Living The Irish Dream - Part 8

        A visit to Dublin would excite any literature buff and surgeon wannabe for Dublin is the home to some of the most enduring writers in the English language and Dublin is also the location of the prestigious Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. Derrick and I were neither literature buffs nor surgeon wannabes, but we were thrilled to be in Dublin, the capital of the Republic of Ireland.
        Flying in via KLM, we spent our first night in Dublin, before venturing to other parts of Ireland. At the end of our Irish exploration, we spent another night in Dublin. We chose to stay at the Riverhouse Hotel for the first night. It was right smack in the vicinity of the happening Temple Bar. Apart from its ideal location, I cannot find anything good to say about this hotel.

        However, I did choose this hotel because of its proximity to all the places we wanted to visit in Dublin. This enabled us to have good meals at the pubs, walk to Hard Rock Cafe to purchase some merchandise, stroll along the banks of the River Liffey, relax at St. Stephen's Green, visit the Christchurch Cathedral and pick up our rented car the following day.

We took a bus from the airport to Dublin city centre. Here I am, lugging my luggage to the Temple Bar area.

Dublin

Our hotel for the first night

The Temple Bar Pub in Temple Bar, Dublin. Temple Bar is where Dublin's nightlife is.

Christchurch Cathedral

Christchurch Cathedral was founded in 1030 and is Dublin's oldest building.

The Ha'penny Bridge is a pedestrian bridge built over the River Liffey.

One of the many pubs in Temple Bar

       

The Molly Malone statue, dubbed as "The Tart with the Cart"

On our second night in Dublin (last night of our trip), we chose to stay a little further away from the Temple Bar area. We needed an accommodation that had free parking for our rented car. Morehampton Townhouse was way better than the first night's Riverhouse Hotel. The only snag was we had to walk quite a distance to get to the city centre for some last minute souvenir-hunting. We had earlier planned to catch the shuttle to the Merry Ploughboy Pub for dinner and some Irish music, but shelved the plan as we were too exhausted after our 11-day Irish exploration. We have now put that down on our must-do list for our return to Ireland.