Several Days in Dublin, Ireland

Our trip to Ireland was back in June but I never posted this entry about our days in Dublin. Here it is.

Times for photos are Eastern Daylight Saving Time.

We spent several days in bite-sized chunks in Dublin. Since the time spent in Dublin was broken up by our various hiking weeks I am not going to try and be specific about what we did any given day. Instead I will just focus on our overall experience in and around Dublin.

Initially we were staying in a hotel that turned ou to be quite a bit farther outside of central Dublin than we had first thought. The Talaght which is several kilometers outside of the center. While the tram was very efficient it still took a good 40 minutes to ride into town and that just chanaged the whole feling of things. On subsequent stays we stayed in a hotel smack dab in the middle of town not far from places like St. Stephen’s Green and the tourist districts around Grafton Street but also near quieter neighborhood streets. Once you are in the center of things it is an easy city to walk around in. We did just that most days.

Their are all sorts of tour groups milling about from walking tours of substantial size to motorized tours using buses, ducks, and maybe even horse drawn carriages. We just walked. Stores of all types abound in the areas around Grafton and you can find some really nice places like the x where I would eventually buy a lovely afghan and scarf. The Temple Bar area is reportedly the place to be for nighttime live music in pubs but we never expereinced that. Just too late and Mom and Dad certainly had no real interest and I didn’t want to try going it solo (and it was late). That whole area when we wandered through was always full of people - so crowded.

We had some places we planned to visit. One of them was the Irish Museum of Modern Art. This is definitely worth a visit if you have any interst in art. We didn’t check out the exhibiitions that cost but the free-to-anyone exhibitions were good enough. At this late date I can’t now tell you what really intriguied us but it was time well spent in an inteeresting old building. A nice snack at the museum cafe topped off that visit.

Some tours do cost money. We booked a tour of the Guinness brewery (well not anymore I think) and while they provide a staggering amount of information some of which I might even remember I am not sure I can really reccommend spending the 20 euros per person for this glitzy experience. I am not even sure it was the best pint of Guinness I have ever had and you would think it ought to be. Their is a lot of history to absorb and plenty of company lauditory information to see as well as general information too. But even for a true stout beer snob I am not sure it is worth the money and time. The views from the top floor of the St. James Gate (think that is right) brewery though are pretty good.

After taking a student-led tour of the campus at Trinity College we had a chance to see athe Booknof Kels. It is kept in a dom room in the library whose main hall is pictured here. Sadly it is hard to really see the book in its case. Just be satisfied learningvthe history. That’s good enough.

A much better deal is the student-lead tour of Trinity College. We had wandered through this centuries-old college campus in the heart of DUblin earlier in the trrip just to get a sense of the place. We even saw teams of, I assume, students playing cricket. The tour we took was lead by a second-year student, dressed in old-style student robes (no longer required) and she had a wealth of knowledge to share. The college has all sorts of traditions that I can see add a lot to the experiences of the students as well as staff who live and study there. You might end up forgetting everything you hear but it is still a tour worth taking. Our visit to glimpse the Book of kels was a bit disapointing. It was crowded and the lighting is so dim that seeing the page they have chosen to share that day was really not possible. However, if you can deal with the light and crowds their is a lot of information to read. We weren’t. Take the student-lead tour but if you do not see the Book of Kels you aren’t really going to feel like you missed something.

More wandering thorugh the town center including exploring places Like St. Stephen’s Green which is a very nice busy park and some smaller parks likeIveagh are worth your time too. Besides on the way back from Iveagh we found an absolutely lovely long skinny tea and coffee shop that serves great apple and chocolate desertss. I wish I could remember its name.

Walking out to the Poolbeg Liggthouse in Dublin Bay. You have to walk just over a mile into the bay on a great seawall tyat juts out from the shore. We actually started at Sandymount which adds a anput 3km of shoreline strolling to the walk.

We did two “classic” walks in the Dublin area as well. The walk out to the Poolbeg lighthouse which sits about 1.8km out in Dublin Bay was a bit of a let down. You walk along a road, and sometimes beach, if you do like us and start at the Sandymount DART station. You can get closer via buses that drop off by a little nature preserve. For us it was a just-under 6km walk one way to the lighthouse. Not hard but also not terribly enthralling. The breezy walk along the top of the granite blocks that comprise the easily 10-meter wide seawall which rises several meters above the sea is an experience in its own right. Waves crash against one side and the other seems far calmer. Huge boats ferrying people and goods move slowly by as the 63-foot high lighthouse gets nearer and nearer. It is a completely automated lighthouse now but for 3 centuries that was not the ase. They burned peet and turf before using oil and candles to create the light to warn ships of hazzards. On a clear sunny though breezy afternoon it isnt a bad walk and plenty of people do it. But somehow I think we were all expecting a bit more though I can’t quite tell you what that more we were expecting was. If you need to kill some time though you can do far worse than this flat not-quite-beach walk.

We left the cliff-hugging trail behind and strolled through fenced off fields. We are just anout to enter the proper outskirts of the village of Greystones.

A far better walk is the journey between Bray and Graystones. I think you actually have a couple of options of walking routes for this walk. The option we id not take would have had us walking over the tops of the cliffs of Bray Head. Instead we followed a tarmac road that climbed up the head to a hardpack gravel path that would take us around the head a few dozen (if that) meters below the tops as well as somewhat above the railway line that hugs the edge of the cliffs and is used by both DART and Irish Rail. That railway was built by English engineer named Brunell I believe. He is acknowledged as one of the great builders of the 19th century but this line was someting of a challenge as it is on ground that has since eroded quite a bit forcing re-design and moving the line inland. The proper place to have put the line would have been more inland anyway but the owner of the land, Lord Meath (sp) idd not want his land bi-sected. He gave the railway the land to build on for free but it still became a very expensive line to build. The views of the Irish Sea though are wonderful. The walk along the narrow path, just wide enough for two people to squeeze by each other, is easy. Give yourself a couple hours to easily walk between the two towns. It is about 8km in length. If you are lucky as you pop out after the gentle descent into meadowlands outside of Greystones you will encounter an ice cream truck. He probably does a big business in that spot on warmer sunny days selling soft icecream cones, cups, and water. We enjoyed our cones. Too bad the walk into Greystones itself is not pretty. A large construction project is underway building, I think, new homes on the seafront. The people with homes arelady there are going to loose their views. It is ugly and noisy. Once you get past it though the village itself seems quite nice. We had lunch in a pleassant little place before walking down to the beach. The sand was warm but the water was cold. Definitely not something I would choose to swim in. But I can say I dipped my feet in the sea.

Mom and Dad on a beach not far from Greystones village. The bluff behind themis what we just descended from on easily walked trail.

The beach at Greystones. The ocean is chilly but we saw some hardy souls in the water - though not far in. It is a windy afternoon on the beach so we left quickly.