The Emerald Isle

2023 finally saw us back on the road for our next big trip! Due to a variety of reasons, Bryan won this vote, and we were heading to Ireland! As per usual, I ordered ourselves a travel book to read all about Ireland and find out the spots we would want to see and visit! So many places countryside that seemed good to check out, we were going to (as per usual) try and cram it a lot!

Off to Dublin we go…..

We were already scheduled to land in the morning and got lucky by coming in about an hour earlier than planned. From the airport, we grabbed a cab and went to our hotel – Hotel Morrison – just north of the river. Our room wasn’t ready, but we chose to upgrade and pay for a deluxe room, rather than standard. This allowed us to get in, unload our bags, shower, and know we wouldn’t have to move them around later, which was worth the extra money.

Ha'Penny Bridge

Our plan was to do a Rick Steves walking tour of the city,starting on the south side. So, we headed out, getting some lunch first before starting the day. One of the fun spots I had seen and read about ahead of time was a place called the Merchant’s Arch. It has this really neat aesthetic to it and holds a lot of history. This place was also almost directly across the street from our hotel. We were able to walk just a block down from the hotel, cross at one of the most famous bridges in Dublin, the Ha’Penny bridge, and that leads us right to the Merchant’s Arch. We were too early to eat there, so we snapped a quick photo and kept on our way. Just west of the building is a very narrow alley that if you walk down it, it leads you directly into the Temple Bar area (more about that later). It felt like such a unique way to find ourselves in the heart of Dublin and kick off this visit.

Prior to the trip, I had read about a famous fish and chips shop called Leo Burdock’s. There happened to be one in Temple Bar, just south of where we were staying, so we stopped there for lunch. The good news about this trip – we planned to eat a LOT of fish and chips and we had some really good ones – but this one was not. It’s not that it was bad exactly, just very bland. And because it was in Temple Bar, also very expensive. (Temple Bar is probably the Dublin photos you are most familiar with. The center of arts and nightlife and very touristy where the prices get more expensive as the night goes on 😉)

Temple Bar

After lunch, we walked to St Stephen’s Green Park to start our tour. Below are the main points of the tour stop – I’m not going to give all the details because, well, go take the tour and learn it for yourself!

Fusilier's Arch and the bullet holes

St Stephen’s Green – Fusilier’s Arch is where we enter. Take time to walk in the park – lots of people hang out for lunch breaks or picnics on nice days. This park was founded as a private park but became public in 1880. Easter Rising (Easter 1916) happened in this park. If you look at the exterior of the Arch, you can see bullet holes that are reminders of the conflict.

Mansion House: Official residence of Dublin’s Mayor – architecture is Georgian style.

Grafton street. Leads directly into St Stephen’s Green. Pedestrian and top shopping street in Dublin. Things must stay low profile – even McDonald’s can’t have their golden arches (they’re silver!)

St. Teresa’s Church – in a small alley just off Grafton Street. Very easy to pop in from shopping and then pop back out. It’s a Catholic church built in 1792. Up until then, Catholics weren’t allowed to practice their religion and when the law changed, they had to do so discreetly – so the church was intentionally built small.

Because we had plans for a separate tour of Trinity College and the Long Library, we chose to skip that as part of the walking tour.

In ‘researching’ our trip, I watched the show ‘Somebody Feed Phil’ on Netflix about his visit to Ireland. I really enjoy this show as a fun travel food documentary – we had also watched an episode about Florence in preparation for our trip to Italy! Anyway, on that show, Phil mentioned this place called
Murphy’s ice cream, a chain throughout Ireland that started in Dingle, that has unique ice cream flavors. We had to stop for some of course! While there, had a blast from the past since I saw a sign for the Irish Cancer Society, and they were fundraising for daffodil days. #iykyk

First beers of the trip!

Up until now, we had been trying to keep moving and caffeinated so we wouldn’t get too tired, but our legs were finally ready for a break, so we stopped at a bar called O’Donoghue’s Pub. (Fun fact: Pub is short for ‘public house’.) We wanted to take a break from all the walking and get our first beer of the day. Even though this was close to a touristy area, and this bar has multiple locations, it felt more like a local shop. There were several guys watching horse races, and they had cheap beers – our kind of place! Bryan was so happy to be having his first beer. The people here were so friendly too. I got a kick out of some of the older, local men. They were all standing in the middle of the bar, as I tried to make my way through for the restroom, one saw me and yelled “Get out of her way!” Very cute and very funny. At this bar, Bryan found his favorite beer in Ireland – Smithwick’s (Pronounced Smitticks) and stuck with it the rest of the trip! No Guinness for him.

After the stop for beer, we finished the tour including these stops:

Bank of Ireland, former Parliament building on Grand Boulevard (we did not go inside, but you can if you’d like.)

Church Lane leads you to the Molly Malone statue (unofficial theme song of Ireland). Legends have been told about the ‘luck’ you will get if you ‘polish’ her chest….so lots of tourists line up to do so! This statue is in front of St. Andrews church, which is now a high-end food court.

Molly Malone Statue

Homeless Jesus

Back on Grand Blvd, Bank Bar – Worth it to step inside just to peek even if you don’t plan to eat or drink. Built in 1894 in Victorian style and they kept the design when the Bank moved to other offices. Lots of fun designs are still in this including the vault doors!

City Hall – Has a dome that was modeled after the Pantheon.

Dublin Castle: We didn’t book a tour, just walked the grounds for free.

Christ Church Cathedral – Check out the statue ‘Homeless Jesus’. Outside of the church on the pavement you can see a historical marker for Dublin’s first Viking establishment.

Down to River Liffey – Source of much of the city’s history because the river created an inland port. Many bridges (including pedestrian only) cross the River Liffey connecting the two sides of the city.

Millenium Bridge

Ha’Penny (hay) Bridge – 1816. Cast iron arch. Got its nickname because it was a toll bridge – only half a penny (ha’penny) to cross.

Bank Bar

Other things that we learned on this tour. If you look closely at the post office boxes on the streets (columns)– you will see that they say ER – because they were built during Edward the VII’s reign. Originally the boxes were red for Great Britain, but when Ireland became independent, it made more sense just to paint them green!

While finishing this tour, we decided that the Bank Bar would be a great place to come back to for dinner and around 5pm we made our way there for an early meal. At this point I decided to have my first Guinness of the trip. It took me about an hour to drink – ha! I hadn’t had Guinness for quite some time and forgot just how heavy it is!

By this point, we were so tired but couldn’t go to sleep yet so we wouldn’t have any jetlag issues. Rather than walk through the town like zombies and not really enjoying what we were doing, we went back to the hotel bar for a drink and by 7pm, I was begging Bryan to let me go to bed – ha! He finally gave me the green light and we crashed wrapping up our first day in Dublin!