Dublin, Day 4

Day four is the day when Dublin begins to take on a familiar feel. Yes, that's St. Stephen's Green. Yes, that's Grafton Street. Yes, the river is that way. Building a relationship with a city is like getting to know a new friend--even if you really, really, really like them, you still don't want to come on too strong or get too familiar too fast.

So, we're taking it easy with Dublin, but we're beginning to get a feel for one another. My favorite way to get to know a city is through my stomach. We've been harassing Eleanor to take us to a grocery store and she finally indulged us. After getting the girls off to school, we walked to the local shopping center. Then, we were faced with the hard decision of sightseeing in the grocery, or eating pastries. I'm no dummy, I chose the pastry.

I think "American Style Donuts" is a great name for an all girl punk band.

This is the face of a happy man. I especially love the bit of custard filling in his beard. Vacation really is a wonderful thing.

While nobody seems to notice me taking photos in the city, here in the suburbs I'm a bit more obvious. Perhaps they don't think their pastries are picture worthy, but they're very wrong. I ate my coffee creme before it even occurred to me to take a photo.
Outside the butcher shop there was this great statue of a sheep and Eleanor encouraged Peyton to go and stand beside it. She also said that there were dog statues somewhere and you could put money in their heads for an animal charity. We didn't see those, but I wish we had!

Then, because we were heading out to the city, we figured we would put off the grocery instead of having to haul our finds around all day. Also, we were about 80% heavy creme at this point and couldn't really focus on shopping. With a little help from Elle, we hatched a plan to take the bus into the city. Along the way, we saw this sign and heehawed a bit.

To extend the metaphor of getting to know Dublin, I figure the bus is a pretty good way to know a city. Depending on the time of day, the bus sometimes provides too intimate an introduction. But, I love that the Irish, from our limited experience, seem to be a very friendly and accommodating when we do dumb American things (more about that later). Even in ol' pleasantville La Crosse, though, I don't think you'd see a sign like this.

 Bus stop realness.

Our goals for today were to go to St. Michan's and to take the hop on hop off bus. We knew that one of the stops for the bus was near Christ Church Cathedral, so we headed in that direction. In the meantime, however, we figured we better find a bathroom before we committed to a tour. So,we stopped in a pub for a quick half pint. Neither of us can remember the name of the place, but the beer was lovely.

Eventually, with some struggle, we managed to find and get our arses on the bus. We didn't end up doing the whole tour, but what we saw was great. This graveyard (maybe Bully's Acre), according to our bus driver, was the site of a fair amount of body snatching in the 19th century. Evidently, the price for a fresh corpse was pretty good!

We then took a tour around Phoenix Park and saw Wellington Monument. I guess up until the Washington Monument was built, this was the largest obelisk ever built.

 Along our route, we also passed the Anna Livia statue--I wish I could have gotten a closer shot.

Finally, we made it to St. Michan's. I was frothing to see their collection of mummies. And, I had read that we might be able to touch one of the mummies (for good luck). Unfortunately, there was no touching and even though the signs said no photography, our guide said I could take one or two without a flash. I was surprised by the number of children on the tour--maybe death seems so far away that they aren't chilled by the thought of one day being a tourist attraction in the crypt of a 900 year old church.

The grounds around St. Michan's were sparse, but beautiful. I thought it was interesting how so many of the headstones were in Latin. I also loved this rose bush.

After our tour of St. Michan's, we continued our tour of the Northside (Taobh Ó Thuaidh). On the recommendation of our lovely host, we decided to grab a drink and a bite to eat at L. Mulligan, Grocer. Propped up at the bar we each had a half pint of delicious sour beer, which was followed by a huge pot of tea--being a tourist is exhausting and we find that we have to alternate between alcohol and caffeine to keep our strength up. After tea, we shared a ploughman's platter and I tried my first Scotch egg!

We started our trek back to our trusty Luas (for a new adventure we rode part of the red line today) and then headed back to St. Stephen's Green. On the way to the Luas station, we stopped in St. Stephen's Shopping Centre. The interior of the shopping center is beautiful and reminds me of a train station.

While in the shopping center, we had an unexpected treat--the Irish version of a T.J. Maxx. As far as we could see, the T.K. Maxx is exactly like T.J. Maxx except the T.K. Maxx has "Big Brands, Small Prices" instead of "The Maxx for the Minimum."

Then, we headed to Dunnes Stores to browse the tea and candy aisles. We bought a variety of treats, struggled at the self-check out, and were told that we have "lovely accents" by the young woman who had to help us eejits figure out how scan, bag, and pay. When we got home we were greeted by the lovely sight of dinner being barbecued in the backyard. Tomorrow, we head for the Burren and adventures in County Clare.