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Dublin is great fun, pub life being central and all.

At Badbobs I encountered this lad who wore a chalkboard to keep tabs on consumption. A cohort squired around this inflatable substitute for a girlfriend he had lost (no recollection of how).

 

 

This statue is of an unknown drinker at the Temple Bar, THE tourist attraction not to miss in Dublin.

 
 
  Other worthy sculptures are of Ireland's own James Joyce (left) and Arthur Guinness, who started the ritual of "a pint of ...  
 
 

 

Another interesting pub was in a converted church.

Dancers danced to this kind of music. (Click on back/return arrow to return to this page.)

 

 
 

 

Speaking of music, there is the Molly Malone song to which this statue refers, also known as Cockles and Mussels or In Dublin's Fair City. It's the unofficial anthem of Dublin.

 

The first day I went on a three-hour walking tour which passed by Dublin Castle, shown here.

It stopped drizzling during the first half hour. Then it was three days of good weather – miraculous by Irish standards!

 
         

Another must-see is the Book of Kells at Trinity College and its library.

 

 

Created by monks around 800 AD, the Book of Kells is amazing calligraphy and tiny, tiny drawings depicting four gospels of the New Testament.

The Long Room (65 meters) houses 200,000 books in stacks lined with marble busts of philosophers and writers. Books are not Dewey Decimalized, but arranged according to size, largest at the bottom. Somebody somewhere knows where each book is.

 

 

 

 

 

The trip was originally a cat-sitting gig, but that was cancelled AFTER I had booked a flight. When I lamented about this to my friend, Valerie in London, she said she’d love to join me in Dublin. Problem solved.

She's an experienced globetrotter, having started out in the Peace Corps. I met her when I first came to Paris. She since moved to London.

Val is great at striking up conversations with just about anybody, a great way of learning local lore.

See her rendition of the trip here. (It takes a while to load – patience!)

 

 
 

 

 

 

We happened upon these mimes – who may or may not have something to do with Dublin's name coming from the Gaelic dubh linn or "black pool" where the Poddle stream met the River Liffey at Dublin castle.

 

Or this...

 

A women's mini marathon of 10,000 participants engulfed us while we were innocently sitting at a cafe.

 

 

 

Then there's the food...

Irish stew, of course (left),

and oysters far different than you find in France. It has been posited that oysters, not the potato, should be the national dish. Atlantic waters around Ireland grow great ones.

 
These definitely are not Ireland's finest,
but there are shops everywhere in Dublin like this. Krispy Kreme gone haywire!
 
The last day we went to Howth, a coastal town that is still within the city limits, but a direct contrast to downtown Dublin.
 
 
There are lots of hiking paths.
 
Ireland's Eye is an island just off the coast with birds of different feathers.
 

More of Linda's travelogs