Ireland Trip Day Three

We rose determined to do more power sightseeing today. We toured Saint Patrick’s cathedral in the morning. The site had a church on it since St. Patrick’s time around 600 AD and this spectacular cathedral was built in the 1100’s. It was spectacular and we spent a lot of time there. We were a bit cathedraled out after that one, so we enjoyed ChristChurch from the outside only.

Saint Patricks Cathedral

Lunch

Keeping the ethnic variety going, we had lunch at a nice Italian place. Lunch is a lot cheaper than dinner here, even more so than in the US.

Dublin Castle

After lunch, we toured the Dublin Castle. We actually took a guided tour this time and got a 45 minute dose of history. It was all quite interesting. The English / Irish interactions dominates the story. Perhaps the English aristocrat’s arrogance in the 17 and 18 hundreds is best exemplefied by the “whistling hall” where the servants were required to whistle while delivering the food to the English Viceroy’s guests to prove they weren’t eating any.

In a single sentence, the Vikings ruled Ireland around 600 AD, the Normans took over in 900, only to be replaced shortly by the English, who lasted until 1922.

Temple Bar

We never made it back to our rooms at all on Friday. We ate dinner in the funky Temple Bar area at a tapas restaurant called Pintxo. Lots of fun to share, food was pretty good and most importantly….. not Irish (remember our Dublin goal).

Friday evening we had reserved tickets for a musical pub crawl. Good thing too, since all 50 or so spots were full. This was a fun evening where 2 musicians take you to two different pubs and teach you

Musical Pub Crawl in the Temple Bar Area

about traditional Irish music while preforming and demonstrating jigs and reels and ballads. The 2 1/2 hours went by like an hour. At least for the three of us that really like Irish music. I will leave you to speculate who number 4 might be. We made the long walk back to the rooms after 11 and dropped like rocks into bed.