Dublin. What a city. What an amazing city. Not at all what I expected and so much more. Going into this adventure I've tried to do as little research as possible order to protect my innocence of the place and have his few preconceived notions as possible, much to the chagrin of my feet. (I’ll come back to them later) with that mindset as my mantra for the day I set off. Now what better way to start the day and with the traditional for English breakfast. (which by the way it's probably 9 1/2 days worth of caloric intake; what with the baked beans, hashbrowns, gigantic sausage, slices of ham that they call bacon, fried tomato, sautéed mushrooms, scrambled eggs, and pieces of toast and all)
(This fine meal was brought to you by the folks at the Travelodge Dublin Airport in swords, Ireland)
Hey now, I'm not knocking it, it's rather quite good. It's just a lot for early in the morning. After that fine meal, I hopped into my noble steed, Reginald, and headed for Dublin city centre. Once in the city center I found myself a nice car park right next to Christ Church Cathedral and set off for the day's adventures .
Unbeknownst to me this weekend was Dublin’s pride weekend. Also unbeknownst to me, this city loves to celebrate. I've never been to or really even around a private event before but holy moly was everyone a embracing the event. All the shops were either selling merchandise or showing their support in some fashion or another. I've always heard that the Irish people are lovely and very friendly, I suppose I saw a fair amount out that all my stops.
My first official sightseeing destination for the day and Ireland at large was Trinity College. Whilst at the Trinity College I was able to go and see the Book of Kells. The Book of Kells, if you were unaware, copy of the four Gospels created the ninth century. It blows my mind that some 1200 years later we still have these copies of holy scripture and amazing pieces of art. I wish I could have pictures to show you that I took today, but I cannot as they are wholly and completely prohibited. So here, have someone else's picture from.
This book of wonder and amazement lead into the Harry Potterest and bustiest place I've ever been, the long room. It's an extremely long room, some 200 feet long library full of several Bagillion books. (It must be true, the tour guides totally said so)
After Trinity College I moseyed on over to St. Stephen’s Green and had a nice walk around the park, saw some pigeons fight a seagull for some bread and a bunch of youths enjoying the view… of their mobile phone screens. Lovely to see that disinterest of today’s youngins is universal among cultures (old man rant done). It really is a lovely place. See? Bartleby thoroughly enjoyed it.
St. Stephens Green led me to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. If you ever find yourself in Dublin, find yourself in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, it’s incredible and amazing.
Now, question for all y’all. When one has finished up at church where’s the next logical stop? You guessed it, the Guinness Storehouse of course.
Unfortunately, probably for everyone involved, the storehouse was closed for the day. Bummer.
Even so, it was neat to see an iconic location. Funfact: the wife of señor Guinness was pregnant 21 times. 17 years of her life were spent being pregnant.
At the doors of the storeouse I was able to go hop on a bus and catch a tour around the rest of the city. I was carted around with a bunch of drunken hillbilly Virginians who were, to be fair, having a great time but were kindly asked to not moon any of the passers by from the upper deck of the bus.
After I’d had quite enough of their liveries I decided to hop off north of The River Liffey. It ended up being a mighty fine thing to get off there as there was all sorts of shopping and massive amounts of people, on account of the whole pride thing. (Did I mention peope in Dublin love to have a good time? Just in case, they do) After a while my dogs started barking and my feet were D-U-N dun. Good thing I was about a mile and a bit from the car park.
On my way back I started taking random side streets here and there which was kinda fun; I saw a little bit more grit to the city that way, more of the day-to-day stuff which was kinda neat. In that respect it reminded me of Cincinnati; it’s a lovely downtown area but stray just a little bit and you’ll find a bit more of the real city.
When I was just about to the car park something hit me. Or rather, nearly hit me. And a few others. Apparently pedestrians rights of way aren’t always a thing. Who knew? Another thing also occurred to me after that exhilarating moment, I needed dinner. I’d planned on finding some pub along the way but because of the aforementioned pride weekend they were crazy busy and I was mad crazy hungry. So naturally, the one place that happens to not be busy is Eddie Rockets, basically, Johnny Rockets but with doormen. Sew Fantseh!!!!
(I’m not gonna lie, this was a seriously good burger. Like really good. And it was nicely priced.) #ThanksBrexit
My tasty burger finished, I crawled back to my Cactus as my feet/barking dogs were no longer chagrinning, cuz by this point they was sha-grumpy.
And this that lovely image I fell asleep, woke up at like 4 or something with cold and pruney feet and went to bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment