A day in Dublin
Dublin, Ireland
11.10.2011 - 11.10.2011
Today didn't start off the best. The first place I was going to go to was a place that offered an interesting meal called Gruel. It was the first thing I wanted to try so I left to have it for brunch.
Last night I hadn't seen any street signs, not matter how hard I looked. Even looking for them while dropping any preconceptions they would look like Melbourne signs. This is what made me lost last night, and even with a map this morning, I got lost pretty quickly.
I finally spotted a street sign at the point I was beginning to feel hopeless. They were at every corner, but they are stuck to the sides of buildings and are very inconspicuous. Even looking for them thoroughly, I had never seen them.
With that I managed to get where I needed to go reasonably painlessly. But hit another snag. For the life of me I couldn't see the place where it should have been. I walked up and down the street looking for it but never was it. Narrowing it down by looking at street numbers, I finally found the spot it should have been as a solid shutter with 'Now Vacant' written on it.
So I had a standard breakfast at a cafe and moved on.
The next place I went to was Dublin Castle nearby. I signed up for a guided tour of the castle and waited. I had a growing doubt that I wouldn't enjoy this trip. But the guided tour was great and very interesting.
This is the picture of the old section of the castle:
The new section, seen to the right of the above photo, is done in a palatial style, which isn't that interesting on the outside. But inside it looks like this:
Afterwards I visited the Dublin National Museum and walked in a few of the surrounding parks before returning to the hotel.
For dinner I went to the Temple Bar since it was recommended. I had a nice Irish stew and went downstairs to the main section of the pub for a last drink before heading home.
Towards the end the band acknowledged that there was a small, Australian group in the audience and said they were going to play Bound for Botany Bay. The live band were good storytellers, telling stories and jokes for the previous songs, and gave the backstory of Botany Bay before playing it.
I ended up leaving soon after my drink was done as there wasn't much to do on my own.
Posted by cannon_fodder 11.10.2011 15:12 Archived in Ireland
