Dublin and the North of Ireland

Dublin

I have some very important advice for people driving to Dublin. Don’t drive to the touristy area of Dublin during rush hour traffic. It was truly terrible. Lots of roads closed to only taxis and busses (which didn’t stop us from driving on them) and both Google and Apple Maps led us astray. It took almost half an hour before we very gratefully pulled into a parking garage and left the car until it was time to drive it back to the airport to turn it in.

Where are the cars supposed to go? By the time you see this sign, you’re done for.

We stayed in the Temple Bar part of town, which is a main tourist section. It is right next to the Lithy River and close to Trinity College. It is full of pubs and restaurants and people. I wandered a bit that night and enjoyed seeing the main busker street (where U2 and Hozier both performed), a cool city park, and a street where open containers don’t mean a darn thing. It was so funny, this street had bars, but most people brought their own drinks and just set up shop lining the curb. Imagine a bunch of people waiting for a parade, but there isn’t a parade, and they all have a variety of alcohol. Ha!

I even saw box of wine. Classy.

Trinity College

Rick Steves told me that the Book of Kells was a the best thing to see in Dublin so I convinced my family to take a tour of Trinity College and the Book of Kells. The tour was really fun; a recent grad named Anya showed us around several buildings of her school and gave us insight to student culture. My favorite stories were that students refuse to walk under a bell tower because no one knows when it will go off and if it goes off when you are under it you’ll never graduate. Also, some lame dean said women would graduate Trinity over his dead body, and at the same time his funeral was happening at the campus chapel the first woman was passing her exams across the courtyard. Suck it, old man!

Other highlights of the tour were seeing the bones of Irish Elk (ginormous prehistoric elk whose bones were preserved in bogs) and the Library. This library is very impressive, but it only has a couple bays of books on exhibit because they are performing a huge cleaning project. If we would have visited next year, we wouldn’t have seen any! Busts line the library walls of famous people throughout history and only recently did they add the first four women. 🙄

This is near the top of the list for prettiest libraries I’ve seen. Even without books.

Book of Kells

After the campus tour we walked through the Book of Kells experience building, which was very interactive. The first part had talking head busts of the folks we had just seen in the library that were animated like Harry Potter. We then learned all about what the Book of Kells is: a beautifully decorated copy of the first four books of the bible, copied by monks on a remote island around the 8th century. It’s a miracle this book survived all this time through all the viking raids and other crazy events of history. The book itself was in a glass display case and is pretty large. The colors are vibrant and some tourist almost got tackled by a worker when he illegally tried to take a picture. (Not really, but she was shouting at him as soon as he lifted his phone in the direction of the book.)

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John with their symbolic looks.

Exploring Dublin

We went for a ride of Dublin on a hop on hop off bus next. These things are super touristy, but I really do like them. You get a good view of the town and don’t have to worry about driving or navigating the streets. I made note of several places I wanted to visit the next day. My sister did not like the Guiness factory…it smelled so strongly for blocks! It was kind of a smoky scent that a taxi driver later told us you get used to. For dinner that night we ended up at a pub nearby our hotel. There weren’t that many people when we got there, but by the end it was packed! A trio of fellas were performing with guitars and an accordion. It was so loud but reminded me how much I like live music in small bars. The next day my cousins flew home but my sister and I spent another day exploring Dublin.

Temple Bar pubs were hopping!

Dublin highlights

Here are some highlights of Dublin.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral: Sunday’s hours were limited so we had to speed walk through the largest cathedral in Ireland, but we did learn things from the audio tour. The cathedral stained glass is very pretty and there is a metal door with a hole through it. This was from when two groups were fighting (I don’t remember the names, but odds are they both started with Mac) and one of them called a truce. The other side didn’t believe them, so the first guy cut a hole through the door and stuck his arm through. His point was a show of faith—the other side could have cut his arm off. Tragically, we got to Christchurch Cathedral fifteen minutes after the last visit and so I couldn’t go in. I will definitely need to visit Dublin again to see this church.

Would you trust him?

Irish uprising of 1916: we learned all about the uprising against the British in 1916. The Irish revolutionaries had enough of the British occupation and decided to fight. Unfortunately for them, they timed it wrong. Instead of the British troops all being in Europe to fight in WW1, they hadn’t quite made it that far yet and could quickly divert to Ireland to put down the uprising. The leaders were all executed and you can apparently still see bullets and shrapnel in some buildings.
The Duke of Wellington was from Ireland and he has a big old obelisk in the enormous Phoenix Park, the only bigger one is the Washington monument.
The mayor of Dublin is elected every year and each mayor gets to live in a mansion and is allotted 11,000 pints of Guinness.
There are statutes dedicated to the Great Famine in the 1850s, during which over a million Irish died and two million emigrated. Honestly, my biggest takeaway about the politics and history of Ireland is that the British were real jerks. They let the Irish starve during the famine instead of helping because fewer Irish was better for them. Two tour guides and one taxi driver all agreed that if the British hadn’t done such a crappy job with Ireland, the wars and fighting wouldn’t have happened.
The Shelburne/St. Patrick’s Irish Premier League football match was a lot of fun. It was very local feeling but the players were really good. The fans for the other team had more to cheer about since they scored twice and lit off firework things and sang songs. We got goujons (chicken strips) and fries with curry sauce, which was different from my usual pretzel and cheese at sporting events. I felt like I was in Ted Lasso.

Not sure what these things are, but I am sure they wouldn’t make it through security in the US

We took a night bus tour and I really enjoyed it. Traffic was all gone by 9 PM so we went further out and saw the Docklands part of Dublin, a fancy area where all the tech companies have their buildings. It was also neat to see the buildings and bridges with lights on them.

The North of Ireland

The next day we went on a full day tour to the North of Ireland (I was corrected to not call it Northern Ireland). It was a great day full of really cool stops.

Belfast

Our first stop was to Belfast where we got off the bus and into a taxi cab driven by a local driver. I was on the backwards seat in the cab! Our driver, Sean, gave us so much information about the Troubles and what went down in this part of the island for last couple hundred years. It was wild.

These taxis had two fold down seats facing the back row of seats.

Gates and murals: they still close several gates in the city at night to separate the Protestant and Catholic communities. It is silly; you can go around them to get where you need to go but it takes longer. Sean said they have started staggering the close times and he thinks eventually they’ll keep them open always but the old timers still get a warm fuzzy feeling knowing they are there.
The Peace Wall: we signed our names to the Peace Wall, a large painted stretch of wall where loads of people sign to encourage and inspire peace. One side of the Peace Wall is Protestant and the other side is Catholic and Sean pointed out that the Protestant side had lots of space and a green grassy area and the Catholic side was ten feet behind the houses. So not exactly even for an idea that is supposed to soothe hard feelings.

All we are saying, is give peace a chance!

Hunger Strikers mural: there is a big mural of Bobby Sands, the main hunger striker of a dozen who died in 1981 while being held as political prisoners of the British. Bobby Sands was elected to Parliament during the hunger strike, but Margaret Thatcher refused to honor it. Sean did not have nice things to say about Ms. Thatcher.

Bobby Sands (and the others) were in a long line of Irish who lost their lives fighting for what they believed.

Una, our tour guide, told us how when she was 11 and growing up in Belfast, a British officer forced his way into her house, threw her against a wall and broke her nose. He returned the next day to tell her mom that they got the wrong house, but didn’t apologize or offer to make anything right. The Catholics couldn’t do anything about crappy stuff like this happening in Belfast. It is crazy, because in America we got the spin of the IRA is terrible, but after hearing from actual people there, I understand where they were coming from.
Sean showed us several Protestant neighborhoods that were flying the British flag along with a flag that was basically a British paramilitary flag. I equate it to the Confederate flag and wonder why people are how they are. 🤮
Titanic building museum: we opted for the taxi tour instead of going to the Titanic museum but it looked pretty cool, like a giant iceberg. The ship was built in Belfast so the museum talked about that. Maybe someday I’ll go back.

Iceberg, dead ahead!

Dunluce castle

Our next stop was to the ruins of Dunluce Castle. This castle was used as Westeros in the Game of Thrones (not that I know what that is, they just said it). It was very pretty perched on a green patch. We had glorious weather so we could see several islands, one of which was part of Scotland and one was Rathlin Island. We learned that in the 1600s the Irish leader who lived at this castle was getting a bit to powerful so Queen Elizabeth sent troops over to take the land and then let the leaders swear to be good British and rent it from her. The most horrible thing about this area was that Sorely Boy MacDonnell (real name) sent the civilians including his wife and children over to Rathlin Island to be safe. Francis Drake and another a-hole decided to kill everyone on the island anyway, while Sorely Boy had to watch from the mainland. They slaughtered several hundred people that day and later joked about it.

This castle was super pretty. I wouldn’t mind living there! As long as the murderous British stayed far away.

Giant’s Causeway

Seeing Giant’s Causeway was my main motivation for this tour. The pictures of the rocks are so cool I’ve always wanted to go. After arriving, we walked an upper trail on top of the cliff for about 30 minutes. It was pretty, but I was a little disappointed because it didn’t look how I thought it would. However, when we took the bottom trail back was I able to see the rock formations that I had been hoping for. My sis has a math degree and she was blown away by the tessellations (her word). The legend is that a giant from Scotland came over to fight a giant from Ireland. The Irish giant’s wife realized her hubs was gonna get worked so she tricked the Scottish Giant into thinking the Irish one was much bigger than he was. The Scottish Giant decided not to fight scampered right back to Scotland creating the stepping stones in the rocks. Honestly, the world would be a better place if more women were in charge.

I don’t understand how the earth made the rocks look like this, but it was super cool.

After playing on the rocks for a while, we visited a cafe and had our final Guinness stew of the trip. We saved the best for last! That stew plus a delicious scone with jam and cream will have me daydreaming of Ireland for years to come.

Ireland, I am going home

After eating we began the long drive back to Dublin. It was a long day, but totally worth it. The next morning, we left the Emerald Isle in the rear view mirror and headed west.