In Dublin’s Fair City . . . .

June 12-13, 2008

Our first visit to Dublin was on the afternoon of Friday, June 12.

By that point we had been awake since 3:00 am the prior morning, and our bodies

were on PST time, which is 8 hours later than Ireland time,

which put us at . . . . oh, yeah, over 30 hours without sleep!

I suspect that had a lot to do with why we ended up at O’Neills both days!

The River Liffey flows through the middle of Dublin. That’s O’Connell Bridge in the foreground.	We found our way into Trinity College completely by accident. We’d wanted to see it, but wasn’t sure where it was. On the second day, we noticed people going though an archway in a high wall, and turned in on a whim, and there it was!	The Irish National Botanic Gardens were fairly close to our hotel, so we made a trip over on our second day in Ireland. It was well worth the walk.
We saw a lot of Irish housing like this in the suburbs of Dublin. A million people live in Dublin; ¼ of the country’s population. And that’s not counting the tourists!	O’Neills Pub is fairly famous, with countless rooms over two or three floors. It was our first Irish Pub, so it holds a place in our hearts.	St. Stephen’s Green is one of the many parks in downtown Dublin. In this picture you can see the boy and his father feeding the pigeons.
Christ Church Cathedral is supposed to be the oldest building in Dublin.	Another picture of the Botanic Gardens. They had different areas that represented different climates and conditions, and greenhouses that had tropical plants 3 stories high!	This is Dublin Castle, now government offices. We tried to take a tour, but it was closed due to a referendum that had been passed the day before.