The Armchair Traveller

Two weeks after arriving back from Krakow, my friend Shanika and I decided to make the trip to Dublin for the Easter holiday. So on Saturday morning we flew out from Stansted airport and landed in Dublin, Ireland at 09:30. Once getting off the airport bus on O’Connel Street (one of the main streets in town) we went in search of our hostel so we could put our bags down and start exploring Dublin. We were staying at Abigails Hostel which had been recommended by another friend but locating this hostel proved to be our first challenge – we walked right past it and continued walking for a further 15 minutes before we felt like we must surely have gone too far and should turn around and see what we missed! It turned out that the hostel just had very subtle street-front advertising.

Our next step was to book ourselves onto an afternoon bus tour which we had read about in a flyer we picked up at the airport. The tour would take us out to Malahide Castle and the North Coast in a 3 hour round trip – great, my first afternoon in Dublin and I was going to be seeing historic buildings and also the Irish seaside! We had a few hours before that bus trip so it was time to get our bearings and explore the local area. One of the most striking features of the city was the river Liffey which was so clean looking considering it cuts through the centre of town – so different from the Thames in London!

We didn’t want to get too far away from where our bus pick up point was so we spent our time around O’Connell Street. This street is very wide with a huge pedestrianised strip running right down the centre of the street which is just as wide as the footpaths on either side of the street. Along the length of this centre strip were many statues to a whole bunch of people I have never heard of before and can only assume were at some point in time famous residents of Dublin. I really loved the statues I saw in Dublin (and there were a great many!) for their expressiveness. They all had funny poses or funny expressions on their faces – they never looked too sad, always happy which sends out such a positive vibe to the city I think. For example the statue of Jim Larkin with his arms flung overhead is so expressive it just makes me want to throw my arms up and shout out a big hello!

Also dominating the view down this centre strip is The Spire – a giant stainless steel knitting needle in the centre of the street. Standing 120m high, the official name of this sculpture is “Monument of Light” – the top section lights up at night to provide a sort of beacon in the night sky across the city. Built in 2003 as part of a regeneration of O’Connell street, the Spire of Dublin stands on the former site of Nelson’s Pillar which had been destroyed by an IRA bomb in 1966.

After some lunch it was time for our bus tour north of Dublin. We had a wonderful Irish driver who told us many tales about the area and even sang us a couple of traditional Irish songs (and then apologised for his bad singing – which wasn’t bad at all actually). He kept us well entertained until we arrived at our first stop, Malahide Castle. This castle is one of the oldest and most historic castles in Ireland with some parts of the castle dating back to 1185 when the Talbot Family took possession of the land. It remained in the possession of this family until 1975 when Rose Talbot sold it to the Irish State to fund inheritance taxes. The views from inside the castle out to the grounds of the castle were impressive, I imagine that in the summer time this must be a great place to spend a sunny afternoon.

On the way out to Malahide we passed a very old stone church which had a miniture replica church alongside it that our bus driver told us was for the leprechauns – yes we are in Ireland, “to be sure, to be sure”.

After Malahide Castle it was off along the coast back towards Dublin. We passed through the fishing town of Howth, and passed by the Royal Dublin Golf Club and North Bull Island Bird Sanctuary. The highlight of the journey back to Dublin was when we stopped up on the summit of Howth Head to take in the view across Dublin Bay which was beautiful.

We finished off a lovely Saturday in Dublin with a beer in the famous pub area of town known as Temple Bar.

The next day was Easter Sunday. I had done some research before we came and discovered that most attractions were closed on Good Friday but were open on Easter Sunday which was good news for us. I was hoping to get to a Catholic church for Easter Sunday mass but unfortunately by the time we found one the service was just coming to an end. So we continued to wander around, eventually heading to the Guinness Storehouse, the 7-floor visitor experience dedicated to the history and making of this famous Irish beer.

For those that know me well they will know I am not really a beer drinker, but during the Guinness experience I think I discovered a beer I actually like the taste of! They say Guinness is an acquired taste and I would say I prefer the flavour of Guinness to most other beers I have tried!

The Storehouse is really interesting as it takes you through the whole beer-making process from the selection of ingredients to the international distribution of the finished product. And being true beer geeks, the people who designed the experience created the whole inner storehouse in the shape of a giant pint glass which if filled would hold 14.3 million pints!

Upon arriving at the Storehouse Shanika and I bumped into two Spanish guys who had been on our bus tour the day before – it’s a small world after all. We said hello to one another when we arrived and then saw them again on the final level – the Gravity Bar – where we all enjoyed our complementary pint of Guinness and the panoramic views of Dublin.

After the Guinness Storehouse Shanika and I went to Dublin Castle for a tour of the State Rooms and the Undercroft and got to hear about the interesting history of Ireland and it’s connection to England.

From there we continued on our exploration of the city, relishing every new piece of public sculpture we came across – especially the particularly charismatic representation of Oscar Wilde  found in Merrion Square. Made of different coloured marble it shows a chilled out Oscar lounging on a rock with this kind of “How you doin’?” smirk on his face.

The statue of Molly Malone would have to have been one of the most popular tourist spots in the city. It was almost impossible to get a clean shot of this statue without some tourist posing in front of it, and there was always a queue of eager people waiting for their turn to pose with her and her wheelbarrow. All I knew about Molly Malone was that there is a pub in my hometown with the same name but as it turns out, Molly Malone is the name of a famous Irish song set in Dublin, a song that our friendly tour bus driver the day before had sung for us!

At the end of O’Connell Street is the O’Connell Monument which Shanika and I took a couple of silly photos in front of. The funniest part was when Shanika became the object of interest for some Eastern European travellers who wanted to have their photo taken with the ‘dark skinned’ girl. This was so surreal, neither of us Kiwi girls ever thought that stuff like that still happened but apparently Shainka’s Sri Lankan heritage made her ‘exotic’ in Dublin! Needless to say we made excuses to get out of there before the photo could be taken, CRAZY!

There were also many monuments to various hardships seen in the city over the centuries. The most powerful was one dedicated to those who suffered through the infamous Irish Potato Famine. The figures are so frail and desperate looking, even the dog looks terrible, it is so tragic. But it is a beautiful monument to behold, as you walk in between each of the figures you can really get a complete sense of each of them and it really moves you with their struggle to survive.

To finish our Easter Sunday Shanika and I found another pub in Temple Bar where we had dinner upstairs and then went downstairs to listen to these two Irish guys playing guitars and singing great songs to sing and dance to. We sang and danced until they finished their set a couple of hours later and then danced to the band that followed after them. I haven’t had that much fun in a long time and it was even better knowing that our hostel was literally around the corner so there wasn’t a long trip home afterwards!

Monday was our final day in Dublin and the weather was starting to turn bad on this day so we timed our trip really well. Our fist stop of the day was Christ Church Cathedral. This Church of Ireland cathedral has a history going back to c1030 and is very impressive both inside and out. It also has a really interesting crypt which contains a lot of information about the history of the cathedral.

Continuing on the church theme our next stop was St Patrick’s Cathedral, dedicated to the patron saint of Ireland. It is said that St Patrick baptised converts to Christianity at a well that once existed in the park on the grounds of the current cathedral. The first church of St Patrick was built here in the 5th century and the one we visited was built in the 13th century. This cathedral has an illustrious history including being the site for the first performance in Dublin of Handel’s Messiah in 1742 and having the writer Jonathan Swift as it’s Dean from 1713-45. There is a lot to see in the interior of this church and it is worth the visit.

Our final destination before leaving Dublin was Trinity College. We had the most charismatic young student of the college as our guide who took us on a tour of the area giving us an interesting history of the University and it’s buildings and famous former students. This young man has such passion and enthusiasm for his university they really should pay him more for the excellent job he did on the tour.

We finished the tour outside the Trinity College Old Library which is the home of the famous Book of Kells. The exhibition you walk through before finally seeing the Book of Kells (or 2 of the 4 chapters they have on display at any one time) prepares you to have a better understanding / appreciation for the book you see at the end of it all. On the next floor up is the Long Room which is the historic library, and as a person who loves a good library this one definitely impressed! The best part was the discovery that the books are not arranged in this library by author or title or any modern library filing system but are instead arranged by book size – the largest books being found on the bottom shelves and the smallest at the top!! That must be fun when a student wants to look at a particular book from the historic collection which is what is housed here!

To sum up my Easter weekend I thought I would finish with a list of  things I liked about Dublin:

• Friendly locals
• Irish Accents
• Manageable size – you can walk everywhere with ease
• Good live music in the pubs
• The river Liffey is incredibly clean looking (especially compared to the Thames in London)
• There is great public sculpture everywhere
• Lots of statues of people in interesting poses
• Guinness Beer
• Marshmallows served with hot chocolates!
• ‘Irish’ things that I have previously only ever heard of referred to as ‘English’ – for example: Full Irish Breakfast,’ ‘Irish Breakfast Tea,’ ‘The Church of Ireland’
• There are lots of interesting stories about the history of the City to hear about

I have definitely put Dublin on my list of places I would like to visit again some time.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS