This morning we woke up to clear skies with an early sunrise at 6:00 am. The ship was in the final stages of our approach into the port of Dublin.
As we were getting tied up at the dock, it started to rain. I guess the weather is like that here, sunny one moment, and raining the next. We got prepared for our day of sightseeing, and then went to breakfast.
At about 8:30, we met up with Ruthe and Brian, we were all going to spend the day together. The plan was to use the Hop-On/Hop Off bus to tour the various areas of Dublin. Stephanie had never done one of those, but they are in almost every European tourist city. It is a nice concept, you pay for the day, and you can ride around and get on and off as many times as you want. They typically are set up for stopping at most of the popular sights, and are on about a 15 minute time spacing between buses, but we found out that that varies between 2 minutes and about 25 minutes at times.
It remained cloudy for most of the morning, and was cool riding the open top, double deck bus. However, it did not rain any more after what we saw first thing in the morning
We rode around and stopped at the St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and went in for a look around and to take some pictures.
We boarded the bus once again and headed over to the Guinness Brewery. We got off the bus and went inside the gift shop, but decided against taking the 15 euro per person brewery tour. Our logic being that at some point in the day, we would rather drink some Guinness than pay that much just to see it made.
We hopped back on the bus and continued our loop around the city. We went through a very large (0ver 1,700 acres) park, and saw all of the blooming flowers, and large, old trees.
Next stop was an area of Dublin called Temple Bar, where we went to the actual Temple Bar and had lunch. The “bar” used in the description of that area of Dublin does not stand for a drinking establishment, but a section of the city.
When we left the Temple Bar, we found that it had cleared up outside, and was sunny, and less windy. It ended up being a very nice afternoon, even a little hot.
We walked around the city, occasionally stopping to look in shops.
We stopped in another pub and had one more Guinness, (well the girls had something a little less “stout” ) We had decided to take a taxi back to the ship in lieu of the shuttle bus we had taken from the ship to the city center in the morning.
They had changed the time in and out of port, so the ship was not scheduled to leave until after 7:00 pm, but the last shuttle was at 4:30. As it ended up, it was less expensive for the four of us to taxi than it had been for the shuttle, and a lot quicker.
Once back on the ship, we went ahead and got ready for dinner and the sail away.
It was a nice day in Dublin.