Friday, September 15, 2006
Saturday & Sunday August 19th & 20th---Dublin
This is our second change of plans concerning. Our original itinerary called for us to go to Ireland after we were in Tignes, France. We changed that and went to Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris that week. This week we are supposed to be in Finland. We decided we would rather spend the week in Ireland so we called and canceled Finland. With the experience we had last week in Scotland with no reservations, we did not want to repeat that pressure so I got on line and made us some reservations in Ireland. We got a taxi to the train station at Prestatyn and took a train down to Hollyhead, Wales which is a Stena Line ferry terminal. It was a rainy day and not a good day to be out and about. We were fortunate that the train station in Hollyhead was in the same building and right downstairs from the ferry terminal. We didn’t have to fight the elements. This a longer boat ride than the trip across the English Channel was. I think we were on the boat about two and a half hours. The boat was a lot bigger also. We were able to check our luggage instead of drag it around with us. We had lunch and relaxed and were ready to see Ireland when we arrived. We lined up for passport inspection and Mary realized that she had left her passport in one of the bags which was checked, so she had to go to baggage claim and bring her passport back. I stayed with the bags while she did all that. I think she gat a little reprimand from the man about not keeping the passport with her for security.
We didn’t get to do all we would have liked in Wales. For instance there are two towns, Chester and Conwy, which are old Roman fortifications and still have the walls and towers around. You can still walk on top of the wall all the way around Chester. These pictures in this post are of the fort at Conwy taken from the train in the rain. We just don’t ever have time to do all we would like to do.
We followed the coast line of the Irish Sea down to Hollyhead. The area is tourist and farms. There is a pretty big sea port at Holleyhead. The ferry runs from there to Dun Laoghaire Harbour near Dublin. That is pronounced Dun Leary by most of the Irish. We took a DART train from the Harbour to a station near our hotel and then took a taxi to the hotel. We were not in City center because we wanted to be on the North side which is the direction of the airport. We spent Saturday and Sunday in Dublin. On Sunday night we went out about three miles to the airport and rented a car so we could do a driving tour of the real Ireland. Everyone we talked to in Ireland said Dublin is not the real Ireland, Cork, Kerry and Galway is, so that was our plan.
Dublin has the DART train system which is very limited in its coverage. They have no underground as the other cities have, but they do have a very extensive city bus system. We were able to travel anywhere we wanted to go on a bus at a very reasonable fare. We got directions from a Harbour Policeman on how to get to our hotel. He cautioned us about getting taxi numbers so the taxi drivers would be less likely to overcharge us.
Our hotel was a Days Inn. It was a high rise and did not try to compete with the big hotels. We reserved a private room with a bathroom. I guess to get that accommodation we had to have a suite. We had a sitting room with a Fridge and Microwave as well as a sink and a tea kettle. Then we had a bedroom across the hall from the bathroom. We paid more than we have anywhere else, but not nearly like we would pay for a double room in a mainstream hotel. It had a good restaurant and we had breakfast and dinner there during our stay.
On Sunday morning we took a bus down to O’Connell Street where there is a Tourism Office and the City Bus Tours start and end. On the bus and to a greater extent on the street we saw a lot of people in their team colors because there were two big soccer (football) games in town. The people are more into soccer than Americans are into college football. We even saw one pipe band marching down the street. We looked around and began to walk down O’Connell toward Trinity College. We went onto the grounds of Trinity College and took some pictures. We did not take the time to go inside the buildings. It is a beautiful area, and is the cultural center of Dublin even today. We walked on Grafton Street which is one of the main shopping streets in the center of the town to the Tourism Office which is located in a beautiful building of the Old St Andrews Church and bought tickets for our tour. Our walk was so pleasant that we didn’t want to get on the bus.
We had already seen a lot of things which were covered on the Bus Tour. On O’Connell there is a Statue of Jim Larkin who lived from 1874-1947 The inscriptions was simply Voice of the Rising. There is an old beautiful building which is the General Post Office and it was taken over by the Rebel faction in the early days of the Rising and became their headquarters. In front, in the median on O’Connell Street is a spire in
memory of the Easter Rising and a Statute of William Smith O’Brien who was executed for high treason in 1848. Just before the River Liffey is a Statue of John O’Connell who was known as the great catholic liberator. He led the fight for rights of catholics who were oppressed even though the were a huge majority.
This Statue as well as many of the buildings in this street still carries the bullet holes from the fighting during the uprising.
Still walking we crossed the River and visited Trinity College. Across the street at the intersection of Grafton is the Bank of Ireland housed in the building which used to contain the two houses of Parliament. There was an open air market area at this intersection and we did a little shopping for keep sakes. We also got some stuff at the Tourist Office before we boarded the bus. We passed Dublin Castle, but it was surrounded by fences and other buildings and we did not see a lot of it. Our guide said it was more of an 18th Century Palace than a Castle.
The next point on our tour was Christ’s Church. It is a Catholic Church and is the oldest in Dublin. The Church was built on land donated by the Viking King Cedrick in 1038. Just down the street is St Patrick’s Cathedral. It was built in 1192. Both these churches are keystones in the growth of the city of Dublin. They have been protestant since Henry VIII split with the Catholic church because the would not give him a divorce. From 1720-1731 Jonathon Swift was the Dean of the St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I think he later became kinda well know as a writer. Our guide told that Gullivers Travels was not intended as a novel for young people, but as a political treaties.
It seemed that in every square we saw a church or a pub. We were told that Dublin has 650 churches and 800 pubs. The country of Ireland is impacted by their pubs and by the fact that Guiness has its brewery and store house in the city of Dublin. About one fourth of the population of the Island lives in Dublin. Guiness does not employee as many of the citizens as it once did because of technology. It is still said that once a Guiness employee always a guiness employee. Guiness has 64 acres of city property. Guiness is, I believe, the largest exporter of spirits in the world. They export over 4,000,000 pints of Guiness per day. The original home of Author Guiness still stands next to the main entrance to the brewery. He and his wife raised 21 children there. The company provides for the health of employees at their own medical center. They have entertainment, sports and exercise centers and offer a self contained environment for their employees, with company owned housing which they make affordable to the group. This is more important when you consider that the average income for citizens of Dublin is 28,000 pounds and the average home costs 400,000.
A dark part of the history of Ireland and Dublin is Gallows Hill and Kilmanham Jail. The jail was shut down in 1923 after the Civil, but many of the well known manes in Irish history were residents of the Jail and were executed there. If 1966 on the 50th anniversary the three main stations in Dublin were re named after Sean Houston, Pearse and O’Connell who were all executed at Kilmanham Jail after the Rising.
Phoenix Park is 1,752 acres of fenced park. That makes it the largest fenced city park in Europe. It was opened in 1830 on land that, like so many city parks in Europe, had been a Royal Hunting Preserve. The official residence of the President is in the park, as is the Wellington Waterloo Monument which is the second tallest obelisk in the world next to the Washington Monument. The largest crowd to ever attend an event in Phoenix Park was in 1979 when Pope John Paul II read Mass in the park. There were one and one-half million people in attendance. At that time, the population was only about 3,000,000 so about half of the population was there. I can’t hardly get my mind around that. That is probably why there are 800 pubs. If you can get a million and a half people together for mass think how many you can attract to a pint of Guinness.
Into the newer part of the city we passed some things which are totally modern. There is a hotel which is owned by Bono from the rock U-2. It has a pent house which rents for 2100 pounds per night. That’s modern!!! We entered an entire section of the city which, because of the period architecture, is Georgian design. Our guide said you can tell if it is Georgian if the windows get smaller on each floor above the other. It was believed that this would give the impression of height to the buildings. All the houses in the buildings wanted to have the most decorative door. This is the only thing that set their home aside from the neighboring apartments. These neighborhoods are also notable for decorative lamp posts and little alleys call muses which led back to the storage for carriages and stalls for horses.
We left the city center after spending a day there and felt that we were familiar with the city. It is all close together and you can easily walk to most of what I have mentioned. The people are open and friendly and have a sharing attitude about their city. There is a feeling that most of them are rebels at heart and feel an affinity for their departed brethren who molded their history. We caught a bus back to our hotel. The hotel provided a taxi ride to the airport for us so we went and picked up a car so we could leave early the next morning.
This is our second change of plans concerning. Our original itinerary called for us to go to Ireland after we were in Tignes, France. We changed that and went to Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris that week. This week we are supposed to be in Finland. We decided we would rather spend the week in Ireland so we called and canceled Finland. With the experience we had last week in Scotland with no reservations, we did not want to repeat that pressure so I got on line and made us some reservations in Ireland. We got a taxi to the train station at Prestatyn and took a train down to Hollyhead, Wales which is a Stena Line ferry terminal. It was a rainy day and not a good day to be out and about. We were fortunate that the train station in Hollyhead was in the same building and right downstairs from the ferry terminal. We didn’t have to fight the elements. This a longer boat ride than the trip across the English Channel was. I think we were on the boat about two and a half hours. The boat was a lot bigger also. We were able to check our luggage instead of drag it around with us. We had lunch and relaxed and were ready to see Ireland when we arrived. We lined up for passport inspection and Mary realized that she had left her passport in one of the bags which was checked, so she had to go to baggage claim and bring her passport back. I stayed with the bags while she did all that. I think she gat a little reprimand from the man about not keeping the passport with her for security.
We didn’t get to do all we would have liked in Wales. For instance there are two towns, Chester and Conwy, which are old Roman fortifications and still have the walls and towers around. You can still walk on top of the wall all the way around Chester. These pictures in this post are of the fort at Conwy taken from the train in the rain. We just don’t ever have time to do all we would like to do.
We followed the coast line of the Irish Sea down to Hollyhead. The area is tourist and farms. There is a pretty big sea port at Holleyhead. The ferry runs from there to Dun Laoghaire Harbour near Dublin. That is pronounced Dun Leary by most of the Irish. We took a DART train from the Harbour to a station near our hotel and then took a taxi to the hotel. We were not in City center because we wanted to be on the North side which is the direction of the airport. We spent Saturday and Sunday in Dublin. On Sunday night we went out about three miles to the airport and rented a car so we could do a driving tour of the real Ireland. Everyone we talked to in Ireland said Dublin is not the real Ireland, Cork, Kerry and Galway is, so that was our plan.
Dublin has the DART train system which is very limited in its coverage. They have no underground as the other cities have, but they do have a very extensive city bus system. We were able to travel anywhere we wanted to go on a bus at a very reasonable fare. We got directions from a Harbour Policeman on how to get to our hotel. He cautioned us about getting taxi numbers so the taxi drivers would be less likely to overcharge us.
Our hotel was a Days Inn. It was a high rise and did not try to compete with the big hotels. We reserved a private room with a bathroom. I guess to get that accommodation we had to have a suite. We had a sitting room with a Fridge and Microwave as well as a sink and a tea kettle. Then we had a bedroom across the hall from the bathroom. We paid more than we have anywhere else, but not nearly like we would pay for a double room in a mainstream hotel. It had a good restaurant and we had breakfast and dinner there during our stay.
On Sunday morning we took a bus down to O’Connell Street where there is a Tourism Office and the City Bus Tours start and end. On the bus and to a greater extent on the street we saw a lot of people in their team colors because there were two big soccer (football) games in town. The people are more into soccer than Americans are into college football. We even saw one pipe band marching down the street. We looked around and began to walk down O’Connell toward Trinity College. We went onto the grounds of Trinity College and took some pictures. We did not take the time to go inside the buildings. It is a beautiful area, and is the cultural center of Dublin even today. We walked on Grafton Street which is one of the main shopping streets in the center of the town to the Tourism Office which is located in a beautiful building of the Old St Andrews Church and bought tickets for our tour. Our walk was so pleasant that we didn’t want to get on the bus.
We had already seen a lot of things which were covered on the Bus Tour. On O’Connell there is a Statue of Jim Larkin who lived from 1874-1947 The inscriptions was simply Voice of the Rising. There is an old beautiful building which is the General Post Office and it was taken over by the Rebel faction in the early days of the Rising and became their headquarters. In front, in the median on O’Connell Street is a spire in
memory of the Easter Rising and a Statute of William Smith O’Brien who was executed for high treason in 1848. Just before the River Liffey is a Statue of John O’Connell who was known as the great catholic liberator. He led the fight for rights of catholics who were oppressed even though the were a huge majority.
This Statue as well as many of the buildings in this street still carries the bullet holes from the fighting during the uprising.
Still walking we crossed the River and visited Trinity College. Across the street at the intersection of Grafton is the Bank of Ireland housed in the building which used to contain the two houses of Parliament. There was an open air market area at this intersection and we did a little shopping for keep sakes. We also got some stuff at the Tourist Office before we boarded the bus. We passed Dublin Castle, but it was surrounded by fences and other buildings and we did not see a lot of it. Our guide said it was more of an 18th Century Palace than a Castle.
The next point on our tour was Christ’s Church. It is a Catholic Church and is the oldest in Dublin. The Church was built on land donated by the Viking King Cedrick in 1038. Just down the street is St Patrick’s Cathedral. It was built in 1192. Both these churches are keystones in the growth of the city of Dublin. They have been protestant since Henry VIII split with the Catholic church because the would not give him a divorce. From 1720-1731 Jonathon Swift was the Dean of the St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I think he later became kinda well know as a writer. Our guide told that Gullivers Travels was not intended as a novel for young people, but as a political treaties.
It seemed that in every square we saw a church or a pub. We were told that Dublin has 650 churches and 800 pubs. The country of Ireland is impacted by their pubs and by the fact that Guiness has its brewery and store house in the city of Dublin. About one fourth of the population of the Island lives in Dublin. Guiness does not employee as many of the citizens as it once did because of technology. It is still said that once a Guiness employee always a guiness employee. Guiness has 64 acres of city property. Guiness is, I believe, the largest exporter of spirits in the world. They export over 4,000,000 pints of Guiness per day. The original home of Author Guiness still stands next to the main entrance to the brewery. He and his wife raised 21 children there. The company provides for the health of employees at their own medical center. They have entertainment, sports and exercise centers and offer a self contained environment for their employees, with company owned housing which they make affordable to the group. This is more important when you consider that the average income for citizens of Dublin is 28,000 pounds and the average home costs 400,000.
A dark part of the history of Ireland and Dublin is Gallows Hill and Kilmanham Jail. The jail was shut down in 1923 after the Civil, but many of the well known manes in Irish history were residents of the Jail and were executed there. If 1966 on the 50th anniversary the three main stations in Dublin were re named after Sean Houston, Pearse and O’Connell who were all executed at Kilmanham Jail after the Rising.
Phoenix Park is 1,752 acres of fenced park. That makes it the largest fenced city park in Europe. It was opened in 1830 on land that, like so many city parks in Europe, had been a Royal Hunting Preserve. The official residence of the President is in the park, as is the Wellington Waterloo Monument which is the second tallest obelisk in the world next to the Washington Monument. The largest crowd to ever attend an event in Phoenix Park was in 1979 when Pope John Paul II read Mass in the park. There were one and one-half million people in attendance. At that time, the population was only about 3,000,000 so about half of the population was there. I can’t hardly get my mind around that. That is probably why there are 800 pubs. If you can get a million and a half people together for mass think how many you can attract to a pint of Guinness.
Into the newer part of the city we passed some things which are totally modern. There is a hotel which is owned by Bono from the rock U-2. It has a pent house which rents for 2100 pounds per night. That’s modern!!! We entered an entire section of the city which, because of the period architecture, is Georgian design. Our guide said you can tell if it is Georgian if the windows get smaller on each floor above the other. It was believed that this would give the impression of height to the buildings. All the houses in the buildings wanted to have the most decorative door. This is the only thing that set their home aside from the neighboring apartments. These neighborhoods are also notable for decorative lamp posts and little alleys call muses which led back to the storage for carriages and stalls for horses.
We left the city center after spending a day there and felt that we were familiar with the city. It is all close together and you can easily walk to most of what I have mentioned. The people are open and friendly and have a sharing attitude about their city. There is a feeling that most of them are rebels at heart and feel an affinity for their departed brethren who molded their history. We caught a bus back to our hotel. The hotel provided a taxi ride to the airport for us so we went and picked up a car so we could leave early the next morning.
