Dublin Part Two

I am back from Dublin now and had a great long weekend! Here are more photos from my trip to Ireland's capital city.

Here we are at the Ha'penny Bridge.

Saturday morning we went to the Temple Bar Food Market. Everything we tried from there was amazing. We had a cronut, blueberry scone, lemon curd bar, carrot cake, and a potato and cheese pancake thing. Below are some photos of the different booths at the market. 

This next photo is of St. Audoen's Church. 

Here we are outside the stone wall.

Here is a photo of Christ Church Cathedral. It is such a beautiful and photogenic building!

This next photo is of the Fusiliers' Arch in St. Stephen's Green Park. How cool that both my maiden name (Hart) and my married name (Smith) are represented! 

We had some Murphys Ice Cream and it was wonderful! We tried samples of Lemon Curd, Toasted Irish Oats, Dingle Sea Salt, Blissful Butterscotch, and Honeycomb Caramel. We ended up taking home Honeycomb Caramel and Blissful Butterscotch for our dessert that night because both were amazing!

Here we are on the Bachelor's Walk. 

We also went to Trinity College and saw the Book of Kells. Since photography is not allowed inside the display with the Book of Kells I don't have any photos of that. The Book of Kells contains the four gospels of the New Testament and was created around 800 AD. Two pages are open for viewing and are changed regularly. Here are a few photos of Trinity College. 

Jackie and me at Trinity College. 

These next two photos are from the Old Library inside Trinity College and upstairs from the display of the Book of Kells. 

These next photos are from our tour of Kilmainham Gaol, which has been a jail since the Victorian age and where many political prisoners from the 1916 Revolution were held. Our tour guide was really knowledgeable and the displays in the museum were also really interesting. They had some of the letters the revolutionists sent to their families before being executed which were really powerful and touching. Some of the letters were from the man who was allowed to marry his fiancee the night before his execution. 

Warren inside one of the cells. 

One of the workers at the gift shop at Trinity College was kind enough to let me take a picture with her coke bottle. How often do you come across my same spelling of Rachael? I'll tell you...rarely. 

These next photos are from Powerscourt Centre, which is a beautiful Georgian House turned mall. I've never seen a mall quite like this back home!

Warren had to leave Sunday to get back to work. Here he is on the top deck of the bus as we waited for the bus to leave to take him to the airport. 

Monday morning we went to the Casino at Marino. It was this elegant "pleasure house" (meant for parties and not living) built in the 1700s for the Earl of Charlemont who loved Italy and wanted to bring a piece of it with him to Dublin. Sadly, the house fell into disrepair and had a lot of water damage but was restored and reopened in 1984. We had a lovely guided tour of the building by an art history student from Italy. 

Some of the intricate ceilings inside the Casino. 

In order to preserve the beautiful original wood floors, they are covered with this cloth that mirrors the actual pattern. Here is a picture of the actual wood floor with the cloth pulled back. 

The restored room upstairs. 

The grounds outside the Chester Beatty Library (which was an incredible exhibit). It is typically full of people sitting on the grass but it happened to be raining so there was no one around. 

Jackie and I split this broccoli, cheese, and sweetcorn cornish pasty. Sweetcorn makes everything awesome. 

We tried donuts at The Rolling Donut. They only sell cake donuts and you can get chocolate iced, cinnamon sugar, or sugar. The chocolate iced were my favourite until I tried a warm sugar one the following morning. So good!

Every time we walked by the James Joyce statue there was a homeless person slumped next to it but on the last day I was able to get a photo sans homeless person.

This is an umbrella vending machine on the street in Dublin. Great idea, especially considering we had only a 4% chance of rain each day we were there and had two really heavy rains.