dublin

My Europe Tour 2025 – Blog #21 – Dublin B 31/10/25 

My last Full Day in Dublin Ireland. It’s been a rushed stay here in Dublin, but I must fit in with my planned stay with friends at Bristol UK, I met on my Machu Picchu Trek back in 2019.

I started my day off as per usual (early) with my over-the-top buffet protein brekky at The Travelodge PLUS Hotel. With my research I checked out the nearest Dublin Express bus stop to ensure I can catch an extremely early Airport bus tomorrow without too much walking in the dark & with that completed I headed down the riverbank walkway away from the Temple Bar end that I have seen for the past 2days.

The first notable sight on the river is the 19th century ship that took emigrants to America. The original Jeanie Johnston Famine Ship did 16 emigrant journeys, carrying over 2,500 people with no loss of life. It is moored at City Quay & they do onboard tours of the ship showing you the famine times. Unfortunately, I’m too early for the first day tour setting, so I kept walking.

There’re some unique bridges here, plus some are raised sectional bridges for the river & channel operations. I walked The Sean O’Casey Pedestrian Bridge, Samual Beckett Bridge & the Dublin Drawbridge (Rolling barrel type). At this point of crossing over the river, the city has assembled the famine sculptures of citizens back in the day & it really is life-like giving you a real feeling of those tough times. The more you look the more you can feel their pain .. so, life -like. Late May 1847 at the height of the great famine, 1,490 tenants from the Mahon estate took on the gruelling 100mile (165km walk) from Strokestown to Dublin docks. Their estate landlord organised this assisted emigration journey to Quebec on one of the numerous ships available, but unfortunately over half died at sea being unwell. Today, there are trek walks doing this journey & some of it to raise money.

Just up from the famine sculptures is the very impressive Customs House (day photo & night photo below) & what a building of the past. Getting up to O’Connell St (Main St) there is a commemorative needle called The Spire, of stainless steel that is some 120m high. It is supposed to represent hope & inspiration reflecting from the past to the vibrant present. I don’t get it, but I agree with the Dublin community as they call it the shiny toothpick. It cost €2mil to do it (bloody waste I think). It just sits there like a pin in concrete.

I came across a street eye (Dublin Portal) & watching everyone being silly & waving to each other was quite funny. I couldn’t tell where the other street eye portal was located but the vision was quite pleasing to see people lose their inhibitions. Near the eye portal & the toothpick was an impressive building of Modern History Museum & nearby was an equally impressive monument, called the Charles Parnell Monument (an Irish Nationalist) set in the middle of the intersection of Parnell & O’Connell Streets. Notice the Golden Harp above which eventually became the Guinness logo.

I crossed the Half Penny Bridge (Pedestrian) to get to the other side of the river & to look back at other great buildings. This bridge crossing is obvious where it cost a halfpenny to cross it until 1919. Walking away from the river you can’t miss Four Courts, built in the later 1700s & housed various main courts. The next obvious landmark to be seen is St Patrick’s Tower in the Liberties. It was originally built in 1757 & rebuilt 1815. It was a windmill to power the Thomas St Distillery. Not far from this iconic structure is one of the many gates to the Guinness factories & this photo is of the St James Gate & just around the corner is the entrance to the Guinness Storehouse (Tour entrance). Just up from this gate is the St James Cathedral.

By this time (2.30pm), I am at the meeting point of the Utah Teapot for my Pub Walking Tour, early of course so I sat around until this quirky looking gentleman asked me if I was here for the tour. In a thick Irish accent it was Kevin, my guide. We supposed to have 13 for the tour but we ended up missing 3 & in waiting for them we were quite late getting away. We had 2 women (Doctors) from Turkey, a lad from India, a father & son from California (Dad a retired FBI agent), an English traveller, a Perth lady & a lady from Florida to name a few. As we walked on Kevin was a great communicator with wonderful Irish humour. This is going to be good, far better than the below average walking tour I did the other day.

Our first pub was The Cobblestone, a quaint heritage looking corner pub. A family-owned pub that encourages singers & musicians to do the open mic method. We found about 12 musicians of an Irish mini orchestra band in full swing & harmony using all types of Irish music string & wind instruments. Very entertaining & lively. There is a mandatory silent rule of respect when people are performing. Sinead O’Connor started singing here when very young. Had my first pale ale there too for the day called Ambush by Trouble Brewing, so the names weren’t that threatening when consuming the mid-level alcoholic beer. I thought it best to pace myself.

The next pub was the Bonobo (new age bar with fireplace) which is more for the younger generation. Here Kevin gave us more beer history along with his quirky knowledge & humour. There are 798 pubs in Dublin alone. He told us The Brazen Head on Liffeyside Bridge St is Dublin’s oldest pub where it started beer moonshining in 1198 (photo below) & now on the same site the pub was built in 1754. Smithwick’s (Irish Red Ale) is traced back to 1710 as the first official beer produced in Dublin by John Smithwick’s Brewery at St Francis Abbey (Kilkenny) adding on to the same beer produced by the then monks.

But the real stories came next. Poitin beer was a rural beer made without any rules (moonshine) in 17th century which caused blindness, coma, etc & ultimately tens of hundreds of people believed to be dead were buried alive. The beer was ultimately made illegal in 1661. Through this series of yearly events a few things came out of it. Sayings like “Blind Drunk”, “Bell Ringer”, “Shit face drunk”, “Saved by the bell”, “Graveyard shift” & “raining cats & dogs” to name a few. To explain these; when they buried the ‘dead’ they had a length of fine rope placed through the top of the coffin & tied to a small bell on a small stick above ground. If anyone came too, then they would ring the bell & would be ‘saved by the bell’. A terrible job was for someone to work the graveyard shift where the person would roam the graveyard at night listening for any bell ringing & then start the recovery digging. Blind drunk is obvious when someone has had too much & also became blind. Shit faced is where people would bucket out their toilet waste, etc into the gutters of the street & it would flow sometimes into a thick rope area, as a small pond. The drunks would ultimately fall over into these areas & when they get up, they wiped their face ‘clean’ using their hands. Get the picture? The raining cats & dogs is when houses had thatched roofs & when it rained over time the dogs & cats would scale up onto the roofs to get away from the flooded streets & ultimately, with their weight would fall through the roof. You could imagine Kevin embellishing these stories in his thick Irish accent. So funny.

After that, we went to Frank Ryan Bar where the pub is so dark, hardly a light is on, but you get used to it. It is for the ambience of pure pub drinking without the distractions. Quite some years ago, a group of women were having a hen’s night out & at some point they took off their bras & hung them from the ceiling beams. There are a lot of bras there now. None of the women in our group were going to contribute, but we even offered them a lot more beer. LOL!! The lighting didn’t allow a photo of the bra ceiling either.

After that session, we went to Arthur’s where Kevin had organised a large table upstairs & for group privacy. Here he showed us (after we bought our Guinness beer) how to drink the beer in the correct manner. If anyone buys me a Guinness, I’ll gladly show them. It is an art & an accurate one. Only one Australian woman from Perth in our group managed it accurately. After this, we had a range of challenges (tests of knowledge). By this time, it was getting very late & I had a very early flight in the morning & I explained that to Kevin who ultimately gave me some welcomed advice on getting the right bus stop which was on the other side of the river to my hotel in front of Custom House. He had knowledge on so many things & wished I had come across him on Day 1 of Dublin. He also conducts his much-loved food tours.

I said good-bye to all & headed off through the very cold winds again & to cap it off a huge amount of people about & fireworks everywhere (Halloween was on). All day I was trying to find a reliable money exchange facility but alas, no bloody luck so it will be me carrying useless Euros into UK, until I find a place there. Airports are a rip off for currency exchange!!

Without looking at Google Maps, I remembered my 20+ minute walk back to my hotel. Showered, packed my bags to 99% complete & settled for some short sleep with the alarm set at 3.20am as I must get the Dublin Express bus to the airport at the bus stop 4.05am described by Kevin. My walking today was 19,461 steps = 15.26kms. Below is a generalised geography of Dublin & surrounds.

I’ll end my Blog #21 here. Many thanks for reading my blogs. My next blog will be of Bristol UK to stay with very close travelling friends from my Machu Picchu Trek in 2019. Please stay safe, happy & healthy. Cheers.

My Europe Tour 2025 – Blog #20 – Dublin A 30/10/25

 From my last blog I am very pleased with my Travelodge PLUS lodgings and became quite settled & feeling refreshed when going to bed. This level of ‘luxury’ (3star, but I rate it 4star) certainly helps when I have been on the fast road of travelling for almost a month straight with no real respite from constant moving.

Somehow with my alarm set I woke up 5mins before it activated. Must have been this wonderful room & awesome King size bed. Such a great sleep. I had plenty of time to venture to Ground Floor & get stuck into the buffet breakfast at the in-house Mossco Restaurant. So much food there & surely there must be a lot of waste. With my protein food in my stomach, I headed off to my 10am meeting point at The Old Storehouse Pub to undertake the Dublin: Highlights and Hidden Gems Walking Tour (2hrs) some 12mins walk away but with this inclement & unkind drizzle weather & wind factor is not making this a fun walk. Not pleasant at all.

Of course, I’m early & left with no cover anywhere, so I used a side of a building to the opposing wind & gradually some people turned up confirming we are all at the right spot. Kieran is our guide; he is late & with no green umbrella as he described to us in emails. With a quick introduction & roll call we are off! Seems strange we have walked almost 1.5klms before our first historical stop, noting we passed several landmarks along the way.

Dublin Castle & the Chapel Royal (Castle St). The castle (round tower) was built early 13th century & had various duties. First one was the ruling King’s Palace & where laws were set in. Then became the Queen’s residence, then a prison for the anti-loyalist Irish. It took on storage duties & some unknown duties as well. The castle was built on the grounds of the Viking settlement & from 1204 – 1922 it served as the seat of English & later British rule. The chapel was built in the early 1800s & attached to the tower.

Our adjacent stop, some hundred metres away was Garda Memorial Garden, Dame St but this is really the Dubh Linn Garden where the Vikings settled their only time in one Winter & set up a long-term camp by a “black pool” which in old Irish language means Dubh Linn. Over time this dialect changed it to Dublin. This lawn area was the governing ruling area when they were here. My photo shows the old Irish language with the translation below of the Garda Memorial Garden. Kieran stated 30% of the population is now learning the old Irish language & is growing with students learning it now in schools. Back in the 1950 -70s only 5% spoke that language. It’s a resurgence to keep their culture & voice. A country that has no culture or language is a country that is lost.

Kieran went on to talk about the Potato Famine where the rich people sold most of the food grown in Ireland overseas for huge profits that basically made most Irish people starve to death from 1845 – 1852 leaving the ‘only’ staple food being potatoes & estimates of over 1million deaths. This changed Ireland to this day where emigration was in full mode to enable Irish to survive in other countries. Ireland is still growing their population but hasn’t come to the original number.

The next big historical site was St Patrick’s Cathedral where Kieran explains St Patrick wasn’t a lifelong Christian & he was also Welsh. His sea life started young & was captured by pirates. He later escaped, did a lot of Christian things & became a heavily involved Christian, later becoming a saint. The world doesn’t know that it celebrates St Patrick’ Day, not knowing the full history of his life story. Kieran calls it a great Irish story. LOL!

Following in from St Pat’s Cathedral we call into the Christ Church Cathedral undergoing extensive stained glass window repairs (Bottom left photo). Across the road is St Audoen’s Catholic Church (Bottom right photo) but we don’t go close there. Walking back to our origin, we come across The Temple Bar district (bit lively & happy area) & we see a store heavily into Christmas with bright lights & decorations (21 Essex St E, Temple Bar). A real standout & very busy & yet we don’t stop & interact .. weird. Then, we come up to a grand building, yet again no commentary. This is Regent House, part of Parliament House, so I had to do my own digging of research.

We kept walking till we came across the famous Temple Bar district which is always busy with residents & tourists, but we are given no time to experience this area & before long we are in front of Trinity College which was set up & built by order of Queen Elizabeth 1. This college is very distinguished with famous students coming from it. It has over 1 million books & archives of ancient history. I’m bewildered why we just passed Parliament House with no commentary or even time for a photo. We were ahead of schedule. Kieran starts talking about the River Liffey & some of its bridges. O’Connell Bridge joins north & south & forms the main street of Dublin, but this bridge is the largest bridge in Europe that is the same width as its length. This bridge is wide! The other bridge he talks about is The Sean O’Casey Bridge where it was built by the same company that built the Titanic. Irish joke about “would you trust it”? It’s a pedestrian bridge thankfully. Again, no photo opportunity.

Within a few minutes the tour was wound up, Kieran thanked everyone & basically that was it. Very weird & like a throw away tour & everyone parted immediately, with no other conversations. Pretty disappointing really. OK .. what now?  

With the weather becoming increasingly worse I decided, without much intelligent thinking walked back to my hotel, not taking in consideration of the significant distance & that I had a Guinness Brewery Tour at 2pm in the same district almost. Walking back to my hotel I came across a sign stating my country hometown of Grafton, so I took the photo for my extended family. Grafton is a very strong British name of standing (Lord Grafton, etc). By the time I got back to my room I was reasonably soaked, so I dried off & caught some downtime.

Within an hour I was required to walk back up to Guiness St Jame’s Gate, The Liberties district which was, say the next neighbourhood to my previous walking tour. What a walk & the weather is getting significantly worse making it a very hard journey. The Guiness factory is huge (more than several blocks & signed on a 9,000-year lease) & after checking a few entrance gates I was finally given the correct entry address. The line-up was quite long, but I was inside surprisingly in a few minutes. Not happy being this sodden. We do the standard aircraft cattle run but the line keeps moving when they release 50 of us cattle at a time. I just got to the gate (almost through) & I was stopped. Well, at least I’ll be the first person in this run when freed. The people behind me had a great laugh on my antics & comment (always trying to get humour in all situations).

This storehouse, opened in 2000 on a £31Mil redevelopment, used to be one of the brewery houses but over time it became semi-converted to a museum & interactive marketing complex of 7 floors. The atrium I call it in the centre has a glass balustrade design on each floor that resembles a giant Guiness pint glass which is calculated to hold 14.3million pints of Guiness beer. There is brewery info from start to finish, then a large commercial shop, more videos & information, then a café, tasting floor & then on the 7th a Guinness Gravity Bar where I can use my entry ticket for a free pint of Guinness, expertly poured. This area was packed!!! You could buy more beer if you wanted too, but my one & only was enough. Nigeria drinks the most Guinness in the world & their alcoholic range is 8% & not the usual 4.6%. Guinness employs testers that inspect all pubs that sells their famous drinks to ensure the ultimate experience & quality is maintained. There are 798 pubs in Dublin County alone.

This Guinness tour is a free self-walk tour, but you must leave before 5pm. My tour started 2.10pm & I walked out happy at 4.50pm & I didn’t waste much time. My free Guinness time was excellent when after a while at the Gravity Bar I had some Americans from Florida ask me about my Wobbly Chook beanie & that started a whole massive talkfest. Shanaia was a blast & asked the most questions. She did horse camp drafting & then became a jockey at 17 & now in her early 30s is doing her pilot’s licence. Such a great conversation but alas, they had an appointment & had to head off. They do brewery work back in Florida too, but I couldn’t find out much more info.

During my tour I found out the following information. I found out how the name of Porter became a type of beer, how Guinness do their own barley & yeast roasting & fermenting & storing their yeast in cryogenic plants with liquid nitrogen set at -196°C & yeast is used up to 8 times before disposed of. Barley is roasted to 232°C. Being a real brewer is far too much technicality & stress for me. Cheers to just drinking the Guiness.

Guinness started brewing before 1759 but in that year changed to the dark brown ale in a bigger way when he signed a 9,000year lease on his original factory & storage area. Today, it covers 50+acres of land & produces 3million pints in Brewhouse 4 every day. Each batch is taste tested 23 times & analysed by scientists & lab techs 231 times.

Back in the day Guinness used his own 300 skilled Coopers to manufacture 1,000 casks (barrels) per week. One time, 250,000 casks were stacked like a pyramid awaiting filling, or repairing & suspiciously caught fire at night & to save most of the barrels they were thrown into the adjacent River Liffey. There was over 200years of continuous cooperage in this factory. It took Guinness 10days to get the casks from the brewery up the river to the port for overseas transport when they first started internationally. The photo taken on 7th Floor shows the green copper dome is the last reminder of George Roe & Co Distillery in 1957, but you have to look extremely closely to see it. To the far left of these photos you can see the start of Pheonix Park which covers 1,760 acres making it the largest in Europe. It even includes the Dublin Zoo. The Gravity Bar gives you a 360° view, but the weather was beyond acceptable for photos, so more beer consumed.

Seeing it is 4.50pm I had better head back towards my hotel & find a good eating spot before retiring. After much walking the rain is getting heavier & the wind increasing. I can really feel the coldness .. OK .. freezing … ALL day!!! It is far worse than me spending 8hrs straight in the Wobbly Chook Brewing Company Cold room with cousin Shane. Bloody freezing all day & I have a thermal top on too (3 layers). Seeing time is critical now, I head back to my trusty Eddie Rocket’s, 52 O’Connell St (main street) to use their facilities & to get a quick meal.

When I arrived at Eddie’s I scrambled straight to the toilet as the Guiness had caught up with me. LOL! As I walked back up the tight stairs a lady about early 60s was confused, so I told her where the toilets were & to go down the stairs carefully. She immediately noticed my accent & said “Australian”. Well, I have never met anyone so excited & thankful of Australia. Her son moved from Dublin to Sydney & now lives in Brisbane (married now) & after some 9years has saved & borrowed money & bought a hotel there. She is so happy he chose Australia to make a start where Ireland never gave him that. She has visited him about 5 times since he moved there & will do so again soon. She shook my hand twice & thanked me for what Australia has given to her family. She is so blessed. We had a wonderful chat before her daughter; son-in-law & kids had to venture back out.

Leaving Eddie’s was bloody awful, the weather was CRAP!!! I was completely soaked when I entered my unit & hung my clothes up to dry, had the hottest shower possible, set the air con on 24.5°C & made a Lavazza coffee with my machine included in the room. Pure luxury. Yay!!!! Today, I walked through crappy weather for 22,643 steps = 17.79 kms.

Tomorrow, 31/10/25 at 3pm I have a Dublin Walking Pub Tour .. which could be dangerous .. where we will be having some drinks or two & that will close my last full day in Dublin. It will end in the Liberties where Guinness is, so another major walk back to my unit. My flight leaves at 6.35am 1/11/25, so technically I’m supposed to be at the airport 3hrs prior, but that’s not going to happen.

I’ll end my Blog #20 here. Many thanks for reading my blogs. My next blog will be more of Dublin B, my last full day in Dublin & then onto Bristol UK to stay with very close travelling friends I met on the famous 4day Machu Picchu Trek in Peru. Please stay safe, happy & healthy. Cheers.