Ireland: Day 2 (Sept. 12, 2011)

As the sun started to light up the sky, the flight attendants brought us breakfast. We landed in Dublin, Ireland around 8:15 a.m. (2:15 a.m. our time). It was kind of a bumpy landing due to Hurricane Katia going past Ireland. We collected our baggage, got some Euros at an ATM, bought a cheap cell phone, and waited for the Hertz shuttle to take us to get our rental car. The car we were slated to get was so small, we splurged and upgraded. Then the Hertz gal, upgraded us again at no additional cost. We had a very nice Peugot 3008 - it gets 43 mpg!! We headed off to our hotel. It should have been a 20 minute drive but it took us 2 hours - we were so lost. They don't believe in addresses in Ireland and there are very few street signs. I had a GPS but couldn't get it to work correctly - later figured out I was trying to find our hotel in Albania!! Didn't know I had to pick which country we were in... This was Tracy's first attempt at driving on the left side of the road, in a strange country, with teeny tiny roads, lots of traffic - it was completely nuts!! He got very stressed and I am sure I didn't help much. Driving in Ireland is absolutely ridiculous!!!
We finally made it to our hotel - the D4 Berkeley - right across the street from the US Embassy.

After checking into our hotel and taking our luggage to our room, we headed out to explore Dublin on foot. We walked around for over 6 hours and I am sure we walked at least 4 or 5 miles. There were people everywhere! Dublin is a very busy city!
Here is the Huband Bridge, quite picturesque; it was built in 1791.

This is a government building where you will find the Irish Prime Minister.

There was some beautiful ivy covering a lot of buildings.

We walked through St. Stephen's Green; it is a huge park in the middle of Dublin that has been there since 1663! There were a lot of people enjoying the park on this nice day.


This is the beginning of the Grafton Street Pedestrian mall - lots and lots and lots of restaurants and shopping. It seemed half of Dublin was there!

This was the South City Market, built in 1894. What a gorgeous building!

Here I am in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral. I don't think I have ever seen such a large church! It was built in 1192, can you believe that?

Christ's Church Cathedral, from 1030!! As you can see, we enjoyed some beautiful blue skies!

Dublin Castle, 1204 A.D.

Dublin City wall from 1240 and St. Audeon's Church from 1190. It was hard to fathom how old these buildings were!

The Four Courts from 1785- quite the large building.

Dublin along the River Liffey.

The Temple Bar district - where all the restaurants and pubs are located.

The Quay's Restaurant in the Temple Bar district where we ate our first meal in Dublin. I had Guiness Stew; Tracy had fish and chips. For dessert, I had a Bailey's coffee and Tracy had an Irish Coffee - yum!

This is the Ha'Penny Bridge from 1816. It is called that because they used to charge half a penny as a toll to cross the bridge.

The Spire was built in 2003. It is 398 feet tall.

Dublin has great public transportation. We saw these double decker buses everywhere. It seems most people either walk or use public transportation. I totally understand why they would not want to drive!!! Ha ha ha!!!

The Custom House from 1791.

You can see some of the modern touches that are in Dublin, Ireland from the building to the bridge. The River Liffey flows through Dublin.

We had a long a very long walk back to the hotel. By the time we got there, we were both so worn out. We had been up for about 30 hours! It was definitely time to crash. We got back to the hotel room around 8 p.m. Tracy really wanted to stay awake until 10 but he gave up around 9 and was snoring within seconds!

We are in Ireland!! How cool is that? It is so hard to believe we are really here. Can't wait for tomorrow - we head out of Dublin and into the countryside.