May 8, 2018

  Today the morning was a bit rainy when we took a 30 minute walk along the Portobello canal after breakfast. We then walked over to the Radisson Blu Royal hotel, just a 15 minute walk. We had zipped the small backpacks onto the larger backpacks and hoisted a large backpack each and easily walked the kilometer over to the hotel and checked in about 10:30 a.m., around the time that most of our cruise group would be landing at Dublin airport. We are joining the travel group that also are going on the 10 night Ireland Iceland cruise.  Cathie and Randy are arriving with the group that is being hosted by Brian and Brendene.  We have cruised with both coupes before. Rounding out the group are Karen & Peter plus people from Ontario and British Columbia, whom we will meet in the next few days in Dublin.

  By 11, we were out exploring. We turned left and followed the street to an arch and found a small alley that took us to the south side street of Dublin Castle where the Chester Beatty Library and Dubh Linn Gardens are located. We walked into the garden which is mainly grass with paths laid out on the original site of the Viking trading center Dubh Linn, which means Black Pool in Gaelic.  It was built near the convergence of the Liffey River and the Poddle River, which today is an underground river.  The paths are in a pattern of the Celtic interlocking circles and are a modern day helicopter landing pad. On the other side of the street was the back side of Dublin Castle’s state apartments which are painted in blocks of different bright colours. We continued on our way and passed Blooms Hotel again and took photos of the colourful side and the portraits at the back of James Joyce’s Ulysses character, Leopold Bloom. Then we walked down Anglesea Street and saw an Irish Restaurant with a nice menu and hoped that we could remember its location at supper time. We eventually arrived at the O’Connell Street Do Dublin office to validate our 48 hour pass for the Hop-on Hop-Off bus. We just missed the 11:45 bus departure from the office but caught it just two blocks away at the General Post Office stop at noon. The complete route takes over two hours. 

   We passed the back of the Customs House, which shows well. Next was the stop for EPIC, the Irish Emigration Museum, and the nearby statues which are in memory of the two million people who died or emigrated from Ireland during the 1840s Potato Famine. The bus crossed the Liffey river on the eight year old Samuel Beckett Bridge, which resembles an Irish harp, for the southern part of the route.  The southern section stops near Grand Canal Square, passes the house where Oscar Wilde was born, the National Art Gallery, Merrion Square, St. Stephen’s Green, Trinity College, old Parliament Building, Temple Bar neighbourhood, City Hall, Dublin Castle, Christ Church Cathedral, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Teeling Whiskey Distillery, Guinness Brewery, Irish Museum of Modern Art, which is housed in a former 18^thcentury hospital surrounded by lawns, close by is the former Kelmainham Gaol, where 15 rebel leaders of the 1916 Easter Uprising were executed. Crossing back over the Liffey River we passed Heuston train station and entered Phoenix Park which covers 1,052 acres where the Wellington Obelisk, celebrating General Wellington’s 1814 victory over Napoleon Bonaparte’s French Army at the Battle of Waterloo in today’s Belgium; the American Embassy; the Irish President’s official residence and the Dublin Zoo are found. In 1662 these former monastery grounds had 15 acres fenced off as Royal hunting grounds, which were stocked with deer, pheasants and partridges that were gratefully poached by the local residents. At night, the main road is lit by the last remaining functioning gas lights in Europe. We then drove toward the city center passing the National Collins Barracks Museum, which was built in the first years of the 1800s.  The bus had been giving the driver grief due to low oil pressure, so at the stop by the Four Courts the driver waited for a replacement bus and some passengers including us departed.  The Four Courts area houses four of the five Republic of Ireland high courts. We walked the 1.5 km to the Writers Museum on Parnell Square, which was where we had planned to leave the bus. 

    As usual when using maps supplied by hotels, we took some wrong turns close to the museum since not all the streets were shown on the map along with not being named correctly on the map.  This has happened on more than one occasion over the past decade.  We finally found the Writers Museum, but since it was after 2 p.m.it was closed for lunch, we stopped across the street at the Candy Café, on Frederick Street, for coffee and a scone. We spent 90 minutes learning about Ireland’s writers over the past 300 years including 3 Nobel Prize for Literature winners William Butler (W.B.) Yeats in 1923, George Bernard Shaw in 1925 and Samuel Beckett in 1969. Other well-known Irish authors and playwrights are Jonathan Swift, dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, who wrote “Gullivers Travels”; James Joyce, who wrote the play “The Importance of Being Earnest,” and Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, to name a few.

   Next, we decided to walk to the mouth of the Liffey River close to the Port of Dublin to see which cruise ships were in port.  It took about 40 minutes. We saw the Silversea Silver Muse and Norwegian Cruise Lines Jade, both of which left on the evening tide. The port of Dublin is not far from the Convention Center Dublin which opened in 2010. We took photos along the way including the Charles Stewart Parnell obelisk, the colourful St. Mary Preschool building beside the Presbytery next to the 1908 Immaculate Heart of Mary church, river views of some of the bridges, and Samuel Beckett bridge. Near the O’Connell Bridge, we felt our energy drain and stopped at the Happy Shop to purchase three 38 gram chocolate bars to share – a Mars bar, a Picnic bar which is a bit like an Oh Henry bar and a Cadbury Double Decker which is a nougat chocolate bar.  Refuelled we went in search of the Irish restaurant that we remembered from our morning stroll through the Temple Bar neighbourhood.

   We retraced our steps from O’Connell Street and walked right past it and passed the Bloom Hotel before we realized that we were too far.  Turning around we found O’Shea’s Traditional Irish Restaurant at 23 Anglesea Street.  It is a small 30 seat restaurant with tables covered in white tablecloths.  We ordered the Chef’s special which was lamb cutlets with mint sauce, baked potato and salad plus a Baileys coffee and the Mixed Grill of a lamb cutlet, BBQ ribs, sausages, fried egg, 2 strips of bacon, mushrooms and fries plus a pint of Guinness draught beer. 

   After dinner it was just at 10 minute walk back to the Radisson Blu Royal where we met our cruise group hosts, Brian and Brendene by the elevator on their way to dinner.

We could finally relax with a glass of Elderberry Cordial that we bought yesterday, after a busy day.

Today’s total distance walked was 18.64 km, more than double our daily goal at home.