Dublin Day

After saying good-bye to dear ol' Liam, we decided to see if we could learn a bit more about Dublin on our own. We headed over to the Dublin castle to take the tour they offer. The Dublin Castle consists of one remaining tower from the 1200 a.d. structure. Apparently some brilliant bloke thought it would be a good idea to do a "controlled" demolition to fight a fire to save the castle by blowing up explosive right next to the tower that held all the gun powder and blew up the majority of the castle in the process. The rebuilt structure off of the original tower is a hodge podge of styles and colors (see two pictures below: those stucco buildings are attached to the old part of the castle. And I thought that our neighbors house was an eyesore to the neighborhood and didnt' fit in.) and now they use the building for official state offices.
I am not sure if the tour was really as good as we thought it was, or if it was merely wonderful in comparison to Liam's tours, but we learned so much about the history of the city we are calling home for the next few days. The guide did a wonderful job of making the "history" interesting and relevant and we learned enough to start applying that knowledge to things we had been seeing around town, but didn't know what they were. We had seen plaques all over the city with an odd shape and a star. After the castle tour we realized that hundreds of years ago, before the castle was blown up, the city had been enclosed by a wall and it was the shape of this old wall (the city boundries) and the star was a "you are here" symbol. Even our tour guide didn't know that. Aren't we clever?
We walked around the grounds of the "castle" and found a hidden courtyard that had a wonderful grassy area, broken up with winding paths of brick.



They were in the shape of snakes, with glass eyes and heads at the beginning of the paths. I thought there weren't any snakes in Ireland. We grabbed a quick bite at this wonderful cafe on the premises. It was such a great cafe, there weren't any empty tables, so we had to be very "European" and share with a unsuspecting woman. We started to chat her up and she gave us some wonderful suggestions on "local secrets" and places to get some local flavor. So after the tour, we decided to try them out. We started walking around to a bar that was to have the most wonderful, authentic local music called COBBLESTONE.
On our hike to the bar to hear some Irish folk music, we stumbled upon part of the old city wall from the 1200's. It was hidden in the middle of this neighborhood and was now part of a wall surrounding a church. A few hours before, none of us would have noticed this wall, but the tiny sign above the gate caught our attention and we headed over to check it out. It is amazing to see structures that are hundreds of years old still standing in any form.

We got sidetracked from our hike to the bar, and decided to try and get into St. Patrick's cathedral next. It was open when we got there, but they charged 5 Euros to get in. I have spent a lot of time in churches in Europe and have NEVER been charged to get inside. We bartered with the priest in charge and got in for 3 Euros each instead. (Do you think that is grounds for going to Hell?) It was nice. It was like every other cathedral I have ever seen. I still don't get the "admission" fee into a church that currently has a congregation and holds services. But what do I know, I am just a silly American.