St. Patrick's Day in Dublin

We had a fantastic time in Dublin! Dublin is a really beautiful city. It's small and easy to move around but what a great time! It's what I always thought a typical small European town would be like, especially in the UK, or as this would be, Ireland.

So we arrived on Sunday evening, which by the way was Mum's Day here. And we settled in to our hotel. Then we ventured out and found a nice little Italian place to have dinner at. The food was fabulous and I had one of the best tiramisu's I've ever had for dessert. Tiramisu is my favorite so I was very happy for that!

Monday we sat out kind of early on foot to visit St Patrick's Cathedral and to tour the Guinness Storehouse. Dublin is super easy to get around on foot, especially if you are staying in city centre. So we walked everywhere. Guinness Storehouse was great to visit!! We had a lot of fun and toured the whole facility. As part of the tour you get a pint of Guinness to enjoy at their fabulous Zero Gravity Bar. It's at the very top of their building and it is surrounded by glass and overlooks all of Dublin. It's really neat to see! Unfortunately the walk back down the steps is not so much fun after having a pint of Guinness. :) And Guinness taste different on this side of the world. It's really very tasty.........at least to me it is! I don't like it in the states, but love it here.

St Patrick's Cathedral

Guinness Storehouse

One of the several great views from Zero Gravity Bar at the Guinness Storehouse

Monday night we found a great little place that had Mexican food. Now let me just say that finding Mexican food on this side of the world is not near as hard as finding GOOD Mexican food on this side of the world. But it was really tasty and the salsa was the best I've had on this side of the world. In talking to the waitress I found out that the owner is from Mexico. He lived in Mexico until he was 17 and then he moved to New York and met a nice Irish girl and they got married and eventually moved to Ireland. So he opened up a restaurant in Dublin. Kudos to him because it satisfied this Texas girls need for some good Mexican food.

We saw this guy while we were out and about on Monday. He was accepting 1 Euro to let you take your picture with him.

Tuesday we set out on foot again and hit the river for a river boat cruise along the Liffey River (the main river that runs through Dublin). It was very overcast that day and a bit chilly but the boat was covered and heated and it was really nice to see the city from the river boat. We went through a really old lock gate they have there. It works kind of like the Panama Canal in that you enter into the lock gate and it closes behind the boat and the water rushes in and raises the boat to the level of the water through the next gate. Then that gate opens and you move through it. Normally the boat tour doesn't go through the gates like that but on that particular day the river was high and it was kind of hard to make the tour through some of the lower bridges along the river. The tour was really fab and we had a nice time. Tour guide was super nice and talked about everything along the river and even showed us where U2's recording studios are in Dublin. By the way, the lock gate was engineered and began operations in the late 1700's and it's still operational to this day!

The River Liffey close to O'Connell St (the main street in Dublin)

The lock gate as we were going through it

After the boat tour we set out to the famous Temple Bar in the Temple Bar area and had a Guinness there at the bar. They had live Irish music and it was busy but not near as wall to wall with people as in the evening. We couldn't get in there the night before, so we thought going in the early afternoon would at least get us in the door. It's a neat old place and really quite big, compared to how it looks on the outside.

The Temple Bar

We also hit Trinity College and seen the fabulous Book of Kells. Unfortunately you aren't allowed to take any pictures of the book or inside their really fabulous old library, where the book is kept. But I will say that if you ever get to Dublin, see the library and see the book........the library is really a site to see with their long hallway and all the really old books.

We also walked through the National Wax Museum there in Dublin. It as okay. It was mainly about Ireland history so a lot of the wax figures were different people through Dublin's history. They did have a room with people, figures and inspiration from Ireland. They had U2 and David Bowie, which I thought was kind of funny. They also had Pierce Bronson. I tried to get pictures in this room but it was poor lighting conditions and no matter how I tried to set the camera I couldn't get a great picture.

At the wax museum. She was creepy........I don't care what anyone says!

So a few of the locals we had struck up conversation with kept telling us that we needed to get to the parade early and find a good spot has the crowds would be thick! They kept saying to look for high ground, though Dublin is flat, so there was no high ground. So we set out early to the parade, leaving around 10am and the parade was to start at noon. When we got to the main street there was hardly no one there. But as the hours went by it was crowded! Every bit of 7 to 15 people deep where you could fit that many people. Since we had gotten there so early we were right at the gate that blocked off the roads and so we had a front row seat. But let me tell you, we were pinned in up against the gate with little elbow room. Made it difficult at times to get some good shots of the parade. After the parade it was terrible trying to get out of the area. It reminded me of being at Mardi Gras with the crowds of people and just not being able to walk anywhere without nearly being elbow to elbow in people. We did finally manage to get through the crowds and found our way to a little pizza place that my friend Sarah told me about, Steps of Rome. We got some fantastic pizza for take away and headed back to the hotel to sit and rest our tired feet and enjoy some pizza with some beer! After that we went down to the hotel bar, had some beer and listened to the really great Irish band they had for the St. Patrick's Day festivities.

At the start of the parade. Look at all the people and this is a VERY small area of the long parade route!

It wasn't a Macy's Day Parade by any means but it was pretty interesting!

There were people from all over the world there! Even a Lafayette La High school band and the University of South Carolina marching band was there from the U.S.

The little girl in the basket was on the news that night and she was saying how much fun she had but how hard riding in the basket was on her bum! lol

So let me clear up two myths that we had heard that we did not see on St. Patrick's Day. First they did not dye the River Liffey green! Second we did not see green beer! I'm not saying they didn't have green beer anywhere but I am saying that we did not see any while we were out and about and they weren't offering it at the bar either. lol

So Thursday morning we headed back home. Dublin was fantastic! We were there long enough to see a lot and still have time to rest. We had some really wonderful food there and even had some sushi there that was pretty good! We really enjoyed Dublin and came home feeling great and not like we were running around the whole time like we did when we were in Paris. Grant you I was sick most of the time we were there but I didn't let it slow me down. So if you ever get a chance to go to Dublin I highly recommend it. Even if it's not during St. Patrick's day, it's worth a visit!