Onion River Exploration Project: Last Day in Dublin

Eileen with her Guinness Beef Pie

Day 12 (8/14/15)

I forgot to mention in yesterday’s blog that after spending the day touring the north we decided to catch some Irish music when we got back to the hotel. My only regret is that we didn’t purchase one of the young man’s CDs. Even though he didn’t look the part he had a great voice and did an outstanding job on the Irish Ballads. Today was our last day in Dublin before taking off early tomorrow morning. We had already decided we were going to take it easy and continue our tour of the city. We had done the National Gallery of Ireland on our first day of touring so today we decided to go to the Irish Museum of Modern Art. It didn’t open until 11:00 am, however, so we stopped at the Dublin Castle first. The castle has served many purposes through history, serving first as a defensive structure later the residence of the royal representatives of the Monarchy until 1922 when it was handed over to the new Irish government. It turns out that parts of it are still used for formal functions like Queen Elizabeth II visit in 2012. Not long after we arrived there it started sprinkling. We then hopped back on the bus and headed for the Irish Museum of Modern Art. The IMMA as it is called is housed in the old Royal Hospital building one of Ireland’s finest examples of 1700s architecture. Like all Modern Art Museums you are kind of subject to what happens to be on display when you visit. There was an altered photography show in the main building that was rather interesting but much of the rest I found a little predictable. After perusing the museum we hop back on the bus and finally were able to finish the last part of the hop-on hop-off loop that kept eluding us. We then changed bus routes and headed out to the Docklands, an ongoing renovation area were a lot of the new businesses of Dublin are housed. Our first stop was at the” U2 Graffiti Wall”. Unfortunately much of it is being demolished and the part that they are trying to relocate was covered with tarps. We did get to see a small piece of it though. The last thing we had on our must do list was to visit the Temple Bar area, which is not a bar at all. It is the commercial hotspot of Dublin filled with small shops and cafes and of course pubs. It is where you will find street entertainers hanging out. Because of the weather it was kind of subdued but at least we didn’t have to fight crowds. We decided to have lunch at The Fitzgerald, a typical Irish Pub looking place. We weren’t disappointed. I had a traditional Irish stew with lamb while Eileen had a Beef and Guinness Pie. The food was very good and the atmosphere was perfect. After lunch we just started walking and checking out the local area. Eventually we meandered our way back in the direction of our hotel. We wanted to pick up a few souvenirs so we hit some shops on O’Connell Street before heading back to our room. I wanted to make one last loop around Parnell Square which was the area around our hotel so we dropped our stuff off and hit the streets again. It was hard to say goodnight but finally we had to go back, repack and get ready for our early departure.