Where We Survive A Somewhat Tedious City Tour And Reclaim The Day With A Visit To St. Patrick’s
Our ship is docked in Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Duhn Leery) – combined tender and bus commute of about an hour. Why we’re so far away, no idea, but it’s a bit of a nuisance.
As in: another early morning and rushed breakfast to get to the designated spot to get our tickets, then wait in line to board the tender to take us to the pier in Dun Laoghaire, to board the bus for a 40 minute drive to Dublin and THEN begin the tour.
Most of the time our tour guides are great. Every once in a while, we don’t. Today was the day. I don’t remember his name, but I think he was the most depressing tour guide I’ve ever heard. Basically, he divided Dublin into 2 categories:
“Old Dublin” = “GOOD”
“New Dublin” = “BAD”
For example: while we were in the center of old Dublin, he’d say: “Look up and see the beautiful old buildings, then look down at the lower part, and see nothing but ugly plastic and fast food”.
Rinse and repeat.
Neither of us took any photos during the tour. Everything just sounded so depressing.
Viking rated this excursion as “moderate”. I had asked a Viking rep why (because it was labeled as a “panoramic drive”), and they thought maybe there was a church involved with steps. As far as I can tell, the only “moderate” part of the excursion was the bathroom break. A 10 minute walk through a park in the rain in order to stand in a line (in the rain) for another 15 minutes just to get to the bathroom door. All the buses were lined up in the parking lot – there were hundreds of people in the line.
Of all the things we drove by, only St Patrick’s Cathedral was interesting. The tour bus dropped off anybody who wanted to stay in the city at the pre-arranged shuttle stop. While we were figuring out the logistics, a woman sitting next to me on the bus with her mom (Ann and Veronica) asked if they could split a cab with us to the cathedral. Of course!
It took a few minutes (and some help from a Viking person) to flag down a cab. We were at the cathedral in about 10 to 15 minutes.
Since the shuttle bus back to the ship ran every hour on the hour until 4:00, our goal was to be on the 2:00 p.m. shuttle. We bought our tickets (absolutely no queue whatsoever), picked up our audio guides, and off we went.
St. Patrick’s is just spectacular. That’s all there is to it.
Jonathan Swift, known as the author of “Gulliver’s Travelers”, was a dean of this cathedral and is buried here. Who knew?
If you are a science person, the name Richard Boyle might sound familiar – as in “Boyle’s Law”. Apparently his family was wealthy enough (his father, also Richard Boyle was 1st Earl of Cork) to erect a monument to the entire family. Richard Boyle, the “Father of Chemistry”, is the little boy in the center of the bottom row.
All four of us were done with the audio tour by 1:20. Andy grabbed this photo of the cathedral from across the street:
We figured we had plenty of time to make the 2:00 p.m. shuttle back to the ship. But grabbing a cab turned out to be harder than we thought, even with a steady stream of cabs on the street in front of the cathedral. We ended up using Uber – the car that picked us up was a taxi!
We ended up missing the 2:00 bus by just a couple of minutes. But then we had some time to sit in the beautiful afternoon. The next bus arrived at 2:30, and was filled by 2:45, so it left. We were back on the ship by something after 4:00 p.m.
Tomorrow: Holyhead, Wales
Maryland Meshugas 