Dublin Day Two

Friday. We slept in. I noticed in Ireland they use UK mains. One thing I forgot to mention about our hotel is that we had a bar that served coffee in the mornings, just a few doors down. Not down the street, but down the hall. So while the others slept, I got an Americano and read a copy of the Irish Times, where I learned that they called football "soccer", another way in which Ireland is a bit closer to America than the UK.

Once the others were up, we had breakfast at the hotel, quite like the typical English breakfast but with a few twists, such as the light and dark sausages that were similar to the Haggis of Scotland.

Then we went out to take in one of the city sightseeing hop-on hop-off bus tours that are all over Europe. (Even Ipswich has one, but only in the summer months.) Conveniently, most of these bus tours start and end just around the corner from our hotel on O'Connell Street.

So we hopped on, and found ourselves going down O'Connell over the river to College Green, where we saw Trinity College, within which is the Book of Kells.



We headed west a bit, past the cemetery with the statue of Oscar Wilde, who lived in Dublin for several years. Then back east toward St. Stephen's Green. We alighted there and toured the park.



Then we went under the Fusiliers Arch to the Stephen's Green Shopping Centre, on the left.



In observance of the Two Hour Rule, we had to feed the little one. Do you see the dome at the top? We got some tea and scones there. Sarah is in the lower right.



The we walked the nearby Grafton Street shopping. It seems all the UK stores were here (Debenhams, Marks and Spencer, Topshop, HMV, Boots, Argos) so it was all quite familiar.



At the end of Grafton Street is a statue of Molly Malone. Before setting foot in Dublin, all I could remember of Irish songs was a lone ditty from my grade school music class (it was a Catholic school, after all) beginning with

In Dublin's fair city
Where girls are so pretty

And that is the song of Molly Malone, a song I would hear and, even, sing several times before the end of our trip.



We then walked through the Temple Bar area of touristy pubs and shopping. We noted one well-known pub (to which I'll write more about later) ...



... and, on the next corner, what appears to be the original Temple Bar:



Nearby we re-joined the bus tour, hopping on as promised. Our next attraction was Saint Patrick's Cathedral.



And further west ... the Guinness brewery. As the bus was moving constantly, I got just this one shot.



But it doesn't do justice to the massive complex therein. Because it is quite huge - many, many city blocks, like a Willy Wonka factory dedicated to stout beer. Now, whereever you are reading this, I am quite confident in thinking that you're within a few miles of a pub that serves Guinness, and I'm guessing it all comes from here.

Now, at the risk of having a van from the IRA with a bomb in it parked in front of our flat, I will say this: I think Guinness is rubbish. I think it's way too bitter for a proper stout. But in Dublin, it's ubiquitous. Lagers and stouts are what is drunk. It's some sort of bitter brown Mafia. To ask for a chewy brown ale or porter here would be like slagging the Pope. It seems a religious thing. So. We didn't take a proper tour, but we did drive around the perimeter of the massive global machinery of the Guinness empire.

Next, our tour crossed the Liffey and went into Phoenix Park, home of the residence of the President of Ireland as well as the Dublin Zoo.

The tour continued along the north bank of the Liffey, past more shopping, restaurants and pubs, until we rejoined O'Connell Street and the tour ended just past Parnell Square.

We went back to our room to relax a bit, and then set out for dinner and live music. Remember that yellow pub in the Temple Bar area? The Oliver St. John Gogarty? They have live music from mid-afternoon, so we got an early dinner there.

We noticed that the locals at the bar were quite friendly. It took us quite a while to get our order in because we were so busy chatting. (Suffolk is renowned for having less-than-friendly locals at the pub, so this is an unusual situation for us.) But then we realised the "locals" weren't - they were all tourists, just like us. But some of the one's we'd been chatting with were from the Liverpool area, and we started to realise about the relationship between Ireland and Liverpool - quite strong, apparently. I remember some Celtic songs mentioning Liverpool. We learned that northern English towns (Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle) have a kinship with Ireland that southern England doesn't.

We were early enough to get a table right behind the band, a trio: guitar, banjo and flute/Irish whistle. They'd play a song, then have a pint and chat a while, then play another song. Sarah had ribs and a salad. Margo got an Irish stew with Irish breads. I got a Dublin Coddle (sausage, crewam, potatoes, bacon, onions, and carrots) and Irish breads. I also tried a Kilkenny Red, which I quite liked, and an "experimental" brew from Guinness called North Star, which I thought was a bit tastier - smoother and not as bitter.

Sarah was tapping her feet to the music but was soon bored enough to want to start writing insults to me in my notepad. She has about four basic insults at this point (I am a spanking head, as well as a troll, and I eat like a shark, and I make farts that can kill people) and sometimes she can combine all four into devastating poetic attacks, but didn't quite reach that level this evening. But, for your edification, here is an excerpt:

Dad is a spangkin-head
he etes like a shark and
shakes his head like a shark
when they eat!

We stumbled across the Liffey afterwards to our room and that was our Day Two.