Dublin

Last time I mentioned that the train trip from Belfast to Dublin had some excitement. We had to pay for the part from Belfast to Dundalk on the border, but our EurailPass covered the part from Dundalk on to Dublin. The railroad bridge at Drogheda was washed out by a storm, so we were loaded onto buses there and taken the rest of the way to the Connolly train station in Dublin.

All that caused us to arrive later than anticipated in Dublin, but we got to see some of the countryside that we would not have seen from the train. When we arrived, we actually never went inside the train station. We just took a taxi from the bus stop to our hotel, which is located on Northumberland Road just south of the canal in the southeast corner of this map. It looks far from the center of town, but it was walkable. Still we usually took the bus from across the canal back and forth downtown. It went straight past Merrion Square on the left and Trinity College on the right.

Our room at the Schoolhouse Hotel was fabulous. This website picture is it or a room almost exactly like it.

We arrived at the hotel so late that we decided not to try to go out and do anything that night. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant and watched a little Dublin TV. The meal was quite good and pretty reasonably priced.

Students first started school here in 1861. Be sure to check out the history of the place if you are interested. Although the information online says that the restaurant was once a classroom, it looked like it was a chapel to us, complete with a choir loft on the opposite end of what you see here. This was the location of our daily breakfast as well.

We arrived in Dublin on Tuesday, October 27th. We were well rested so we decided to do the 1916 Rebellion Walking Tour the next day. This was one of my major reasons for visiting Dublin. If you are as unfamiliar with the history as I was, the history part of the tour website provides a quick look at the major players, what happened, why it happened, etc.

We met at the International Bar. If you go to the link, you will recognize this picture. We gathered in the basement for an introduction and then hit the streets.

Lorcan, our guide, described what we were seeing as we walked toward the main area of the fighting. It's not Lorcan in the picture below, but rather a guy who was on the tour with us and stepped into the frame just as I was trying to take a picture of O'Neill's. He was kind of an interesting guy from Dallas. He was traveling to several places in the world and blogging about it.

We did eat one meal at O'Neill's Bar. It was plentiful and tolerable pub food. Unfortunately, we never were in any pub late enough for the real music.

We did go to the Cobblestone one night. Rick Steves touted it as a great venue for traditional music, but I think we were there too early. We ate Chinese a few doors away and went on home that night. It's possible that either at the pub or at the Chinese place is where Trout picked up the bug that probably saved his life.

Now, back to the Easter Uprising tour. Trout insisted I take this picture of the Guinness store as we walked along.

Living in Tucson now I rarely think of real rivers running through cities, but of course, most cities were built on them. This is the River Liffey that divides the north of Dublin from the south.

We are on the O'Connell street bridge.

This used to be the tallest building in Dublin. Now it's the 2nd tallest. The number of floors reflect the number of leaders of the Easter Uprising, and it's a union hall.

This is the post office where the leaders of the rebellion holed up and where the fighting began.

You can still see damage from the bullets from almost 100 years ago.

This is the flag of the Republic of Ireland flying above the post office. Although not official, the Irish say the green represents older Ireland, Catholics and Irish Nationalism, the Orange represents newer Ireland, Protestants and the Orangemen/British and the white represents brotherhood or peace between these two elements in Irish history. According to Lorcan, the Irish still yearn to be one country again and it's a welcoming invitation to Northern Ireland to leave Great Britian and join the Republic.

There's a small museum of the Uprising inside the post office. This plaque is also there.

Outside there are monuments for many events in Irish history. This one is for Daniel O'Connell, an early 19th century Irish political leader who campaigned for Catholic rights and Irish independence from Great Britain.

If you look closely, you might see some British bullet holes dating from the Uprising in his statue.

Another famous Irish leader with a monument here is Jim Larkin. Interesting (to me anyway) his life span was almost exactly the same length as O'Connell's but 100 years later.

There's another plaque on his monument that includes a quote from one of his speeches in French, Gaelic and English. In English it says, "The great appear great because we are on our knees. Let us rise."

This plaque lists the names of the members of the Irish Citizen Army in 1916 and where they were located during the Uprising.

Dublin's motto is an old one from British rule and scoffed at today by many Dubliners. The latin says, "The citizens' obedience is the city's happiness" or "Happy the city where citizens obey." Hmmm? Reminds me of old-fashioned wedding vows.

One of the many enjoyable things about Lorcan's tour was learning how Dubliners make fun of their monuments. Below is Molly Malone (remember the song?). She has many nicknames, but my favorite is the "Tart with the Cart." I think it may have something to do with the cut of her blouse. I definitely got the feeling that Dubliners (if not all Irish) don't put much stock in reverence for much of anything.

Go to the Wikipedia article on Dublin for a lot more information than I can give here. The article about Dublin monuments and statues , complete with nicknames is also fun.

This isn't a monument. It's a sign for a shop long closed. Note the date.

So what else did we do in the two days in Dublin besides learn about rebels with causes?

My other must-see was the Book of Kells. I debated about which link to provide for it and chose both the Wikipedia one above and the Sacred Destinations one for Trinity College.

When you go, you get to see several reproductions of pages with information about them and then finally the book itself -- in a very dark room with minimal lighting to protect the 1400 year old illuminated manuscript. People hush when they go into the first exhibit area and see the reproductions, but I think nobody even breathes when they see the real thing. Perhaps this is one of the few things that people in Dublin are reverent about.

We did not go to the Temple Bar area of Dublin. Even with the possibility of great Irish music, we were not up for the late performance times, rowdiness and crowds. Maybe next time.

We did spend a little time along Grafton Street, a somewhat upscale pedestrian shopping street. We didn't buy anything except some food at Bewley's. One of the nights (it's all a blur now) we were looking for someplace to have dessert and stumbled onto Bewley's which was one of the few places that were still open and quiet. It turned out that Bewley's is a 90+ year old local institution with great food, coffee and desserts. We ended up eating there twice.

The only other thing we did in Dublin was our laundry, so we packed a lot in on the 2 days we had to be tourists in the city. The next day was saved for sites outside and accompanied by pouring rain.