Day 2--Ireland

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Today we got up early and packed up our things from Jacobs Inn and headed out to roam around Dublin for a few hours. On the way out we grabbed a breakfast of toast from the hostel. We picked up our bus tour tickets then set out walking for Dublin Castle because we had a few hours before the bus left. We walked around the grounds of Dublin Castle taking pictures of the castle and the grounds. Dublin Castle isn’t really the stereotypical castle—it’s more a government building.

Once we had taken a sufficient amount of pictures we headed back to the bus stop so we could take a South Coast Tour of Ireland. This tour took us through the mountains and along the coast line. As we were traveling the bus driver we telling us about the different historical landmarks that we were passing—as well as giving his own personal commentary of random facts. Such as the ‘Finger Rock’ so named because it resembles a “universal symbol.” Later in the trip the driver took us around a round-about a few times because he thought it wasn’t fair that the left side couldn’t see the same rock as the right side did. We made an unscheduled stop at a beach where we were able to eat our Subway and go on the beach for a few minutes.

Our scheduled stop was for Powerscourt Gardens. Going here we saw—the Italian Gardens, Tower Valley, Japanese Gardens, Winged Horses, Triton Lake, and a Pets Cemetery. We were able to walk around the gardens for about an hour and a half. After which we boarded back onto the bus and headed back towards Dublin. The bus driver continued to tell us jokes and stories to keep us amused through-out the trip. The South Coast Tour took us about 4 hours and 30 minutes to complete. The gardens were beautiful and the bus driver had the whole bus laughing with his jokes. On the way back into Dublin we were also entertained by our bus driver’s singing.

Once we were back in Dublin and had unloaded the bus we set back out to explore Dublin for a bit. We traveled back to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. However, we decided that the line was too long to wait in to see it. So we sat in one of the Trinity College court yards and took some more pictures and rested from walking with our huge backpacks. After a little sitting we set off to go take a picture will Molly Malone and her cart. Molly Malone is very famous and there is an Irish song about her.

We continued walking for a bit, and decided to look and see if we could grab something to eat while watching Irish Dancers. Unfortunately we were unable to watch because we didn’t have time to get to our ferry for Holyhead. So we grabbed burgers at Eddie Rocket’s. Then we did the touristy thing and took a picture straight up of the Stire. We then sat and people watched before needed to go to the ferry. While people watching we saw a guy dancing in the street with his headphones while he was waiting for the bus.

We took a taxi over to Dublin Port. There we checked in and waited to be boarded. I have now taken my first ferry ride.