May 7, 2018

  Geographically Dublin is about as far north as Edmonton in Canada. 

  Breakfast, which reminded us of the breakfast at the motel in San Antonio Chile in December, started with orange juice and coffee and included Activa yogurt, thin slices of ham with whole grain bread and optional cheese as well as toast & marmalade.

  The sky was partly cloudy, there was a little wind and the temperature was 10 C with a predicted high of 22 C and partly sunny.  All day we were told how lucky we were to have such a gorgeous day since during the last 2.5 weeks of April, it rained every day.

  We out the door by 8:30 am after a nine hour sleep.  We walked over to the Do Dublin office on O’Connell Street in 35 minutes, but they were closed for the bank holiday.  We walked back across the Liffey River to another tour sales office and bought tickets for a half day bus tour at 9:30 am leaving just past the Do Dublin office further up O’Connell Street.  We arrived with five minutes to spare for the tour out to Malahide Castle and a Coastal Tour which included the northern part of Dublin Bay.

   Our driver gave us a history of the Dublin area and pointed out sights during the 25 minute drive to Malahide Castle.  We passed the boyhood school of one of the members of the U2 band and the 12^thcentury stone roofed church St. Doulagh’s Church. 

   The invasion of the Anglo-Normans knights from England in 1169 changed Ireland.  The peasants of the day had never seen horses or highly trained cavalry and were easily defeated. With the conquering of Ireland, the English king gave land to his knights and they built small wooden residences with moats that were later expanded into stone tower houses and stone castles, with expansions added over the centuries. One of these castles is Malahide Castle.  The property was given to Robert Talbot and stayed in the family over eight centuries and 30 generations until 1976 when it was sold to the Irish government.  The person in the Talbot line needed to sell the property to pay the inheritance tax from her brother’s death. The estate covers many acres. Some areas are used as the venue for large rock concerts by musicians like Pink and the Black Eyed Peas while there are other areas set aside as sports grounds for rugby and soccer.

   The stone tower house part of Malahide Castle was built in the 1330s. Then, several centuries later, the castle additions included the great hall, and later another drawing room and bedrooms.  Bathrooms were added in the late 19^thcentury and more renovations were done in the 1950s.  The wood floors are made of wide planks. The original drawing room of the tower house was paneled in beautifully carved wood and included a priest’s hole. One of the lords had a dream that this room should be paneled in white marble with engravings, but he realized that he couldn’t afford that and when the carved panels were completed they were painted white for several centuries. Then a future generation expanded the room, added windows for light and painted the paneling black. The table is original to the room. 

   The newer drawing room is painted orange, a most unusual colour in its time, and symbolized great wealth because it was a difficult colour to make.  It started a trend in 17^thcentury Ireland and England. The floors are covered in a gigantic Chinese 400 square foot rug.  Most of the paintings in the castle are by 18^thcentury artists and are on loan from the National Gallery.  All the frames are gilded with gold leaf. The large mirror over the three meter mantel was used to reflect the light of the candles.  It was too high for people to see their reflections.

   The two upper storeys are bedrooms for the family and staff. The lord and lady of the house had separate bedrooms with circular corner dressing rooms. The bathroom on the family’s level had a free standing copper bathtub.

   The large table in the great hall, which was built in 1475, can seat 22 people.  It has a balcony from which musicians would serenade the guests. On the morning of July 1, 1690, 15 Talbot men ate breakfast at the table then rode off to try to repel William of Orange’s claim to the Irish throne in the Battle of the Boyne, many kilometers further north of Malahide. Only one survived the battle, Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnell.  

  After the castle tour, the group was given over an hour to explore the property and gift shop.  We walked through the well-kept grounds including the West Lawn and woodland, listening to the calls of different birds including peacocks.  We passed the ruins of the castle’s chapel.

    Once back on the bus, the route back to Dublin was a scenic coastal drive along the Irish Sea around to Dublin Bay through the towns of Malahide, Port Marnock, Baldoyle, Sutton and stopped for a walk on the pier in Howth. The price of gas in Dublin is €1.36 per liter which is about $2.18 Canadian.  Some of the towns are fishing ports and some have marinas, Howth has both.  At the end of the pier, which is lined with restaurants, is a lighthouse and another lighthouse is by the harbour entrance.  Across the harbour from Howth is Ireland Eye island. After strolling along the pier, we walked back to the street and bought gelato in waffle cones at Amores next to the Howth Market. From Howth, through Sutton and on to Dublin is a cycling track and walkway running parallel to Dublin Bay, where there is an island accessed by a causeway.  The island is only for animals but cars are allowed for day trips.  The island is a result of the buildup of sediment from construction of a North Bull breakwater for Dublin Bay. An engineering survey for the project was done in 1801 by Captain Bligh formerly of HMS Bountyover a decade before.  Half of his crew had mutinied and sent Bligh and loyal crew members adrift is a large dinghy near Fiji in the South Pacific in 1789.

    Near Clontaf is a carved tree, a partial preservation of a diseased cedar tree, sculpted by Tommy Craig of Newcastle.  We saw sculpted trees similar to the cedar carving in Argentina in January.  From the view of Dublin Bay you can see the old smoke stacks of the Port of Dublin, from where we will be boarding a ship in three days for the cruise to Iceland.

   Our driver talked more about Dublin’s history as a Viking settlement from the 9^thcentury and the repelling of the Vikings by Brian the Brave who had united the tribes of Ireland to defeat the Vikings in 1020.  The Vikings had destroyed many monasteries when they conquered Ireland.  People lived around the monasteries rather than in towns.  The Vikings set up Dublin as a trading center and a town grew there. Brian the Brave became the first King of Ireland.

  After the bus tour we ate a quick lunch of a shared Clubhouse sandwich and milkshakes at Eddie Rocket’s diner on Anne Street.  Then we walked to Trinity College, five minutes away, for a 3 pm walking tour.

  Donal was the guide. He teaches Irish history at the University of Dublin.  He gave us a history of Trinity College founded in the 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I. Students had to be male, landowners and Protestant.  When the ban was lifted to include Catholics and Presbyterians, the Catholic Church banned members from attended the university unless they received special permission from the church which lasted until the 1970s.  Women were admitted in 1915, before they had a right to vote.  By the entrance to the college is a statue of Edmund Burke, an 18^thcentury supporter of the American Revolution, but not the close by French Revolution.

  Across from Trinity College the first Irish Parliament Building was built in 1731.  It was the first purpose built double chamber building of its kind.  Even London’s parliament is housed in a former abbey. The parliament had been meeting in Christ Church Cathedral.  Thomas Payne wrote the Rights of Man. He was a republican and supported Irish rule. Irish Republicanism was founded in 1791 in a pub.  In 1796, French soldiers arrived on the Irish west coast to aid the revolutionaries, but due to bad weather the revolt was called off.  Again in 1798, French soldiers arrived of the Irish west coast and this time fought with the revolutionaries, but English forces were sent from Liverpool and crushed the rebels.  This scared the Irish Parliamentarians so much that they fled to England and sold the Parliament building to the Bank of Ireland. Their renovations to the building closed in all the windows since there was a tax on building with windows and has remained that way ever since.  The window tax was known as “Daylight Robbery”.

   Next, we walked to Blooms Hotel where in 2015 an artist painted murals on all four exterior walls based on James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, which is a fictitious day in the life of Dublin – June 16, 1904.  The main character is Leopold Bloom.  Dubliners salute Ulysses each June 16^th.

  Next, we were strolled over to Dublin Castle, starting with the approach where we saw the 1230 Records Tower, the 19^thcentury Chapel Royal and the Georgian Administration building before entering the castle courtyard.  The castle is where the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, a representative of the British crown lived and ruled Ireland from 1204 (after the 1169 Anglo-Norman invasion by Richard de Clare aka Strongbow) to 1922 (after which Ireland became a republic after their Independence War).  In the courtyard is the entrance to royal staterooms and the Bedford Tower, the former home of the Irish Crown jewels which were stolen in 1907 and never recovered.

  The current Irish flag was presented to Irish representatives to a meeting in France. The green is for the Catholics, the orange is for the Protestants and the white between stands for peace.

  The final stop was the end of the lane to the venue where Fredrick Handel conducted the first ever concert of his Messiah near Christ Church Cathedral being sung by some of the Christ Church choir boys and a famous English songstress on April 13, 1742.  Handel Day is still celebrated on April 13.

   There are two rivers in Dublin the Liffey and the underground, Poddle.  They were part of the origin of the name Dublin in Hibernia Norse or Ireland Viking.

   Close by Christ Church Cathedral is Dublinia which gives the history of Dublin and a is a good place to visit.

   After the tour we walked down Dame Street and stopped at Bobo’s Goumet Irish Burgers for supper.  We ordered Guinness draught beer accompanied by a Moroccan lamb burger and Chenin Blanc wine with a goat cheese & beetroot salad. Then we walked back to the B&B through St. Stephen’s Park, where lots of people were enjoying the +22 C evening.

Today’s total distance walked was 17.77 km.