In Dublin's Fair City

We flew from Carlisle Airport (yes Carlisle :), on the Spirit of Carlisle to Dublin – home of sweet Molly Malone and her wheelbarrow.

Stayed on the edge of Pheonix Park and had a couple of memorable trips on the Hop on/Hop off Including an infill moment when the driver lead the whole bus in a rendition of ‘Wild Rover’.



Highlights included:





Walking a crowded O’Connell Street, looking up at the Needle, or the Pole in the Hole as the north bank know it or the Stiletto in the Ghetto as the south bank know it :)

Dubliners enjoy renaming their street art. The Spirit of the Water, a reclining woman with water fountains at her back, becomes the ‘Floosie in the Jacuzzi’ :)

A guided tour of the amazingly restored Kilmainham Gaol, where the leaders of the Easter Rising were executed, an act that turned the tide of public opinion and led to the forming of the Irish Free State.

...and if you want a Cathedral we have two to spare – no, not Liverpool, Dublin. Christchurch and St Patrick’s are within walking distance of each other on the south bank. We were contemplating entering St Patrick’s when a man asked if we wanted to go ahead of him, we politely said he could go first and a hidden line of 30 odd schoolchildren trooped in behind him!

A boat trip down the Liffey

The south bank has a large area reclaimed from the estuary and is home to many tech giants. Intel being worth a mention as they use 10% of the Liffey's water as coolant and in exchange cleaned and re oxygenated a then very polluted Liffey.

A very funny, knowledgeable and reasonably priced taxi driver transported us to Dublin’s beautiful National Botanic Gardens – at around two thirds the size of Kew, with matching large glasshouses, it kept us in awe for most of the day.

and squirrels abound

and after all that there's only one place to retire to ...