Dublin (Ireland Part 2)

When we got back to Dublin we met up with Jenny & Chris at the hotel.  We'd read about a place nearby that served some of it's own beers, and were intrigued.  When we got there we had dinner and their beers were pretty good.  They had a home made Pale Ale that was delicious.  Next up was the famous Church bar.  It's named that because it actually used to be a church.  And not just any church...it was where Arthur Guinness was married in 1761.  Now it's been converted into a giant bar.  It was over priced, but worth a drink or two to say we'd been there.  It's funny how we've gotten used to cheap beer (price, not quality) in Germany.  The average price for a half liter glass is 2-3 Euros in Germany.  In Ireland, the average price was double that at 5-6 Euros.

We walked around for a little bit more after that, but since it'd been a long day for all of us, we headed back to the hotel and called it a night.

The next morning we got up and ate breakfast at the hotel.  It was a decent sized buffet, and cheap compared to some prices.  Some hotels we've stayed at charge anywhere from 20-30 Euros for the breakfast buffet.  This one was only 8 Euros, and was more then filling.  After breakfast we headed down to the City Hall area to start the tour.  The lady who took us through was VERY knowledgable.  We started off at the Dublin Castle, which looked more like a palace then a castle.  The original Dublin Castle was built around the 1100's, but due to war & fires, was mostly demolished and replaced with what's today known as the castle.  Until the Irish independence in 1922 it was used by the British for their local government.  There is one tower that still remains from the original Castle.  It's interesting, but definitely looks out of place.  The back part of the castle is a pretty green lawn now, but used to be a swamp.  It's waters were so murky & black that the local Vikings called it "Dubhlinn", meaning black pool.  Over the years the spelling was changed a bit, until it became what we know today as Dublin.  Through out the tour we stopped at Christchurch Cathedral, nicknamed the Whiskey Church because Jameson Distillery helped fund the majority of the renovations over the years.  Our tour guide told us the story of the Cat & the Rat, whose mummified bodies are on display in the crypt of the church.  One day the organ player was testing the organ and he noticed that when he hit a particular key, the organ didn't play any chime.  They took it apart, and found a mummified cat inside.  The organ was in the lower part of the church, where the air is very dry, which is why it mummified.  They put the organ back to together, but that key still wouldn't play any music.  They took it apart again, and this time further up the pipe found the mummified remains of a rat...presumably the one the cat had chased up there.  For some reason, instead of burying or disposing of the animals, the priest at the time decided to preserve and display the animals.

From there we headed to Trinity College, a university that has been there for hundreds of years.  It was a beautiful campus.  The tour ended in the local gardens that used to be private, but are now opened to the public.  It's also where the Irish resistance in 1922 during the uprising holed up.  They stayed there for awhile until British snipers started picking them off from the surrounding buildings.

After the tour we were hungry, so we headed over to the Jameson Distillery for lunch.  The food wasn't bad, but was over priced.  The dessert Shanna & I shared was good though...we even had an Irish Coffee to go with it.  After lunch I walked down to the bar area and tried a 15 year old bottle of Jamesons..it was AMAZING.  The neat part was the bar area had a glass floor that was situated over the remains of the original distillery.

At this point we'd been walking around all day and we were beat.  We weren't far from our hotel, and didn't have any plans for a few hours, so we went back & took a nap.

That evening we headed to the Workman's Bar in the Temple Bar district area.  The tour we had taken earlier in the day sponsored a pub crawl through out pubs in the area.  The first bar started you off with a complimentary pint of Guinness.  We hit five pubs between 7:30pm and midnight, and had a great time talking with our pub guide.  She was about 5 foot tall, had a thick Irish accent, and just talked & talked all night.  But it was a lot of fun...it's great spending time with friends, but one part of travelling we both love is talking with the people who live where ever we are visiting.  At the end of the pub crawl we cabbed it back to the hotel and called it a night.

The next morning, after breakfast, we had a few things planned.  That morning we wanted to see a few things in town, then later that afternoon we were heading to the nearby coastal village of Howth.  We first walked to St. Patrick's Cathedral.  It was a pretty cathedral from the outside, but really neat from the inside. One thing I learned was that Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver's Travels, is buried there.  There was also all kinds of plaques & memorials in there.  One plaque I thought was really interesting, it was dedicated to a guy who was killed in action in Afghanistan.  I assumed it was a recent plaque until I noticed the date...1842.  Remember how Christchurch Cathedral was nicknamed the Whiskey Church?  Well St. Patrick's is nicknamed the Beer Church because the Guinness Brewery put a large amount of money into restoring it.

From there we headed to the Christchurch Cathedral that we had stopped at the day before on the tour.  This time we were able to walk in, as well as go down into the crypt area and see the Cat & the Rat mentioned earlier.  They also had some of the set costumes from the show The Tudors.  Apparently they filmed at the church all the time.

Now it was time to head to Howth.  We hopped a bus to the train station, then took a quick train ride there. It's too bad the weather was overcast, because it was pretty enough as it was, but on a clear day it would have been amazing.  We walked around the dock area for a bit, then headed over to a row of seafood restaurants for lunch.  They are all lined up right where the fishing boats dock, so they would unload their catches that day and they go right into the restaurant.  The place we ate at served them "tapas" style, so we ordered a bunch of plates and just shared them.  The food was outstanding.

We walked from there, along the dock, to the tourist information center.  Inside the center a local artist had a small shop set up.  Shanna fell in love with a watercolor print of the local light house, and it was reasonably priced, so we picked it up.  The artist was really nice, and gave us his contact info.  He asked us to send him a picture once Shanna had it framed and hung in our house.  While walking to the local bus stop, we saw a dog that I had to get a picture of...he was the same breed as Murphy, and was even sitting with his legs crossed, the same way Murphy does.

The bus wasn't going to be there for another 45 minutes, so we took a cab up to the summit area.  The view from up there was amazing.  You could see way out into the ocean, as well as the local lighthouse.

We walked around the summit area for awhile, then were lucky enough to catch a bus that went all the way to Dublin.  It was neat riding on the upper level of the bus and seeing the country side.  It was also strange riding on the left side of the road.  That would take a long time to get used to.

When we got back to Dublin, we walked around shopping for awhile, then headed back to the hotel and ate dinner there.

The next morning we got up early, headed to the airport, and flew home.  One neat thing I saw while in the air was some mountains.  We were way above the cloud layer, but these mountains were so tall the peaks broke through the cloud layer!  I took a picture of it and it's on the pictures page.

So that was it...over all we had a great time, and now more then ever I want to go visit Scotland.  The people in Ireland were so friendly, and the country side is stunning.

The blog will most likely be quiet for awhile...our next planned trip isn't until the end of May when we go to Paris & Normandy for Memorial Day Weekend.  Then in June Shanna's Mom is bring her niece & nephew out for a few weeks, then in July we fly back home for a week!  So it'll be quiet until May, but then there'll be lots of posts between then & mid July.

To see pictures, click here or any picture above.