{"id":19,"date":"2007-06-20T22:02:54","date_gmt":"2007-06-20T22:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/20\/nautical-twilight\/"},"modified":"2009-03-31T15:22:18","modified_gmt":"2009-03-31T15:22:18","slug":"nautical-twilight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/20\/nautical-twilight\/","title":{"rendered":"Nautical Twilight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tonight, I had a wonderful Dublin evening. Anita was on the phone for a long conversation at about eight, and I took a walk to my new favorite place, the Grand Canal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The rain from all day cleared, and by the time I reached the canal, there was a rich, spectacular rainbow over a short row of Gregorian<\/del> Georgian townhomes. I just smiled and stared; I may have creeped out some joggers. Nobody else seemed to notice the rainbow — maybe they’re common around here.<\/p>\n

I strolled east, and I found several pubs and restaurants. They were embedded in neighborhoods, each alone in a residential area. So far, all the pubs we’ve visited have been cheek-by-jowl with several others. So these new places were immediately attractive to me.<\/p>\n

I didn’t bring any money, so no pint for me. But serendipity smiled upon me, just as the rainbow did. I walked the long way around the canal and saw a floating restaurant motoring towards the next set of locks.<\/p>\n

I saw the restaurant yesterday, under unusual circumstances. It was draped with a banner reading, “Coffee on the Canal,” which got me excited, but the banner was a prop for a film. I watched the shooting for about an hour that afternoon.<\/p>\n

Back to now: the barge was labelled “La Peniche: fine dining”<\/a>, and as I approached, it drifted into the locks. A crowd, about twenty people, gathered to watch the locks at work. It was impressive, as you can see on Flickr<\/a>. Apparently, it was unusual, since some Garda\u00ed<\/a> stopped to watch and residents were looking from their windows. As the water rose about 3 meters, the diners came to the top of the barge — smoking, taking snapshots, and listening to the Skipper’s story about the canal. Within about twenty minutes, the dinner party was on its way west.<\/p>\n

I can’t convey how lovely this evening was to me. I’ve been blessed by so many little gifts from Dublin in these first few weeks!<\/p>\n

Credit due to Anita for the Nautical<\/a> pun. Just a little north of Dublin, in Belfast, nautical twilight lasts all night at midsummer<\/a> (this weekend).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tonight, I had a wonderful Dublin evening. Anita was on the phone for a long conversation at about eight, and I took a walk to my new favorite place, the Grand Canal. The rain from all day cleared, and by the time I reached the canal, there was a rich, spectacular rainbow over a short […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,6,7],"tags":[55,574,112,760,575,576,572,571,573,577,150,570],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":663,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions\/663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}