Dublin Post Tour
We took the train from Belfast to Dublin and spent two more nights there before flying home to Los Angeles.
Click on the first photo to see each section in a larger slide show.
Day 21: Dublin
The train station was only a block from the Europa, so that was convenient, and the train was crowded, with many people going to the beach because of the great weather! At the Dublin train station, we ended up getting the same taxi driver who took us to our hotel at the start of our tour! What are the odds?
Our hotel was in the Temple Bar area. We like to try different parts of a city when we travel; it gives us a fresh perspective. In the lobby while checking our bags, I ran into a man wearing a sweatshirt from my high school. It’s a very small school, and in the 50-plus years since I graduated, I’ve never run into anyone who was wearing anything with its name on it. We had never met before (we attended decades apart), but it was fun chatting with him.
We walked to 14 Henrietta Street, an old tenement building that has been preserved as an historic site. This area used to be where the rich lived in Dublin so this was originally a beautiful single-family house with tall rooms, hardwood floors and nearly floor to ceiling windows. At some point the rich moved to the other side of the river, and this area became slums and the formerly magnificent properties eventually became tenements with hundreds of poor people living in spaces originally occupied by just a few. Local historians managed to preserve this house and open it for tours in 2018. It’s fascinating.
Day 22: Brú na Bóinne
After breakfast we walked across the river to O’Connell Street, past the bullet-ridden GPO building, to our meeting spot for the trip to Brú na Bóinne.
When I first read about Brú na Bóinne in the RS guide, I wondered how we could visit it. While researching, I stumbled upon Newgrange Tours By Mary Gibbons | Newgrange Tours | Dublin. This solves two problems: they drive you there, and you can book these more than 30 days in advance (otherwise you have to take the chance you'll get tickets.) The pickup spot was convenient enough that we could walk there from our hotel.
There was a terrific guide on the bus who was informative and entertaining. We learned about the history of Dublin and about the sites we were visiting. The Bru na Boinne area includes three different burial sites. The Newgrange mound is the highlight of the tour. This is estimated to be 5,000 years old, and it was built facing south, with a ‘sun collector’ that catches and distributes sunlight into the tunnel - once a year! On the winter solstice! And we think we’re so advanced! (If you want to visit during the winter solstice, there’s a lottery for tickets; 38 spots available a year, and 30,000 applicants.) Standing inside and looking at how this was built so long ago, before the pyramids, before recorded history is humbling. The stones are massive but carefully laid on each other to create a nearly perfect seal that has lasted this long. How did they build this 5,000 years ago? It makes you think and smile - and then frown at the hundred-year-old graffiti scratched into the walls. (You can’t take photos inside.)
I highly recommend making the effort to visit this. There are not many other places in the world where you can walk inside a 5,000-year-old man-made structure. If they change the rules and no longer allow people inside, well, then my recommendation might change, but as long as they allow visitors inside, add an extra day to your trip to see this. (I’m told that during COVID, they closed it.)
Day 23. We left Dublin on Tuesday, flying back to LA via Minneapolis. We were delayed by bad weather. The first rain we experienced in over three weeks!
This was a fabulous trip and made us both proud of our Irish heritage. Beautiful countryside. Beautiful ocean cliffs and islands. Colorful buildings. Great seafood (I gained a pound a week!) Great hotels. Great guides. Great people. Amazing history. All in all, great craic!
