As I have mentioned I spent a few days last week in Ireland, in Dublin to be more accurate, I have visited the city before but that was years ago and was only a day visit and you really can’t fit a great deal into just a few hours so a return visit to Dublin was always in the pipeline and when I was creating my 101 things list I a longer trip to Dublin.

In fact this all came about as I had booked some time off work for my birthday and did not want to waste it by doing nothing, originally I had hoped to visit Prague but various problems arose so I settled for Dublin. Decided to travel by boat rather than plane as I figured there would actually be more free time to see Dublin rather than having to sit around in some airport for hours on end waiting for a plane so caught the train from Carmarthen late last Sunday night for the early morning crossing from Fishguard. Arrived in Ireland just before 7am and it was straight on to a bus for the three hour drive to Dublin, I know catching a plane we would have arrived in Dublin and it would only have been a short journey from the airport to the hotel but any flights would not have arrived much earlier anyway.

Trinity College Library - Book Of Kells

Once in Dublin it was decided to make our way to the hotel, even though we were not able to check in we hoped that we would be able to store our bags there when we went out and explored the city, the hotel “Drury Court” was pretty close to the centre of Dublin and once we had dumped our bags we headed into the city and to Trinity College, where such famous people as Oscar Wilde had once attended. It was then that I was forced to go into the library, I say forced as you had to pay to get in to see the Book Of Kells and you were not even allowed to take any photos when inside, at least I was able to use my student union card to get a discount. If I knew the displays in the library were like that I don’t think I would have paid to go in, heck I don’t think I would have gone in if it was free please don’t me wrong the Book of Kells is interesting but I have read all about it before and I found the exhibit very crowded with tourists (lol) It was bad enough trying to get this photo taken without some idiot walking in front of the camera.


There had been a shower while we were in the library so we quickly visited the local tourist information centre to get some flyers to look at as we made our way back to the hotel to actually book into the room.

The hotel was one of the cheapest I could find that was in the city centre so I was not expecting it to be fantastic, from reviews I had read about the hotel I knew that there was a nightclub next door and other guests had found this a problem but we were on the third floor and over looking a lovely alley at the side of the nightclub so not exactly fantastic views over the city but at least the room was clean and tidy. I was disappointed that there were no complementary biscuits with the tea/coffee making facilities! It was then that we decided what we were going to do the next day as I always find it better to have some sort of plan of action, once that had been decided we got ready to sample the nightlife that Dublin had to offer. Now this could have been better as you might know Dublin has so many bars and so many places to eat that it must have taken us at least an hour before we finally found somewhere to eat. Okay I was being a little picky as some of these menus were really quite pricey for what you were getting, or it could have just been my brain could not work out the conversion rate between Sterling and Euro.

After walking all around the Temple Bar area we came to a restaurant called Bruno’s and after a quick look at the menu in the window we decided to go in. Now the restaurant was pretty small but they found us a table and handed us the menu, this is when things started to go downhill as the menu was different to what had been displayed in the window (turned out that was the lunch time menu) and it was pretty expensive but there is nothing more embarrassing than after being seated to get into an argument with the waitress and walk out so I ordered one of the pasta dishes and asked if it came with fries to which I was told it did. When my food arrived it was minus the fries, which turned up five minutes later and doing my best Gordon Ramsey impression I criticised everything about the place and the food. By the time the bill arrived I was fuming so when I discovered I had been charged for the fries I remained “British” and said nothing but did nearly smash the door when I was making my exit. So if you are ever in Dublin keep away from Bruno’s.

I suppose this had got the evening off to a bad start so from then it was a visit to a few of the local bars and pubs to sample the Guinness and to find somewhere a little lively to spend the evening. Needless to say ended up in a bar which was pretty lively…

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 3rd, 2007 at 2:31 pm and is filed under 1001, Personal, Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.