First Day in Dublin

This June, we went with my family for a trip to Ireland to see some of the highlights of the beautiful Emerald Isle. We left Friday afternoon from Raleigh, flying via Air Canada to Toronto and then overnight to Dublin. I chose Air Canada, because they were significantly cheaper than other airlines, but also because they have good customer service (for an airline, anyway) and clearing US Customs is a lot easier in Toronto than major US airports, like JFK or Boston. We did have the added step of clearing Canadian customs, but because we were only in transit, this was very simple and straightforward. Our trans-Atlantic flight left Toronto late in the evening and we arrived in Dublin around 11 in the morning. After getting our luggage and clearing Immigration/Customs, we caught our shuttle from Aircoach that took us to our hotel in Dublin - Ballsbridge. We arrived a little early and had to wait in the lobby for about a half-hour for our room to be ready. Once it was, we dropped off our luggage, changed clothes and headed into Dublin. From the hotel, we headed down Northumberland Road, which changes names several times as it heads into the main tourist area of the city. Besides some airplane food, we hadn’t eaten today, so our first stop was somewhere to eat and have a drink. My cousin Lani had just turned 18 and it would be her first (legal) drink. We stopped at the Blarney Inn on Nassau Street near Trinity College.

Here, we had a late lunch and some drinks to officially commemorate our visit to Ireland. My mom, uncle, and cousin had Guinness, while I had a Smithwicks, as I don’t care much for Guinness. Sandy had a whiskey & ginger ale. For food, Sandy and I both had some traditional Irish food - Shepherd's Pie and Sandy got a bowl of creamy vegetable soup. After we ate and finished our drinks, the server let us go behind the bar and took a group picture. From here, we continued down the street and headed to Trinity College.

Sandy was really excited about visiting the library here, but unfortunately, it was about to close. So we walked a bit around the campus, getting pictures of the beautiful buildings, including the Campanile, Public Theater, and Graduates Memorial Building and planned to come back for a visit to the library later.

There was a lot of construction going on, but I was still able to get some good pictures of the beautiful buildings. After that, we headed over to Suffolk Street to the Dublin Tourism Information Centre, which is located in a beautiful old church, the former Church of St. Andrew.

This is where we would be picked up early in the morning tomorrow for our tour of the Giant’s Causeway and Northern Ireland and I wanted to be sure we knew exactly where to go. We didn't want to be wandering around aimlessly at 6 in the morning. Then we did a little bit of shopping - I picked up a power converter, since the European one I had brought doesn’t fit the Ireland/UK outlets and Sandy got some lovely paintings from a street vendor. We also found a 24-hour convenience store. Our tour tomorrow was very early in the morning, too early to get breakfast. But we could stop by this convenience store and get something to eat before the tour. By this time, it was getting into the evening and although not late, we were all exhausted from the long flight. But before we made our way back to the hotel, we made a detour to Dublin Castle.  The inside was closed for the evening, but we walked around the outside and I got some pictures of the beautiful buildings.

Heading into the area, we saw a suit of armor near a door and then headed towards Chapel Royal and Norman Tower.

The Norman Tower, also called the Record Tower and built in the 13th century, is the last intact medieval tower at the castle and in all of Dublin.

The beautiful Chapel Royal was once the Church of Ireland chapel and has a number of carved heads along its walls.

After a short time, we started making our way back to the hotel for an early bedtime.