A Weekend in Dublin ... Ireland

We left the house last Thursday around 6:15pm to make sure we were at the airport with enough time to get settled.  At the PA state line, Denise realized she left her phone at the house.  Remember this, because it will come up again.  Of course it is still rush hour traffic between Wilmington and Philadelphia, but we managed to get home and get to the airport a little after 7pm.  We boarded and were on our way a little after 9pm. 

It was a pretty bumpy flight over, but we both managed to get some sleep.  We landed in Dublin a little after 8am local time, quickly cleared customs, and grabbed a cab to the hotel.  Let the fun begin …

After two calls to Verizon to confirm, neither of our phones work when we land.  Problematic on a number of levels, but most immediate is our plan to meet up with one of Denise’s college friends on Sunday.  Tory and her husband live in London.  So, with the iPhone we went back to the house for not working and my personal Blackberry not working, we’re down to my work Blackberry – which the phone is conveniently disabled on thanks to my company.

We booked Thursday night at the Westin in addition to the nights we would actually be in town so that when we arrived we could check right in, freshen up, and then start seeing the sights … or so we thought. 

The guy at the front desk gave a quick scare when he said he could not find our reservation, but as soon as he searched the right arrival date he found in it.  As he’s going through the process of checking us in, he starts to explain that the water will be off until 10am and then they will be going through each room from 10-12 to run the water to clear the pipes.  Also, the electric will be on and off periodically throughout the day as they are in the middle of testing their emergency generators.  So, we drop our stuff in the room and head out to get oriented.  It’s about 10:30am at this point.

 

After about an hour of walking along the Liffey and St. Stephen’s Green, we stop in and grab some lunch at Davey Byrne’s pub just off Grafton Street.  We then head back to the hotel since it’s nearly 1pm.  We get to the room and run the water a bit just to make sure things are all clear and they seemed to be.  Denise is standing in the bathroom and all of the sudden water starts flowing out of the back of the toilet bowl.  Denise pulls the top off the back and water is spraying everywhere.  We get the front desk on the phone and they send one of the engineers up to take a look.  Apparently, when they shut the water off – the pressure build up from turning it back on knocked the cover off some valve and the rest … was all over our bathroom floor and into the room.

While I’m downstairs talking to the guy at the front desk about getting a different room and a refund for Thursday night’s reservation since we were not able to do anything we wanted to do, like take a shower, Denise was able to use her phone to connect to the hotel Wi-Fi connection to send her friend a message and give her my work email address so we could get in touch.  Communication with the outside world now reestablished, we retired to the hotel bar for a few pints while they sorted our room out.

So, after a few comp’ed drinks at the Mint Bar the guy front desk comes down and they have a new room for us.  I forgot to mention that we had gotten an offer to upgrade our classic king room to a deluxe room earlier in the week. So, we were already in the equivalent of a junior suite.  Unfortunately, the “city view” they had offered wasn’t much of a view and I strategically made note of that when inquiring about getting a new room.  So, they moved us to one of their signature suites.  It was a 2-story room connected by a spiral staircase overlooking Westmoreland Street called the George Bernard Shaw Suite.  It was nice to say the least.

 

After a shower and a change of clothes we head over to Trinity College to walk around and see the Book of Kells , which is basically a pictorial bible from the 9^th century.  It was an interesting little piece of history and the college was beautiful.  We ran back to the hotel to get changed for dinner.

 

That night we had made reservations at the Tea Room at the Clarence Hotel, just off Temple Bar and the river.  Drinks at the Octagon Bar before hand – oh and the place is owned by Bono and the Edge.  To make a long story short – skip it.  The bar was nothing special and the food was sub-par.  After that, we just went back to the room and crashed for the night.  It was about 10:30pm local time, and that was Friday.

Saturday we grabbed some coffee and made our way over to the Guinness Brewery at St. James Gate.  We weaved our way through Tempe Bar and stopped at a few places along the way, including: The Queen of Tarts, Christ Church, and a few other spots.  The Guinness tour was very interesting.  The best part, besides the pint at the end, was the view of Dublin from the Gravity Bar above the brewery.  You could see a full 300-320 degree above the city of Dublin from Wellington Park to the northwest all the way around to the Wicklow Mountains to the southwest.

 

After soaking in the view and our complimentary pint, we headed out to find St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  It was very interesting, but not unlike many of the old churches you might find in the city or around the world from that time period.  A

 After a quick tour of the cathedral, we headed back to Temple Bar to a place called the Porter House for lunch and, of course, more Guinness for me and Smithwicks for Denise.   After lunch, we wondered back through Temple Bar to the hotel and then back over towards the river to snap a few more pictures and to try to find a bar a colleague of mine from Dublin had recommended called John Mulligans.  Finding the bar, we sat down for yet another pint.  This place was completely off the beaten path and clearly a locals pub and we were thankful for it.

We didn’t have plans for dinner on Saturday night, so we wandered back over to St. Stephen’s Green to see if we could get a table at this place we had seen the day before, called Hugo’s.  We walked in and were seated right away.  The food and atmosphere were very nice.   Afterward, we walked back over to Temple Bar to catch some live music.  Unfortunately, Denise and I seemed to have eaten something that didn’t agree with us and were up half the night getting sick. 

Sunday hit us both pretty hard.  We got a late start.  We grabbed some coffee and pastries and just walked around.  We were planning to meet up with Denise’s college friend, Tory, later in the day.  Around 2pm we stopped in at Sheehan’s on Chatham just off Grafton Street for some lunch and Tory met us there.  We caught up over drinks and then wandered around a bit before stopping in at another place in Temple Bar for more music and drinks before Tory headed out to get back to London.  Denise and I went back to the hotel to grab something to eat before packing and getting to bed.

 

Monday’s flight back was relatively uneventful and we were very happy for that.  We arrived in Philadelphia right on time to find the remnants of another snow storm we missed by being out of town (the first being last October while in Alabama).

It was a great trip and we can’t wait to go back and see the rest of the country.