Limerick to Dublin

Cloudy

It rained overnight, but had stopped by morning, which was alright with us. We had breakfast at the hotel (they had to make coffee especially for us), then walked across the street to the train / bus station.

We purchased bus tickets for what we were told was a 2 ½ hour trip back to Dublin. It turned out to be a four hour trip (everyone is optimistic when giving advice around here…), but we got to see towns like Kildare and Ros Crea (which had a castle) that we wouldn’t have otherwise seen.

The bus dropped us off (or “let us down”, as they say here) just a block from the Abbey Hotel, where we planned to spend our last night in Ireland.






After dropping our packs at the hotel, we walked up O’Connell St. (every city seems to have an O’Connell St.) to the Garden of Remembrance.








The Garden commemorates the Wild Geese, the Irish fighters who, after being defeated in the Williamite Wars in 1691, had to leave their country forever. They moved with their families to France (their allies in the war) and remained there for generations.








The memorial also contains a reflecting pond in the shape of a cross, with swords and shields painted on the bottom.







Dublin on a cloudy day looks a bit grittier than Dublin on a sunny day, and I was more sensitive to the homeless asking for handouts.






There was a vendor on the corner selling boxes of strawberries, which we bought for a euro and totally consumed right there. The strawberries were about half the size of the huge tasteless ones we get at the supermarket, totally sweet through and through…

We looked in a tourist shop, but decided we had enough stuff, and didn’t need any shamrocks or leprechauns. Just as we were leaving, the “traditional Irish” music that you hear everywhere here struck up a rousing chorus of “You’re drunk, you’re drunk, you silly old fool”, causing me to burst into tears. By way of explanation to those not in my family, this was a song my Grandpa O’Keefe loved to sing, and I suddenly missed him very much. I realized that the whole time I’ve been here, I’ve been looking for faces that look like his…

Our last dinner in Dublin was at a Turkish restaurant down the street from our hotel – three weeks in Ireland, and we managed to never once have Irish stew...