Dublin trip
Took the train from Foxford to Dublin on Friday morning which took three and a half hours but meant that we avoided the insanity of the Titanic celebrations in Lahardane.
The village is expecting 15000 visitors this week to celebrate the anniversary of the Titanic’s ill fated voyage to America. I suppose it is good for the town. It will bring some publicity to a lovely part of Mayo and some trade.
Anyway enough of that.
This was the second time that I’ve been to Dublin. The first was last year but only for a day. This trip was for two days, so not much of an improvement on the last time but we packed in a lot more. Plus I got to see the famous tourist trap Temple Bar district this time.
On arrival we checked into The Morrison hotel on The Quays. It is a nice four star hotel that looks like it used to be something special during the boom time when credit was good. It seems to have lost that magic sparkle but this isn’t to say it is a bad place to stay. I’d say it was on the border of a three and four star hotel. At the very top of the three stars but missing some quality to make it a four. Nevertheless, it is conveniently located and was cheap (€150 for two of us which included breakfast in bed and a couple of gin and tonic cocktails in the evening).
The very first item to see this time around was the zoo in Phoenix Park. We took The Luas (Dublin’s rather excellent tram service) from the hotel to the park. The park itself is a thing of beauty. It currently has stunning tulips arranged in precise flowers beds as you walk through. Were the weather ever so slightly warmer it would have been a perfect day to sit and read a book or take some pictures. As it happened it was lovely to walk through with a slight breeze in the air.
As you’d imagine during the Easter holidays, the zoo was packed with bloody children. But no bother, our long adult strides and age hardened glares soon showed these little urchins who was boss as they cleared paths for us to walk and moved aside in both fear and admiration for us to have the best viewing angle of the animals.
I was really impressed with Dublin Zoo. The last time I went to a zoo it was a bit boring and lack lustre. Dublin Zoo, however, managed to keep adults as well as the kids entertained with a mix of really cool animals and informative descriptions and facts.
Highlights for me were the penguins (funny to watch), the tigers (majestic and impressive) and the Gorillas (awesomeness). In fact recently the gorillas were moved from their old enclosure to a new one. On passing the old enclosure you could still see the hand and knuckle smashes into the several inch thick glass where the male gorilla tried to break free! Glad I wasn’t there when he tried that. Attention seeker.
After that we again took the Luas to Collins Barracks. This is an old military barracks that is now a really cool museum. There seemed to be two exhibitions happening at the time. One was on crockery and vases and the other on the military history of Ireland. We chose the military one and spent the next hour learning about how crazy but patriotic the Irish were at fighting for their country and causes that they believed in. The best part of the exhibition was that it was part interactive. Thumbs up to that.
It was time to freshen up and get some dinner by now so we headed back to The Quays and had a drink or two followed by a meal at an Italian restaurant.
Now it was drinking time so we headed over to Bruxelles just off Grafton Street. Nice bar that played some nice rock type music and had a really laid back atmosphere. This is where that cliché of all Irish being friendly was born. Even though I was clearly a tourist, I felt right at home here. Drinks were a little pricey but you expect that the don’t you?
The next morning we went to another museum but this time one that centred around the private collection of Chester Beatty. He loved to collect old world books and manuscripts and by the time of his death he had a rather sizeable collection. In fact it was so large that he was known to have hired a curator just to look after the collection. Most of it now lives in this museum which is in the heart of Dublin in the Dublin Castle.
All in all I enjoyed my time in Dublin and would love to come back some other time to explore other parts of the city.
