We woke up early in the morning eager to visit Dublin, as always when we start a trip. After having breakfast, we looked for a bus to go to the city centre. We had to ask in a supermarket and nobody knew for sure which bus we had to take and where the bus stop was, but finally a guy gave us the proper information. Beware, you will need some coins to take the bus, you cannot pay with notes and they don’t have any change on the bus. Sadly we didn’t have that information, but luckily the driver allowed us to pay with a 10 euro note, because he saw us with the kids, I guess (but we lost the change, 3 euros). By the way, it was the first time on a double-decked bus for the kids, and they enjoyed it so much!
Our first stop was Trinity College. It was a very pleasant walk through the university, quite quiet and away from the crowd. After the walk, we had a take away coffee, and rested on one of the campus playing fields, while we observed a group of students playing frisbee. There was a huge queue for the visit to see the book of Kells (an ancient book dating from the seventh century), so we skipped it.
Then we headed to Christ Church Cathedral. A very nice and quiet church, and then we continued our walk towards St Patrick Cathedral, the largest and oldest cathedral in Ireland, dating from the eleventh century. Here we sat on the lawn of the cathedral park for a while, and we left the kids playing some children’s game for a bit. We always wonder where they get all that energy, because we were a bit tired already!
They began to feel hungry, so we returned to Christ Church, because we saw a cafe advertising a daily menu for 9.95 there, so we headed over there. It was a great success because it was cheap, the food was awesome and we were treated very well. The girls chose some carbonara pasta, Maria a tuna salad, and I chose a hamburger.
After our lunch we continued our visit the city. First we walked by Temple Bar street, with all the life of Dublin’s pubs (we need to come back without the kids to have some beers). And then we strolled towards the statue of Molly Malone. We waited some time in a cafe called Avoca, very close to the statue, and the kids asked for a creamy chocolate cake. It was so big that they couldn’t eat even half of it. Guess who finished it. 😉
First Emma, and then Alfonso arrived from work. They didn’t know each other so we introduced them. After the meeting, we went to explore the Dublin Castle, and we sat for a while, while the kids played a bit and we caught up with each other. What a great place to talk, the castle is really cool! After that we went back to Temple Bar to have a pint of Guinness and at about 8 pm we said goodbye to Emma and we got back home.
On the way, we stopped at phoenix park because Alfonso tells us that there are usually deer on the wild. This park is a gigantic park, it even has a zoo. Well, there are herds of deer in the wild that live in the park, and luckily we found them after looking for them a while, we got as close as we could to take a picture, the girls were fascinated (and so were we).
And I don’t have more to tell… We got back to Alfonso’s house to rest, and we are very happy because we’ve seen everything we expected, and the weather was excellent! We’ve walked a lot, according to Maria’s mobile, almost 15km, and the girls have endured like champions. And we have very high expectations for tomorrow!