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Published: July 26th 2005
We decided we'd spend saturday doing a walking tour of a few of the sights in Dublin. But we weren't going to get anything done on an empty stomach, so we stopped off at a little cafe for a cheap, and what turned out to be a delicious breakfast. After that, we began our tour at Trinity College, Ireland's oldest university and home to some interesting history. The college was built by the British as a Protestant monastery in hopes of "civilizing the Irish and curing them of Popery". It's also home to Book of Kells. The campus was really beautiful, but full of tourists, which made us wonder how anyone could study there.
From there, we made our way to Merrion Square, a small park full of gardens, shady walkways, and sculptures. Most notable was an apparently famous statue of Oscar Wilde which offers a few of his more well-recognized quotes. A personal favorite was, "Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative". Across the street were the National Museums of art and natural history, which made for another nice little detour, despite the rather uneventful collection they offered. After that, we grabbed some sandwiches and spot at St.
Irish Breakfast
simple, but I have to admit, pretty damn good.Stephen's Green, Dublin's most famous park. There, we sat by the pond and watched the ducks fight over the bread we threw in. After lunch we took a longer walk around the park and decided it was time for a pint. The next stop was Grafton Street, Dublin's main shopping district, which aside from being completely crowded, offered very little worth commenting. However, while walking through the heart of it, we picked out an entourage of about 8 huge black guys walking the opposite direction with a camera guy not far behind. It turned out the be The Game, some guy who apparently raps with 50 Cent. Someone else had to tell me who he was.
Next on the stop was Temple Bar, which offers a different experience during the day. The district happens to also play host to a number of art galleries, institutions, music venues, and museums which we didn't have time to visit, but still added to our already lofty impressions of the area. We also managed to see another celebrity - Christopher Meloni, who plays Detective Elliot Stabler in Law & Order: SVU. Nick refuses to believe that we saw him, but I looked right
in his face and Tyler backs me up on the spotting.
From there, the group split ways. And while the majority of the group left to head back to Limerick, Nick and I stayed for one more night so we could finally hang out with our host for the weekend - Melanie. She was extremely gracious in letting us stay at her place. She even took us to a barbecue party hosted by some softball friends of hers that gave us an opportunity to see a few members of the Martyrs (the softball team Sean and I guest played on our first weekend in Limerick). We ended up staying there and arguing politics until around 3:30 (it wasn't my idea).
All in all, the trip to Dublin was great and well-exceeded any impressions I had gotten about the city from previous visitors. There is a lot to see, and I couldn't help but feel like I didn't even scratch the surface. Oh well, maybe another time.
PS: I added a link on the last entry to the video of Tyler dancing with the belly dancer. I've also added pictures from the softball tournament on the entry
The Oscar Wilde Statue
Us trying to make the same face Oscar is. about that.
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