Dublin City Tour

In the U.S. we have the Grey Line buses and in Ireland they have Hop-On-Hop-Off buses. We took advantage of this bus to get a tour of the city and thought we would do some hopping but we found that every thing we wanted to see was just a 10-20 minute walk from wherever we were. Since it is Sunday morning there were very few people getting on the bus so we ended up with an almost private tour.

We boarded the bus at St. Stephen's Square, a lovely garden park. In the early 1800's until the late 1800's the typical house was constructed in the Georgian style. They looked like apartment buildings three stories high and were made of red brick with tall windows and an arched doorway. Windows on the top floor were considerably smaller than the rest of the floors as to give the impression of it being a taller building. A  tax could also have been the reason for the small window as the government assessed a tax on the number and size of all windows in a building. 

Trinity College was built in 1591 as a place of education for Anglican priests. In was a male only college until 1900. This is where we visited the library yesterday. The Bank of Ireland currently resides in a building which used to house the House of Commons and the House of Lords. We drove by St. Patrick's Cathedral aka The National Church of Ireland which has been on this site since 1432. Dublina, part of Dublin Castle is attached to St. Pats. 

Phoenix Park is two times bigger than New York's Central Park.  Many ball fields, bike and walking trails, gardens and homes are located here as well as the zoo and the U.S. Ambassor's residence and Ireland's presidential residence. 

Following our tour we were dropped off near Temple Bar which is an area full of pubs, bars and restaurants and the original bar for which the area is named. Jameson's Irish Whiskey Museum is near here. Our tour time was not until 4 pm so we walked to Christ Church Cathedral and explored the neighborhood. 

Our tour and tasting at Jameson's was a much better experience than at Guinness. We even got to compare the taste of Jameson's to scotch and Jack Daniels. Jamison's is distilled three times which makes it smoother and better tasting than the other two whiskeys. 

After dinner we said our farewells to Mickey and David. They will visit Belfast, Scotland and London before heading home. We fly off to Sweden in the morning.