Downtown Dublin Ireland on a Saturday Night!

Saturday night in a major European city… What to do?  We decided to explore the city center!

This was our light rail stop in downtown Dublin.  We’d taken the ‘Luas’ trolley/light rail system from the Kylemore stop.  There were about 11 stops along the way and all the cars really filled up too!

Despite the presence of quality stores like Marks and Spencer in this pedestrian friendly area, we didn’t do very much shopping. 

Marks and Spencer was founded in London in 1884.  Today the company has 979 stores in the United Kingdom, of which 615 are grocery stores.  Internationally, the company has another 454 locations with stores in Ireland, India, Turkey, Russia, Greece, France, Poland, Hungary, Finland and Spain.   Worldwide sales in 2017 were approximately $13.8 billion US.

There were lots of people downtown in the late afternoon…shopping, drinking and dining.  Unlike big cities in the USA, tall buildings are the exception and many structures have been around a long time.   

Not all structures in Dublin are low rise… This view down the busy pedestrian mall shows The Spire of Dublin.  This 397 foot tall stainless steel sculpture was the centerpiece in the regeneration of O’Connell Street, a major thoroughfare/area that had become a bit worn over the years.  The area was cleaned up and brought back to life and the Spire was intended to be a replacement monument for Nelson’s Pillar. 

Nelson’s Pillar was a large granite column that was capped by a statue of Horatio Nelson.  He was a famous British Admiral who is best known for his victory (and death) at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.  Completed in 1809 when Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, the 134 foot tall ‘Pillar’ survived until March of 1966 when it was severely damaged by explosives planted by Irish Republicans…

This is O’Connell Street…formerly known as “Sackville Street”, which it was referred to during the 1916 “Easter Rising”.   The Rising was launched by Irish Republicans to end British rule in Ireland while the United Kingdom was fighting WWI.  This was the most significant Irish uprising since the rebellion of 1798.   FYI…Ireland became a self-governing Dominion of the British Empire in 1922, (Irish Free State), and it officially became a Republic in 1949.

O’Connell Street is Dublin’s main thoroughfare and it’s the city’s widest but not longest street.  It may be one of Europe’s widest urban streets.

Note the statue in the center of the boulevard walkway along O’Connell Street.  This particular statue is of James Larkin.  Larkin was an Irish trade union leader and socialist activist.  He founded the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, the Irish Labour Party and the Workers’ Union of Ireland… Several other statues of famous Irishmen are prominently displayed along O’Connell Street.  To view and learn about them, you can go to https://www.tenontours.com/the-monuments-of-oconnell-street-dublin/.

We tend to stick to small towns, villages and the countryside wherever we travel, so this excursion was a bit unusual for us.  There is a lot of history in Dublin and there is a lot for visitors to experience.  Still, given our limited time in Ireland, we wanted to focus on the countryside.  If we had the time we would have definitely focused on Christ Church Cathedral (ca. 1038), St. Patrick’s Cathedral (13^th century) and the many museums around the city.  To check out some popular sites for visitors around Dublin, go to http://www.dublintourist.com/directory/places_to_visit/.

Well heck…all that walking and exploring eventually required a break of some kind!  We selected The Gin Palace, home to the largest selection of Gin in Ireland, with 156 different brands from all over the world!   

Notes:

·         Gin derives its predominant flavor from juniper berries and its one of the broadest categories of spirits, with all of the various origins, styles and flavors revolving around juniper as the required common ingredient. 

·         In addition to the required juniper, botanicals/flavoring agents for gin often include lemon, bitter orange peel as well as such items as anise, angelica root, orris root, licorice root, cinnamon, almond, cubeb, savory, lime peel, grapefruit peel, dragon eye, saffron, baobab, frankincense, coriander, nutmeg and others…

The interior of The Gin Palace is colorful and ornate with a big Victorian themed bar and they were busy on this early Saturday evening.  We managed to fine a table and all of us ordered gin drinks of one sort or another…one choice being the Premium Gin Sampler Tray.  That included 3 premium gins for 18E/$21.60 US.  The Gin Palace serves food as well but we didn’t want to spoil our dinner…

You can learn more about The Gin Palace and check out their menu at http://www.louisfitzgerald.com/ginpalace#about.  

When we started looking around for other sights and possibly someplace for dinner, I led us to this busy footbridge across the River Liffey to Dublin’s Temple Bar area. 

The Temple Bar (Irish: Barra an Teampaill) is located on the south bank of the river.  The area is promoted as Dublin’s cultural quarter and its lively nightlife is popular with locals and tourists alike. 

This photo is looking east along the River Liffey from the pedestrian bridge.  The Liffey or more popularly, the Ha’penny Bridge was built in 1816.  In 2012, the Dublin City Council removed a large number of ‘love locks’ from the bridge and then in 2013, they removed another 660 lbs. of locks!  Signage now asks people not to put padlocks on the bridge.    

The River Liffey is only about 78 miles long but it supplies much of Dublin’s drinking water as well as for industry.  For much of history, from Viking beginnings of the city up until recent times, the river was used for navigation and trade. 

The Temple Bar area of Dublin is colorful, lively and interesting.  It’s a great place for people watching as well! 

There are various theories as to why the area is named Temple Bar.  One possibility is that it got its name from the Temple family.  Sir William Temple built a house and gardens her in the 1600s and later he served as the provost of Trinity College, serving in that post from 1609 until 1627.  However, it’s more likely that the name was directly borrowed from the Temple Bar district in London…where the main toll-gate into London was located back to medieval times.

We walked around Temple Bar for quite a while…gawking at the sights and the people…before we began looking for a place to have dinner. 

We didn’t realize that we were just a few blocks from Trinity College or we would have wandered over for a look.  The college was founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I as the “mother’ of a new university.  It was modeled after the collegiate universities of Oxford and Cambridge and it’s the ‘newest’ of 7 ancient universities of Britain, Scotland and Ireland. Oxford is the oldest of these universities, having been founded in 1096!

Along with a couple hundred other people, we stopped for a little street performance by this band...

As attractive and appealing as the area is, we finally stopped casually strolling about and starting focusing on a place for dinner!  Good luck with that mission!  It was Saturday night and without a reservation, our mission was daunting.  We certainly couldn’t get into the Oliver St. John Gogarty Pub…that big yellow building…with a line waiting for entry!

We kept looking for a place to eat.  We walked several blocks, checking out the possibilities at Quays Temple Bar, The Old Storehouse, Toscana, The Boxty House, The Temple Bar Pub and even 'Thunderbird'…shown above.  It was all to no avail!  The restaurants were completely booked or packed with patrons. At least my bride was able to see a few horses along the way!

So it was back to the Ha’penny Bridge and across the River Liffey to the less popular and crowded north side of the river!  Coming up in a future posting, we finally found a place for dinner on our first night in Ireland…

That’s all for now… Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them.

Thanks for stopping along and sharing our walking tour of a small part of Dublin’s center city!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave