Home » Ireland » Dublin in a Weekend

I had a couple of weeks before I whizz home for Christmas in Australia and I thought I'd just see the year out quietly in London.

Dublin in a Weekend

Nickjenkins
2003-11-20 13:14:39

Displayed times (last time: )

died several hundred years before Australia was discovered.

After the monastery we took a stroll along the Green Road, a circular walk through the forest. At the south end of the Green Road we detoured onto a side walk which lead up the hills alongside Glendalough itself. This turned out to be an energetic but breath taking climb along a path laid with railway sleepers.

We climbed about 600m up the hills to the crest where we could see stunning views along the glen to the North, Dublin and the sea. Fleeing the cold we turned back at the top and headed back to the car. We were passed on the way by two particularly active individuals, jockeying their mountain bikes down the nearly 1:1 gradient. One of them remarked at the bottom that it had "seemed like a good idea at the time".

That evening we returned to Dublin and had a couple of beers in a couple of quiet Irish pubs. Food was more difficult to have since the restraunts of our suburb of Raneleigh were packed to capacity and we had to settle for bar food. We eventually caught up with a bunch of friends in nearby Rathmines (pronounced "Rat Mines", although why anyone would want to mine Rats is beyond me) who were enjoying a Guiness in their local living room, a pub called Slattery's.

A word about Guiness here too. It's all true. Guiness in Australia or even Britain is a thick heavy brown drink which is particularly heavy and puts me under the table after a glass and a half. Guiness in Ireland is this strange, brown nectar which seems to slide down easily in batches of three or four pints and has apparently no side effects.

The next morning we arose at a leisurely hour for a full Irish breakfast at our guest house (full Irish breakfast being different from full English because it includes both Black and *White* puddings, yuk!). We headed into Dublin and spent a couple of hours wandering the centre of town including the Temple Bar nightlife district.

We also visited Trinity college and saw the Book of Kells, one of the more treasured ancient Celtic manuscripts. The work put into such manuscripts is mind-boggling and I for one will be sticking to the laptop and laser printer rather than the hand bound, calfskin, quill and ink manuscript.

Trinity also has a most impressive library of ancient volumes which is sadly, not open to public access. You can wander down the central isle of the library but the dusty tomes are roped off and not available to the grasping fingers of the public.

We then spent the last couple of hours having coffee and trawling around Dublin some more before heading back to the airport to drop off the car and head home.

The flight from London to Dublin takes 45 minutes and we were backing in our own living room by half-past nine. Future plans for Ireland include a visit to the west coast sometime in the near future. You can be assured that when we make it there, I'll be writing another travelogue too....

Wednesday, 24 Nov 1999 18:43:42 PST

My travels