For whatever reason, Dublin and I just didn’t “click.” I couldn’t see myself living in Dublin, for instance. Maybe because it is too gritty, too brash, or too raw for my taste. Maybe it’s because we arrived late, when there no restaurants within walking distance of our hotel– only pubs. We ended up eating greasy fish and chips out of wax paper on our hotel room floor. Ok, that sounds kind of fun, but our hotel was one of those soulless corporate places with an ice maker and vending machine on every corridor. And the smell of fish and chips didn’t go away after we finished.
When we woke up the next morning, we found breakfast and then made our way to St. Patrick’s Cathedral– literally the only thing we planned on seeing in Dublin before beginning our 3-ish hour drive west to Connemara via Galway. Alas, when we arrived at St. Patrick’s it was closed for an hour for mass (it was, after all, Sunday morning). Hardly charmed, we considered just bailing on Dublin but ultimately I had one of those “this may be the only time we ever visit Dublin; we have to at least see St. Patrick’s!) So we walked around to another old looking building, found it was charging a ridiculous price for admission, and then just wandered around Dublin for an hour before making our way back to St. Patrick’s. We were 15 minutes early, but a line was already forming and several hop-on hop-off buses came by the deliver more people into the line.
Sunday morning in the park outside St. Patrick’s:
My favorite part of the cathedral was that they had these wooden seats down each side of the cathedral aisle with helmets on top. Unfortunately I didn’t have my super fixed lens so that I could get decent photos of it in the low light.
