I got home late last night from a whirlwind adventure in Dublin. Two and a half days of excitement, mostly involving getting lost and confused as Kristy and I navigated our way through the city and countryside of Ireland. Good thing I have a sense of direction (thanks dad!) - otherwise we would probably still be in Dublin trying to find our way back to Belfast. Oh dear.
But enough of that: on to the good stuff! Stories and pictures!
Kristy and I arrived at the train station about an hour early before departure time. We easily wasted time (as us young adults are known to do) and queued up, only to wait forty minutes due to an unknown delay. Naturally our trip would start with a bang. As a result, we arrived in Dublin well after dark. We hopped onto the Tram/Luas which is similar to the Metro system in San Diego or any light rail in general. Well... the tram was also delayed. A car had broke down in front of us and then there was something happening with the rail itself. It would have been tolerable had these two kids not decided to yell "Next stop Abbey Street!" at the top of their lungs for five minutes solid. And if their parental figures had done something to shut them up. The looks Kristy and I shared, oh man... I've never wanted to hurt children so much in my life. Due to these silly and small complications, we decided to walk to our hostel. Seeing a city at night doesn't do much for a first impression. Nor does having some drunk guy pissing on a wall try to talk to you. But perhaps that's just me being incredibly biased.
Twenty minutes later, we finally arrived at our stop. Kristy would have kept walking had I not spotted the hostel. The Generator - gets its name from the tall generator tower that it's built next to. It's also a chain throughout northern Europe. /aside. Yay! We made it. No more trouble from delayed trains, trams, loud children and peeing drunks. But now it was dinner time. Oh god. Pretty sure our tummies were trying to eat themselves by this point in the evening. And we had no idea where to go. Brand new city at night with only an expensive market and two pubs next to the hostel. Totally not what we wanted to munch on - we felt we deserved better after having such a crappy travel day. We ended up wandering around when my eye caught a flashing red light. That generally signals a restaurant or bar... generally. With our luck so far, we thought it would end up being completely not what we wanted. However! It was a restaurant and it was Italian! Peppe's Italian Restaurant to be exact.
There were pictures on all the walls of the building when it first became a restaurant in 1975. It really hasn't changed much from my picture I took (2011/11/11).
Kristy and I were the only people in the place, aside from the chef and a young Italian waitress. It made us worried at first - here was this incredibly quaint and nice restaurant and no one was in it! We were in for a wonderful surprise. Peppe's completely took us away from our troubles and worries. The food was a small piece of heaven. We partook in a two course meal and of course, a glass of wine (merlot. My parents would love it. I've never tasted such a smooth merlot before.). My appetizer was a dish of sauteed mushrooms with a very lite salad/some bread while Kristy enjoyed some fresh bruschetta. The smell alone made our mouths water. After our starter, we both devoured our pasta dishes; Kristy had spagheit al ragu and I had penne arrabiata. And naturally, we splurged for dessert: tiramisu. We figured if we were going to go all out, we might as well enjoy every cent spent. Yummmmmmmm. We seriously couldn't stop talking about it! We still can't. It was the first thing I mentioned to my flatmates when I came home. Talk about a redeeming impression, huh?
Needless to say, we slept well. Snore.
The next day, we woke up around 8am and decided to explore the city. We didn't really have a game plan - don't go to a city without a game plan. You'll end up walking around for hours trying to figure out what to see, where to go, and how you're going to make it happen. I only had my list of churches that I wanted to visit and Kristy left her "to-do" list back in Belfast. We were pretty much useless to one another. Luckily, the hostel had this super awesome visitor map; that thing was a god-send. So despite no plan, we had a map and someone with a sense of direction. That was our saving grace for the day.
This is the Four Courts building. It's Dublin's main courthouse. It's on the north side of the River Liffy. taken w/ my mobile.
We crossed the River Liffy on the Father Matthew bridge (which, as I've just learned, is apparently the recognized location as being nearest to the original crossing point of the river.) and made our way into the Viking/Medieval Quarter of the city. The first thing we saw was the Christ Church Cathedral. It's the oldest of the medieval churches in Dublin (followed by St. Patrick's). I took some photos of it, but due to the overcast skies, none of them turned out as well as I had hoped. We didn't go inside and instead enjoyed the view of the large church from the exterior. After that, we meandered our way through the very hilly streets towards St. Patrick's Cathedral. This is the largest church building in Ireland! We actually made our way inside - it was just after 9am (when visiting hours start). We paid a small fee to get in and we were the only visitors there. We had the entire church to ourselves as their boys' choir had a small service. How surreal!
1) located on the south side and 2) on the north.
Just a couple examples of the stained glasses within the church. Gorgeous.
After the choir was done singing and headed back to school, we were able to explore the church entirely and take more photos (we weren't allowed to take photos of the service itself. Understandable, but that would have been incredibly neat to have captured!). I haven a ton of the stained glass; such a fantastic art form. So many rich colors and symbolism involved.
This panel is located on the south side of the church.
We spent roughly an hour or so in the church before we decided to move on - we wanted to find the Well of St. Patrick. Instead we found a park just outside of the cathedral with a sign stating that the well was "near here." Uh... that could mean anywhere! We decided to label the decorative fountain in the middle of the park as the well to satisfy our lack of location.
Panorama of St. Patrick's Cathedral. taken w/ my mobile.
After this we decided to head to Dublin Castle. The British ruled from this castle until the 1922 when Ireland gained its independence from England. Now it's used for Irish government stuff. When we got there, we went the back way in (I think? It didn't look like it was open and the only part we managed to see was a chapel). I suspect that it wasn't open to the public that day due to the Occupy movement that was happening nearby. Or it just isn't open to the public ever. Whatever excuse, we didn't get to see the inside of the building. The outside was pretty enough to look at - they converted the coach house into a very pretty garden with oriental art installations dotted throughout.
A blue sky moment - first day in Dublin was fairly overcast and kinda blah. So it was nice to get a blot of sun and sky! taken w/ my mobile.
We worked our way into the Temple Bar Quarter - apparently this is the district where all the tourists like to go and party/shop. However, when we were there, there was no one around. That seems to be a theme of our trip so far - we've had a lot of things to ourselves. Yay travelling during the middle of the week! We ate a this little cafe called The Stage Door. The chicken pie was delish! After lunch, we explored the National Photo Archive and saw a neat gallery on childhood in Ireland. Most of the pictures were of upper class kids, but when you have the money, you can get the pictures, right? We then made our way to the actual Temple Bar. I'm not entirely sure why this particular pub is so famous - it's just something you have to see when in Dublin. So we did just that.
Red is a very popular color for pubs. Reds, blacks, and golds usually give a pub away.
Still in the Temple Bar district, we ran into the National Wax Museum Plus. I had no idea that Dublin even had a wax museum; it was definitely worth seeing! It was so much fun (and I could use flash photography, which doesn't happen very often!). Kristy and I had a blast looking at all the wax figures. They had some vikings, medieval figures, and Irish mythology along with Irish writers, characters from movies (like Hannibal Lector, Buffalo Bill, and Gollum for example), and several celebrities. I also had some fun posing with some of the figures. There was some 17th Century figurehead and I posed like him. That is currently on Kristy computer (I'll get my paws on it soon enough!). I also posed with some of the horror-inspired wax heads. And I mean literal heads. They were hanging from the ceiling with some blood vessels/nerves oozing out of their necks. Yum, brains. Those pictures I'll show off later. Instead I have one of a medieval soldier and of a woman that Buffalo Bill was going to carve up. Super sexy.
It looks like a real person! Here is the dead lady. She's a bit naked, bloody, and well... dead. As dead as a wax figure can be.
Finally, to end our day, we made it to Trinity College Dublin. It's a huge campus - you can't miss it. It was built in the late 1500s - the architecture is very romanesque, and of course there have been lots of modern elements added as technology advanced. So much cobblestone though. I'm not very practiced in walking on cobblestone, as Kristy can attest to me almost tripping on my own feet every five steps or so. We saw the famous Book of Kells. It was incredibly expensive and anti-climatic. Nine euros and you can't even take pictures within the tiny gallery. Ironically enough, my favorite part wasn't even the book. At the end of exhibit, you walk through the Long Room which is this huge and beautiful library filled with tons and tons and tons of old books. My archiving experience and not-so-inner historian wanted to look through all the books! When I got to the other end of the hall, a security guard spotted my camera bag and basically followed me around until we exited to the shop. Ugh - how annoying. Clearly, I am a trouble maker, but I suspect that you knew that already.
And that was day one! Long winded story telling. Woo~ But don't worry, it gets better!
Everything you have done sounds so cool. The dead wax lady is creepy. I would like to buy some of your photography and help fund your education. :)
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