June 14 : First Day in Dublin

After arriving at the airport, we took a taxi to our hotel. The Muldron Hotel is a modern hotel just outside of the downtown core, next to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The room was clean and bigger than most European hotel rooms, but not as big as a standard North American room.

Despite not having not much sleep, I was not tired. So, I decided to go and get an Irish SIM card for our phone. The mobile phone stores are about a 20-minute walk from the hotel. With my meandering walk along Liffey River and taking pictures it took quite a bit longer.

Our new phone number while we are on vacation is 3538-740-69754. I have no idea how you would send a text from Canada to this number.

I then took a walk along O’Connell Street. This famous boulevard is very enjoyable to walk along and was brimming with pedestrians. O’Connell Street houses numerous monuments, including one of the world’s tallest sculptures called The Spire (Monument of Light), a large needle-like monument that stands 120 meters high.

I thought Rome could be call the city of churches, but Dublin does not take a back seat. There seems to a church on each block. I got lost trying to return to hotel by navigating using the church spires. I thought each tall spire was St. Patrick’s, but I ended up several blocks away going in circles.

Later in the afternoon we went for lunch at a famous fish and chip shop that Marg had found on Google. Unfortunately, we got lost trying to find the shop using Google maps. Google sent us in circles. Eventually we just gave up.

For supper we went to the Porterhouse Temple Bar pub. There we finally had our fish & chips. During meal got text from our group staying, who are staying in Hard Rock Hotel. But time I responded they had already left for their dinner.

We met Coleen, Ron, Janet, and Keith later for drinks. As usual we had good times with lots of laughs.

All in all a better day to kick off  the vacation than our trip over to Ireland.