Continued from Dublin Day 2.
The last day of our trip!!! We are so excited that we will be going home to Austin tomorrow!! I miss my dog!! I don’t think I’ve ever been this homesick during traveling. After this trip, probably no extended traveling trips for a while.
The only item on our agenda today is to get on the hop on hop off sightseeing bus. We just want to go home and we wanted to do the bare minimum today because we are very travel weary.
Fish and chips lunch spot suggested by the Gs last night.
Oh, fresh OJ, yes please.
The Gs had recommended this place because they have ray on their menu. Unfortunately, ray is a rare catch and they didn’t have any today so the haddock will do. Very crispy and tasty, but sad that they didn’t have ray since I’ve never had it before. It’s supposed to taste sort of like monkfish, a meaty fish.
Our waiter here was a woman original from Bulgaria, and we struck up a little chat with her. She mentioned that she likes Dublin because it feels so stress free here compared to her home town in Bulgaria, even though Dublin has 10 times the people of her home town. Our waiter at the Italian restaurant, where we ate at the first day here, also mentioned that living in Dublin feels stress free. He mentioned that people are honest and that living is simple here. From my own extremely limited exposure to Dublin, I find it sort of boring…but maybe boring is what makes it calming for others…
The easiest way to feel like we are not wasting a whole day and not do too much is to get on one of these sightseeing buses. In retrospect, we should have gotten on this thing yesterday as the tickets are good for 2 days and we could have used it just to get around the city. DUH!
Today is another very windy day, and we were lucky to be one of the first passengers on the bus, so we took the covered seats on top in the very front row. Away from the wind, away from the sun, and away from the inferior view on the lower level.
The GPO, this time seen from the second floor of the bus.
Crazy bird lady. She parked her car randomly with emergency flashers on, then started feeding pigeons with a whole loaf of bread.
Why do I look so serious?
Grafton street.
Sweny’s Pharmacy. Supposedly featured in Joyce’s Ulysses…sad to say, I haven’t read the book so I can’t appreciate the reference.
Oscar Wilde’s childhood home. Across is the park where he played as a kid, and there’s statue of him inside the park as well.
Georgian buildings with smaller windows the higher up you go. Apparently, they used to tax the size of windows.
Oh, a Skyline. R33?
Such blue sky.
The bus made a stop at the Guinness Brewery.
Kilmainham Gaol, the prison where many Irish revolutionary leaders were imprisoned and arrested. I think if I had any bit of motivation left today, this would be what I’d come visit today, also SG highly recommended it. Wish we had any energy left to actually move ourselves off this bus…
Entering Phoenix Park. The Central Park equivalent of Dublin, except it’s much bigger than Central Park.
Both the Ireland president’s residence and the US embassy are located inside Phoenix Park. US gets the preferential treatment because it was the first country to recognize Ireland as an independent country….speaking of which, Irish are fond of Americans because they feel like we were both able to free ourselves from the UK.
Driving by Guinness Brewery again. It sits on a site that has a 9000 year lease starting in 1759 and only charged 45 pounds per year for it. Pretty damn good deal…except that’s the genius of the Guinness marketing. A little digging around online(actually on Guinness’ own website) and it turns out they’ve since bought out the property so that original lease is no longer valid.
Not a cyclist friendly city, unlike Amsterdam. Then again, Amsterdam is like bike heaven so that’s a rough comparison.
Back on O’Connell Street, right by our hotel.
Well, that was an easy way to take a brief tour of the city without having to do much other than sit on our butts. I much prefer the rest of Ireland over Dublin. The countrysides of Ireland is amazing compared to countrysides of other countries, but the city of Dublin is just so so compared to cities of other countries.
We visited a gift shop. You can buy a lucky penny for 3.99 Euros. Does that make it 399 times more lucky?
They really do play up the whole green theme over here.
That’s a a lot of ice cream. It was stressful eating it, because it kept on melting in the high winds outside and I spent the whole time eating it strategically to manage the potential dripping issues.
Ice cream put me into a sleepy mood, so went back to our hotel and took a nap. We are simply traveled out and just want to go home back to our old daily routines.
Several hours later, it’s time for dinner. We walked down O’Connell Street on our way to dinner, and from the corner of my eye, I spotted something amazing.
CRANE CLAW MACHINES!!!!!! YES!!!! FEED MY ADDICTION!!!!
This being Ireland, and not Japan, all the items up for grabs(yeah, you like that pun?) were PG rated. But, there was “THE BIG ONE”! The one machine that dwarfed all others.
I don’t really have any use for a giant stuffed animal…but we’ve got all these petty Euro coins with us that’s just dead weight because currency exchange desks won’t take small coins. Let’s get rid of 2 Euros worth of change(2 Euros per play) and see what happens…
OH OH OH OH OH!!!!! Holy shit, on my first and only attempt!!!!
LOL!!!!!! RL was in disbelief that I was able to succeed in one try. She’s got the look of “What have you done KL!!!?? How the hell are we going to fit this giant thing into our backpacks??!!”
One of us is much more excited about the other. I told RL that I won it for her and it’s a symbol of my love for her. RL seems to think that I won it for myself and that it’s a symbol of my love for myself…
Like a champ!! We’ll need to head back to our hotel first and drop this off because trying to head out to dinner again.
OK, dropped off the prize and now back on O’Connell St in search for dinner.
RL made sure that we walked on the side of the street opposite of the claw crane place this time so that my addiction didn’t slip again…
It’s Sunday, many of the stores are closed.
Legos!!!
Dinner spot. We’ve been craving sushi. In fact, when we head back to Austin tomorrow, we’ll be on the search for sushi.
People in Ireland love making reservations for dinner. We were only allowed a seat if we were able to finish eating in 45 minutes. Sure, that’s doable for us. Odd that many restaurants don’t seem to take customers who are willing to wait for a table, even if it takes a while.
Something simple to stop the craving for a couple of days until we get back to Austin. This sushi place came well rated both online and from the Gs. It was ok…then again, we were in Japan not too long ago so our standards are quite high.
After dinner, one last visit to an Irish pub.
JB, look familiar?
What every wife expects to hear from her husband about 20 times a day.
Someone’s been throwing eggs here. We saw 4 broken eggs thrown onto the sidewalk, and it looks like it came from a moving car by the way the eggs splashed. Good thing we weren’t around when this happened, that would have ruined our night.
OK…now back to reality. How do I fit a stuffed animal, that’s about size of my backpack, into my backpack along with all of my existing items…
To be continued at Home, Sweet Home.