Days 21 and 22–Dublin, Ireland

Fans of Whose Line Is It Anyway will get this:

“Oooooooooh, oi-dee-die-dee-die-dee-die, dee doi-dee-die-dee-die”

Woke up to a beautiful day. The Queen Elizabeth was in town, and it’s a really big and regal ship. We were happy to hear there was a shuttle going to town, considering it’s a good couple miles, so we headed right out and got dropped off near Trinity College, right into a pedestrian shopping area and crowds reminiscent of Amsterdam. Different from Amsterdam however, was there were a lot of street performers out, and many of them were really good. Here’s something I didn’t expect to see.

Tired old sand dog

We wandered about while I was keeping a close mind on the direction, as I definitely wanted to make it to the Temple Bar district for it’s eclectic range of shops, restaurants and pubs. After a good long while, we stopped at a café and I got my first home grown pint of Mother’s Milk, aka Guinness.

One happy Salty

And I finally understood what my Irish friends had been telling me. It is different here, and much better. I love Guinness as it is and it’ll now never be the same for me. Sniff.

As we were enjoying, the most amazing guitar music came drifting down the alley. At first we thought it was recorded, but realized it wasn’t and hurried down to find the source of it. The man was playing an acoustic with two amps, flat topped with a slide. I likened him to a combination of Ry Cooder and Adrian Legg. I could’ve stayed forever listening, but Neesh needed to move on after a few minutes. This dude was getting good money for his efforts, and I threw in 3 whole Euros being so impressed.

Someone sign this guy

We headed up towards Temple Bar and ran smack into a (pardon the pun) monstrous Zombie Walk. Probably 500 feet of the street was filled with them (complete with Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” playing).

Only the beginning of the Zombie Walk

We finally found the end of the line and headed away, only to end up seeing them coming down the street. We hurried across and ducked into a bar that used to be an old bank (thus the name, The Bank). I felt zombiefied at that point and needed some sanity. After another pint we dared to go out and find some lunch, ending up at a place called The Porterhouse. I only had one beer despite the beer menu.

I need to rent a flat near here

We finally found Temple Bar, walked about, and I had one more pint and listened to some music before Neesh declared surrender. Six hours of walking finally did her in. We never did experience any nightlife on the overnight stops, but we still had a good time taking in the city by day.

The next morning we woke to showers, but weather.com promised little chance of rain for the day so we pulled the trigger on going to the Dublin Zoo, Europe’s oldest zoo. Before we went we sat and watched the port operations, which is actually fascinating to watch. Nearby sat the three parts of the tops of two Vestas wind turbines (minus the blades). No Brian, I didn’t flip them off as they weren’t in the North Country. :) The ship with the yellow and black stack has a ramp you can see, and trucks were constantly moving containers off and occasionally you’d see some new BMW’s and Mercedes’ drive off. The cranes in the back were constantly operating, and this was a Sunday.

View from the balcony – day 22

The zoo was quite a ways past the shuttle stop so we got a taxi for about 20 Euros. Luckily the showers subsided along the way. The Zoo is within Phoenix Park, Europe’s largest public park at a whopping 2000 acres. The Zoo itself is no small affair, with lots of primates, lions, elephants, giraffes, sea lions, hippopotamus (I didn’t thrash him from top to bottomus), rhinos and the like. Cool stuff.

 
Good kitty, nice kitty, and an otter doing ottery things

 
Ring tailed monkeys all huddled together, and rhinos

One very lazy snow leopard

A baby gorilla (not Artie Lang) feeds at right, with the male right there hiding from the rain

By the time we hit the Gorillas, it was now raining and Neesh’s feet had taken enough abuse, so we skipped half the park and tried to catch a cab. This took 15 minutes, and in the rain, wasn’t entirely pleasant, but we finally found one despite being told by a guy getting out that the driver didn’t know where he was going. We didn’t have a choice at that point, and he luckily got us there with only one misstep in the port itself.

The ship had a nice surprise of bringing onboard an Irish band, so we listened to the music for a while, and otherwise had a slow day after that. Neesh had done an amazing job of walking for miles the past few days, and we were both glad that the big cities are now down and over with for the remainder of the trip. They’re fun, but exhausting, and the crowds can get to me after a while.

Sea day tomorrow, as the pace now slows back down. Works for me.