Hey All!
I have indeed been missing from the blog but I have a good excuse: I took a trip! The hubby and I set off to see a wee bit of Ireland (that's my attempt at an Irish accent!) and had a great time. The only down side of the trip - it was not long enough! We spent a couple of days in Dublin and a couple days in Belfast and saw as much as we could fit into our quickie vacay!
First up - Dublin. What a pretty city! We stayed in a quiet area near St. Stephens Green (a lovely park) but we were able to make our way on foot to most of the city.
The leaves were starting to turn in the park and it was such a pretty fall afternoon! Although, there were still of bright flowers:
Our tour guide told us that the park ranger lives in this little house inside the park. I hope it's true as I think this would pretty much be a perfect existence!
We wandered out of the park and into Grafton Street - which is a great area for shopping although I mostly just snapped photos:
From Grafton Street we headed to Temple Bar which is a great neighborhood of bars and restaurants and had lunch at a place called "Elephant and Castle". I ate some yummy locally raised Hereford steak (which I would feel a little guilty about a few days later when we passed through the fields full of beautiful cows on the train) and generally relaxed into the pace of Dublin:
From Temple Bar we were right near the River Liffey (which flows through the middle of the city of Dublin) so we wandered over and had a cup of coffee by the water:
There are obviously several bridges across the Liffey throughout Dublin - but that last photo is of the Ha'penney bridge (which is short for half penney which was once the charge to cross the bridge) but according to my guide book - this bridge has come to be a symbol of Dublin.
All along our walk I noticed these street lamps which are just so cool:
I love the shamrocks!
One of our days in Dublin we took the requisite double decker bus tour. As I've said in the past - these bus tours might be a bit cheesy, but they are always the best and often the cheapest way to see the highlights of a city and get your bearings. We hopped off the bus at Christ Church Cathedral as this is a place I was really looking forward to seeing!
We went below the cathedral to the crypt which was cool and very interesting although when I heard "crypt" I was hoping for something a little creepier!
We hopped off at a few other places - including the Jameson's Whiskey distillery - which may explain why we didn't have energy to see everything that was available on the tour. One of the places that looked truly beautiful and I would love to spend some time in the next time we're in Ireland is Phoenix Park. It houses the Dublin zoo, the President's house, some gorgeous flower gardens and a monument to Wellington:
It is the second tallest obelisk in the world - the first tallest of course is????? The Washington monument here in DC. So I guess now we should figure out where the third tallest obelisk is and add that to our travel list since we seem to have started a trend without even knowing it!
We had great food in Dublin including a Guinness stew that I intend to try and recreate here at home and of course we had wonderful beer! After Dublin we were on to Belfast and I'll post some pics of our visit there next - it was just as beautiful and interesting as Dublin and I hope you'll enjoy it!
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