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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 #19 – Lisbon to Dublin 29/10/25 

I thought I would start this blog to highlight how things pan out, some in your control, most are not, in getting to your plane. As my friend Sharyn back home would say “C’est La Vie”  .. (such is life).

As per usual, I don’t sleep well when I set my alarm. Brain mustn’t switch off. 6.30am I am up, having a quick bite of what I bought yesterday & my protein drink & when all was done, I was out the door by 7.10am. At my unit there are 2 underground train stations (Restauradores at the front door & Rossi around the corner & some 200m away). These stations have 2 different lines & each one has a different way to connect to the 2nd train station to the airport. Rossi is the clear choice for the airport & I’m more confident on achieving the goal. The ticket machines are another thing. Luckily there was an assistant there & he guided me through it. First you buy a train card (1metro ticket with it or a day ticket). The card costs €0.50, then €1.85 ticket = €2.35 & I was able to pay in coins. Whew!! Now off to the platform (down the stairs). Train in 2mins (7.30am). Exact arrival time confirmed.

Arrived at my change station of Alameda (a few stops up the line) & more stairs (2 flights up), then a 100m walk & finally I see the one small, almost hidden sign below saying Aeroporto. I’m half-way down the stairs & the train comes in. You have 10secs to board or get out of the train before it heads off. Seriously!! Doors almost hit my arse! Thank God I’m reasonably fit to get down those stairs with baggage. With about 6 super quick stops we reach Aeroporto & 3 flights of stairs (1 escalator there but not working). The platform I came in on (main line) is 3 storeys below ground, yet crappy access with stairs mostly. A lot of people struggled with their luggage. Lifts are small & take for ages to get in one most times. From my last blog I discussed my routine of scouring the airport you arrive in & to see how your upcoming departure can proceed. Everything is going to plan & I know where I am to go in this ultra-large airport terminal. You can see in the photos the large lobby & HUGE departure board the second you arrive. This procedure of scouring also applies to train stations, especially & particularly Gare du Nord & Gare de Lyon stations in Paris. OMG, brutal stations!

My arrival went too well & I’m here ultra-early but thought I would do my bag drop anyway. After 2 check-in counters I obtained my boarding pass. I checked online the day prior but due to having another TAP flight upcoming into Bristol UK they sent me to another counter & after all that gave me a revised boarding pass. Following the line, you come to the Duty-Free area, large food hall, etc & that’s where you wait in the N Terminal (North), S is for South Terminal to a central area to see the Departures Board. It would be another 2.5hrs before my gate is even displayed. Once your gate is called on the board you must go straight to that gate as the brand-new section of the EES Schengen Travel Visa System is in action now (Oct 12th), so the line was very long. They have a section for EU residents & another section for all other country passports. Finally, you get through after a couple of questions (9am) & then I was allowed to go to my Gate 44A which was almost the furthest one in that N Terminal. No time to muck around.

Showing your boarding pass & passport was so slow at the gate; it was bordering on painful & some people weren’t helping by not being ready. Really? We walk down the aerobridge but then redirected down the stairs to the tarmac level. There we wait for an airport terminal bus to transport us to our plane. Some 5mins passes when the bus door open, we pile in, slightly crushed when another bus pulls up slightly after. We are left in this bus for more than 10mins before it travels (seemed much longer). The route now takes us past the full length of the Terminal 1/ Terminal 2 building, through the plane maintenance area & then turn right into another plane parking station & up to the rear of our plane. Why catch a bus at the furthest end of Terminal N & then travel about 3klms to the parked plane at the other end? OK … we now wait for the doors of the bus to open so we can board our plane up the steps. We have 3 babies, about 6mths old but so far, they are OK. It took about 13mins by my phone for the doors to open with utmost relief from the passengers. We were certainly NOT happy. Finally, we are off!! What a time phase of disorganized crap.

It seemed a quick 3hr flight where we land in lovely Dublin 4.30pm at a fantastic 11°C + wind factor (sarcasm). Obviously much colder than Lisbon. Brr! Outside the terminal are buses & the best one for most of us is the Dublin Express which also stops at Terminal 2 on the other side of Terminal 1 (across the roadway) & then to the City Centre & beyond. My ticket to the city centre (Financial sector) was €10 & 30mins travel. Some 300m away from my stop is my Travelodge PLUS Hotel & it’s very swank indeed. My room is glorious!! I quickly went back out in the lovely weather (more sarcasm), crossed the River Liffey bridge (Talbot Memorial Bridge) at my street (Moss St) & walked past the glowing Customs House, looking more like Parliament House. This is the bus stop to catch the Dublin Express again for the Airport to Bristol UK in coming days. I eventually found a recommended place with retro booth seating, great music & food at Eddie Rocket’s, 52 O’Connell St (main street) within a 6min walk.

Tonight, I finally had confirmation of a refund for the failure of the Tut-Tut Golf Cart Guide Tour in Barcelona (24/10/2025), so I found a one spot availability for the Guiness Brewery Tour for tomorrow arvo at 2pm ($52AUD) in time for my 2hr Walking Tour to finish at 12noon. Looks like my days are planned but still knowing I will only scratch the surface of fabulous Dublin.

I’ll end my Blog #19 here. Many thanks for reading my blogs. My next blog will be more of Dublin & eventually onward to Bristol. Please stay safe, happy & healthy. Cheers.