Ireland Scrapbooking: Dublin

St. Stephen's Green

Exploring the City

Dublin Castle

Chester Beatty Library

St. Patrick's Cathedral

Christchurch Cathedral

Exploring Dublin

Ireland Recap - Traveling and Dublin

September 3

After a long day of work at Toro, we packed or bags and were on our way to Minneapolis for the night. We made a stop in LeSueur to take in some Erbert & Gerbert for supper and the first half of cousin Brian’s football game. We stayed at cousin Mark and Meghan’s for the night, reliving our memories from Kaua’i and the Big Island of Hawaii from the previous February – gearing them up for their upcoming trip in October!

September 4

We were up early on Saturday morning, and enjoyed breakfast with Mark and Meghan before heading off to the airport to begin the longest day of travel to date.
Our flight left on time, around 11am and we had a 7-hour layover in Toronto, where we enjoyed (or rather, didn’t enjoy) a burger and some of Canada’s famous “Poutine” – which we will never try again!

After a rather lengthy layover, during which we had a nice visit with some Irish folks who live slightly north of Dublin, we finally boarded our next flight on time, and got on our way.

September 5

Almost 7 hours later, we finally arrived in Dublin, still in amazement that we were actually in IRELAND! We got our first stamps in our passports, gathered our luggage, and boarded Dublin Bus 16A on our way down to our hotel to leave our luggage.

We had every intention of exploring the city that day, but truth be told, we did a lot of nothing. We wandered down the street a few blocks and I enjoyed a chai latte at Cafe Metro while Mark had a cup of juice. We walked down to Grafton Street do explore a few of the shops, then meandered through St. Stephen’s Green and the city nearby before heading back to our hotel to check in and take a long, much-needed nap.


We awoke later and ventured out to find some supper at a nearby Italian Restaurant – Boccaccio – which was really great!

Afterward, we wandered the streets a while before heading back to our hotel, where we had no trouble sleeping an additional 8 hours.

September 6

While we slept in a bit, we still were awake, showered, and dressed by 8am and on our way downstairs to breakfast at Bia Bar for our first full Irish breakfast of the trip. We filled up so much so that we didn’t have room for lunch even 5 hours later, which was a good thing, as we had lots of exploring to do!

Many of the days we spent in Ireland were “good” weather-wise, but today was an exception. Unfortunately, we didn’t move as fast as I would have hoped, but in the morning, we took in Dublin Castle, Chester Beatty Library, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Christ Church Cathedral (if only from the exterior), and enjoyed a bowl of soup at a small café in the Temple Bar area.

Dublin Castle

Chester Beatty Library

St. Patrick's Cathedral

Christ Church Cathedral

Temple Bar Area (Lunch)

While we had every intention of heading back near St. Stephen’s Green to catch the shuttle bus to take us to the drop spot for our bus tour of Malahide and Howth, north of Dublin, we realized that we had missed the earlier pickup time, and therefore had to hurry to find (and catch) the bus at the bus depot on O’Connell Street. So we made our way there – just in time – and were on our way!

Dublin Bus Tour (Malahide Castle, Howth)

Our first (and only) stop on the bus tour was Malahide Castle, which was highly entertaining and interesting. It was a treat, as we would later learn, to have a refurbished castle to visit, as many of the other castles we visited were in ruins.

Malahide Castle

Since it was such a miserably wet day, we didn’t make further stops along the way, but returned to the Dublin Bus depot around 5pm. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to make it much of anywhere else, but we did walk through Trinity College Square, even if we didn’t make it to the library or in any of the other buildings, as they were closed.

O'Connell Street, after the bus tour, on our way to Trinity College

Trinity College

Instead, we headed back to the hotel to dry off and shower, as we were pretty well soaked, then made our way out in search of supper once again. We settled on Bewley’s and split some delicious breads and dips, a yummy (tasting, but pretty gross looking) pizza and Connemara Pie for dessert.




It was a BUSY day, and we weren’t able to see everything we hoped, but were thoroughly impressed with the things we did see. When I look back on this day, I'm tired, but we still really enjoyed it!

---

Full picture dump from this day can be found here:

Traveling: http://picasaweb.google.com/rompte/Ireland01Traveling#
Dublin: http://picasaweb.google.com/rompte/Ireland02Dublin#