Dublin, belated guest post from Heather

Our little Georgian home

The Dublin guest blog! Shamefully late from guest blogger Heather :)  Please mentally insert between France and Lisbon in Julie's trekking.

 

Trinity College Bell Tower

As Julie reported, the eating was good. Oh, goodness, was there cheese and cider galore! This may just turn into a post on the many wonderful ciders we drank, but I’ll try to include some real places, too. I arrived a day early and got us checked into the cute AirBnB house we were renting a room in. It was very “Dublin” as marked by the Georgian architecture and brightly colored door. Our hosts—and almost everyone we met in Dublin—were super friendly. 

When Julie arrived on Friday for first official Day 1, we tackled some sightseeing, hitting up a tour of Trinity College, including a very funny recent grad tour guide, the Book of Kells and the library. Or rather THE library. Learning about medieval book making and illustration was cool. The Book of Kells itself was hard to see with so many people, but all of the illustrated were really amazing. 

The highlight of the tour, though, was the old library, filled with ancient books, mostly in Latin, up two stories—and sorted by size! No library of congress or dewy decimal here. It was absolutely beautiful there. 

Oscar Wilde. No monochrome marble for this man!

 

Between the tour and the library we found Oscar Wilde at Merrion Square (it was a beautiful park, with all different street lamps throughout). The statue was cool, and I found a neat blog about it that talks about all the lovely stone in it. We discovered Butler's Chocolate, which we later realized was THE chocolatier throughout Dublin, and saw a bit of the National Gallery. That evening there were pubs with friends of Julie’s from the ship, and some spontaneous live music, Trad One, at a pretty decent pub off the main route in Temple Bar, called the Storehouse. The piper caught me taking the picture!



Day two, hiking in Howth, a great little sea town with a beautiful cliff walk that both my Dubliner native flight companion and one of Julie’s coworkers had both recommended coming in. It was a gorgeous day and 9 of us hiked over the hills of heather like the Fellowship. It looks grey and overcast, but it was quite lovely and even warm once we began hiking. We then returned to town for a great seafood lunch at "one of the best seafood restaurants of 2013," The Oar House. (and dessert of macaroons in the local market).

 

Howth (hoooth)


Julie and I bolted back into town to try to get a tour of Abbey Theatre that I had talked us onto the night before. Although we weren’t able to get an official tour due to a performance, the guide who felt bad about mixing up the days on us gave us a lighting round tour that included an unofficial glance into costume storage, fabric room, shoe storage, and wigs.


Julie's tempura courgette blossoms

 


 

Another great dinner with Mary, Kelly, and Ashley from the ship, and a performance of Major Barbara at the Abbey.  Beautiful production values with a really cool moving set, and Paul McGann (the 8th Doctor!!) was fantastic.









With Mary, Ashley, and Kelly at the Abbey Theatre







Giant Hobbit hole!

Day 3 (tired yet?) was our day trip out to the Cliffs of Moher. We got up at the crack of pre-dawn and slept our way across the country. After a quick photo stop in Limerick to see King John’s castle over the Shannon, we arrived in rolling hills and the Cliffs. The visitor center looked like a giant Hobbit building! The cliffs were amazing (once we dragged ourselves away from the happy Irish cows), and we walked out along the wild side a bit away from the fenced in parkland. These stunning cliffs may be recognizable as the Cliffs of Insanity from The Princess Bride, and the location of Voldemort’s cave for Regulus’s locket. We were promised puffins in all the signage, but no go.

Our trip also took us out to the Burren, a beautiful rock surface along the coast on the West side of Ireland. Note: also HP filming, as one of the cold, lonely camping locales. This might have been one of the more amazing landscapes we saw on the whole trip. It was just so huge, and we continued to see stretches of it up and down the coast as we drove on. After a stop in little Doolin for lunch, and the very beautiful ruins and graveyard of Corcomroe Abbey, we headed home.
 
 


Seems like a good idea!

Looking sadly into the distance like Hermione

Happy Irish cows

 




















Our lovely house-host served us homemade crepes for dinner. Despite it being Sunday night, we tracked down a local pub with more live music--an Irish band doing bluegrass and Americana music!! The crowd was 3 am drunk at 10 pm due to a huge Gaelic football game that day, but the music was pretty good, and we had a lovely last night in Dublin.


The Final day was leisurely shopping and finding a few gifts and photo ops… we returned to our beloved Sheridan’s cheesemongers (they give you lots of cheese tastings to help you find what you want!) for an elevensies of goat cheese, baguette, and pesto, and the met Mary and Kelly from the ship by chance in Grafton Street.


Elevensies from Sheridan's Cheesemongers

The lunch-time play they had heard about was sold out, so we wandered further along town to find the historic district, meandering through Dublin Castle on our way to the Brazen Head--the oldest pub in Dublin and where Robin Hood was rumored to drink. It had a beautiful medieval style courtyard where we had a classically Irish lunch, cider-blacks, and a lovely visit.
 
 


"Falling slowly...."

  
   
  
 

On our way back, we found Walton’s music store, where the piano scene from Once was filmed and Glen Hansard used to hang out, near George’s Arcade (also a great place for shopping, the Arcade, and where I had my first travel-weary lunch on my arrival day!).

 




Thank you, Dublin! And thank you to Julie and all her new friends on the ship for sharing a tiny portion of their trip with me.