Travel-log Part 1: Dublin
Good morning, friends. It’s been over a month since we got back from our Ireland trip, and it’s been a whirlwind of a summer since we got home. But I made a promise, Mr. Frodo, and I aim to keep it.
I promised to tell you all about our Ireland trip, and here I am to make good on that promise!
It was such a great trip and we had so much fun and we made so many epic memories and I probably can’t fit it all into one blog post, so get ready for a series of posts.
In the heading picture of this post you can trace our travels through Ireland. We started in Dublin, drove down through Waterford into Cork, then on to Killarney, up to the Cliffs of Moher, through the Burren National Park, back to Limerick, and then back to Dublin by out-of-the-way of Kilkenny.
But let’s start at the beginning, shall we?
Dublin
Here we are, our first picture in Ireland! We got on a non-stop flight out of Minneapolis at 9pm on Saturday evening, and arrived in Ireland 8 hours later at 10:45am Sunday morning, Ireland time. There’s a 6-hour time difference between where we live and Ireland, and that made talking to everyone back home a bit tricky!
Our hotel room was not yet ready when we got there around noon, but they had a room where we could leave our luggage, so we wandered back out to use our hop-on hop-off bus tickets and see the city.
It was nearly 70 degrees out and sunny that day, and everyone in Ireland was complaining about how hot it was!
The bus tour was a good way to start, especially since we were running on about 2-3 hours of sleep on the plane, our bodies were telling us it was 6am, and we’d just pulled an all-nighter! So it helped us stay awake, we got a picture of the layout of the city, and heard some interesting tidbits about the various landmarks.
We stayed in Dublin for 2 days and I’m sad to say it was not our favorite part of the trip, nor was it our favorite place in Ireland. Dublin is a very dirty city, and honestly, the area where we were staying felt decidedly shady. The hotel was nice, but the staff was not friendly, walking to our hotel was a little creepy, and we’ve both decided that if/when we go back, we will probably skip Dublin all together.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Trinity College were the two really “touristy” things we did in Dublin besides the hop-on hop-off bus tour.
St. Patrick’s was self-guided, and it was fun to wander around St. Patrick’s and learn more about the history of the building and the man.
We had a tour guide take us around Trinity College and she was entertaining. We learned about the history of the college, some of the buildings, she pointed out architecture, and we just generally enjoyed wandering around.
A couple of highlights:
The Bell Tower
The bell tower at Trinity College. Funny story: this is the second bell tower, as the first bell tower was too small for the bell and kept cracking every time it rang. So they had to build a second tower around the bell.
Also, the bell has no set schedule, it rings randomly and there is a superstition on campus that if you are under the tower when it rings, you'll fail something.
The Long Room
So many ancient books. And that "floating" globe at the end of the room when you walk in is a truly awesome sight to behold. Inspired by stories of astronauts about what it feels like to see Earth from space, this enormous globe is a pretty cool work of art. Also, it somehow works really well in this room full of ancient tomes.
The Book of kells
Of course, the big attraction at Trinity College is the Book of Kells, which is an illuminated, hand-scribed manuscript containing the four Gospels and is believed to have been written sometime around 800A.D.
You cannot take pictures of the Book of Kells, so I can’t share that… but as an experience, it’s pretty cool to see something that old having lasted so long.
Other Attractions
Just a few shots from our jaunting around Dublin on foot. Of course we had to stop by the Portal (far left), which is basically a glorified web cam, but is set up in Dublin and NYC and we thought it was hilarious that the first time we saw it was from the Ireland side!
The River Liffey (center) flows through the heart of Dublin. This is a fresh-water tidal river, so its height varies throughout the day.
And finally, the Temple Bar (far right) is just a really pretty building, and the entire area is named after it. This area has been completely pedestrianized and is a neat, old-world-y place to walk. We got ice cream across the street from Temple Bar and it was delicious.
So those were our first two days in Ireland. In my next post, we’ll head out of Dublin and drive southwest to Waterford and then on to Cork!