We woke up really early at 5:30am to get ready and take the tube to Victoria station so that we could catch the train to Gatwick Airport. We had an 8:30am flight to Dublin. We
decided to not take the Gatwick express as it’s much more expensive
than the regular trains that go there, especially when we had decided to
fly the cheap Ryan Air to Ireland, as opposed to the expensive
British Airways, I guess! Anyway, the flight itself was just
over an hour and pretty uneventful.This was our first experience flying
Ryan air. Ryan air flights are interesting though because the flight
attendants are constantly trying to sell you stuff.
We
landed in Dublin on time and the immigration was a breeze, the
Immigration officer just stamped a little visa thingy in our passport
and we were out. We had decided to take the Airlink bus that goes to the city center . We got off at the O’Connell Street and were greeted by the "Spire of Dublin", which
is a large100 foot steel pole in the middle of the road. It seemed to
me that it was there for no reason and I was least interested in trying
to find out more about the spire.
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| O'Connell Street and the Dublin Spire
The city is separated by the river Liffey. We were staying at O'Callaghan Davenport hotel at Merrion Square which was on the other side of the river and just a short walk, going across the bridge. The hotel is a bit of an odd historical building, but in a great location.
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| River Liffey and Ha'Penny bridge |
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| Facade of O'Callaghan Davenport Hotel |
After we settled in we decided to go out and explore Dublin. We headed towards the St. Stephens park and took a stroll through the park and we came upto the Grafton Street. Grafton street is the main shopping street of Dublin. It was pedestrian only and had a lot of the shops. The statue of Molly Malone is on Grafton Street also.
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| Statue of Molly Malone |
Next we went to the Trinity College, oldest university in Ireland and quite popular among tourists, In the old library you can find the famous Book Of Kells. We skipped the library and just strolled through the grounds
In the evening we went to the Temple bar area. It is a wonderful area of Dublin, with a lot of history and things to do. You will find a lot of bars here, but more used by the tourists.We got to walk all through that area and see all the little, stores, pubs and some other sites by the river Liffey. We ended up walking a lot and were pretty tired. We ended up eating at one of the Kebab shops near the Temple Bar, which was to our surprise, really good
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| The famous Temple bar |
Next day, we had planned on visiting the Dublin Castle and the Guinness storehouse. No visit to Dublin would be complete without a visit to the Guinness storehouse. You can read about our visit here
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