But there was enthusiastic soccer with foam balls, bubble blowing and chasing and the like.










I found that I could actually see out of the Excel when I had time between crowd control and fan emergencies.
 This view almost show the Thames.  The glass circular building is the hotel attached to the Excel.  It was completely booked by the time I got around to making reservations.  Loncon 3 had over 11,000 paid memberships.  Happily for Ops, not everyone showed up at the same time.

There were huge crowds for people like George R.R. Martin, Connie Willis and others.  All of them gave panels, autographs and readings.  For the most part they made themselves available to fans who wanted to chat.  That is one of the things I like about cons.  Most of the famous want to mingle.





At the end of the con, all consumables are consumed.  Many are left from private parties that publishers throw or the mysterious SFWA suite.  SFWA stands for Science Fiction Writers Association.  I'm not sure what goes on in the suite, but they do hand out good booze at the end of the con if it hasn't all been drunk.

What you are seeing is a part of the dead dog party.  I'm not sure why it is called that, but I think it is that fans love to party so they stay until all the beer is gone and the last dog dies.



     Next post will be from Dublin.  Eurocon, the European Science Fiction Convention starts there next weekend.   I'm looking forward to seeing a bit of the lovely city before and visiting Belfast the days after.

A bientôt.