Dublin - Day 1 - Georgian District, National Library, Leinster House, National Museum, National Gallery and Oscar Wilde Memorial

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This morning, we headed towards Dublin’s Georgian District in the south-eastern quadrant of the city. As we meandered in that direction, we passed St Werburgh’s Church and Dublin Castle. We will visit the castle another day but took the opportunity to venture into the courtyard this morning to take some photos before lots of tourists were about.

As Dame Street merged into College Green we admired the Bank of Ireland building. It was challenging trying to take photos with end-to-end double decker busses motoring along the street! Perseverance paid off and photos of Ireland’s original Parliament Building were eventually taken. The bank has occupied the building since 1803 with Ireland’s Parliament being incorporated into the British Parliament in 1801.

From the building that was once Parliament House we ventured around to Kildare Street where Leinster House – housing the parliament of the Republic of Ireland – is situated. Leinster house is flanked by the National Library and the National Museum. We popped into the National Library but could only visit the current exhibition dedicated to the Yeats siblings. The library itself is not open to the public as it is a research library only and one must hold a reader’s card to access books in its collection!

The Yeats exhibition was very interesting dedicated not only to famed poet William Butler Yeats but his brother John B Yeats and sisters, Susan and Elizabeth. John was a famous artist in his own right and sisters, ‘Lily’ and ‘Lolly’, as they were affectionately known, were influential in the areas of needlework and printing. All up a very artistic family.

From the library we made our way into the National Museum – Archaeology. The museum has been in operation since 1890 and holds an extensive collection with its earliest artifacts dating back to 7,000BC. Items of interest from the Celtic, Viking and Mediaeval eras are included along with ancient gold items and coins discovered in hoards.

We grabbed some lunch around the corner on Leinster Street at a small café called Coffee Angel. Their ham and cheese toasties were excellent! Or maybe we were just really hungry with our stomachs still getting used to eating lunch at what was bedtime the day before yesterday, ha, ha?!

After lunch we walked along to Merrion Square to view the Oscar Wilde Memorial before crossing the street to visit the National Gallery. The gallery houses a collection of European and Irish art from the 14th century to the present day. Quite by chance the first room that we walked into housed works by John B Yeats. Interestingly the room also displays the Olympic silver medal that he won at the 1924 Paris Olympics for his piece titled ‘The Liffey Swim’. Olympic medals were awarded for arts and culture until 1948. Now there is something that we didn’t know about the modern olympics before today!

Our next stop was at the National Museum - Natural History. Rather disturbingly their sign out the front describes the museum as the Dead Zoo which I guess is, in fact, a fair description of their extensive collection of stuffed animals. Established in 1856 the museum holds around 10,000 zoological specimens from Ireland and around the world.

We walked along the Nassau Street frontage of Trinity College to the statue of Molly Malone on Suffolk Street. Molly is described as a semi-historical, semi-legendary figure and she is best known for the song ‘Cockles and Mussels’ which is has become an unofficial Dublin anthem. The statue depicting the song’s tragic heroine and her barrow is a familiar symbol of the capital.

We walked back around the corner onto College Green and found ourselves back at the Bank of Ireland building where we brazenly walked into the main banking hall for a sticky beak. Wow, really beautiful but, unfortunately, ‘No Photography Permitted’. As we exited the bank and set off along Westmoreland Street towards the river we could see and hear the students chanting their pro-Palestinian slogans from the first-floor windows of the college.

We arrived at the O’Connell Bridge over the River Liffey and took photos towards the Ha’Penny Bridge. The Ha’Penny Bridge is considered another symbol of the city. It was opened in May 1816 as the first dedicated footbridge over the River Liffey. It was also the first iron bridge constructed in Ireland. The bridge was officially named after the first Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, the Dublin-born victor of the Battle of Waterloo. However, it soon acquired the nickname by which it is known to this day because it replaced a ferry which charged passengers a half-penny to cross the river – and this amount continued to be charged to pedestrians as a toll to cross the new bridge!

Strolling along the Liffey Boardwalk on the north side of the river we soon happened upon Cloud Nine a pastel pink ice-cream parlour. With it being around mid-afternoon it was declared ice-cream o’clock and we ventured in to choose our flavours. Bernie opted for a double vanilla. The rest of us got a little more adventurous choosing choc-mint, choc-orange and tiramisu scoops.

Fortified with ice-cream we continued our river walk on the south bank of the river along Wellington, Essex and Wood Quays past the Millennium, Grattan and O’Donovan Rossa Bridges before turning up Winetavern Street towards the Viking/Mediaeval area of Dublin and Christ Church Cathedral with its famous covered bridge linking the cathedral to the Synod Hall.

After about seven hours out and about sightseeing we returned to our apartment to put our feet up for a couple of hours before dinner. Although I reported this morning that the kettle in our room was not working on our return, we found that it had not been replaced. I popped down to reception and had the kettle swapped over for a working model. Fortunately, I did decide to pop my immersion water heater into my suitcase for just such an emergency and I was able to use that for a cuppa last night. With the replacement kettle plugged in and operational I boiled that up to make a well-earned cup or refreshing green tea. Aaahh.

We headed out to dinner at the Brazenhead Inn walking through the garden at St Auden’s 12th century Church on our way. Dating back to 1158 the Brazenhead is considered to be the oldest tavern in Dublin. Of course, with that claim to fame it is very popular! We timed our arrival well though only having to wait a minute or so for a table for four. As we were ordering and eating, we could see that patrons arriving after us were queuing well out the door facing a much longer wait for a table. We feasted on pork sausages with mash, beef and Guinness stew and fish and chips washed down with Brazen Red ale, Guinness, Carlsberg Lager and sparkling water.

This evening, we are definitely feeling less fatigued than last night! Despite our room being a bit warmer than we would like it to be for a good night’s sleep we did manage a decent amount of shut eye last night. After retiring pretty early we found ourselves unable to sleep much after 6.00am but that enabled us to rise early and finish off the blog and photos for Tuesday.



Steps: 17,529 (11.54kms)

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Comments

[Maggie (Margaret) Morrison Morrison]

Oh how I adored "walking " all this with you and holding my beloved Irish literary heroes close. Marvellous , marvellous; thank you . Glad you didn't fall into the Liffey; I imagine it's not much cleaner than I remember from 4o odd years ago.