Today started with a delicious breakfast at the Rolling Donut, a cozy little spot in downtown Dublin that was close to the first stop of our Hop-On/Hop-Off tour called the Rolling Donut. I had a lemon poppyseed donut and a breakfast tea, it was huge and very tasty!
After breakfast we went to the Hop-On/Hop-Off pickup spot, the bus tour and admission to a lot of the stops were covered in our GoCity pass. It was definitely a great deal! We decided to just ride around to see what stops we’d want to get off on eventually, we rode the whole 90 minute circuit and learned about the history of Dublin and a few of the sectors in the city. The Georgian area of the city, named for the four King George’s, is identified by four story houses where the windows get smaller as you go up in floors, this was meant to make the buildings look taller and also helped to save on costs because glass was being taxed exorbitantly at the time. All of the houses look pretty similar, but the one main distinguishing feature of these houses is the different colored doors. Our tour guide offered two explanations for this – one of which was when Queen Victoria died it was decreed that everything should be painted black in the UK including doors and light posts, so the people of Ireland painted their doors every color but black. The second explanation (which he said is less rebellious but probably more accurate) was that all the houses looked the same, so when the men came home from the pubs they’d have a hard time finding their houses, so their wives painted the doors crazy colors to help their husbands find their way home.
A few other places we saw from the bus:
After we rode the circuit of the Hop-On/Hop-Off tour we decided to grab lunch before riding the bus to a few of the stops we wanted to see. We found a cute little Italian restaurant and had some delicious meals. I had potato gnocchi with ragu sauce, it was very good!
We got back on the bus and decided to check out the Teelings Distillery, admission was included in the GoCity pass, but unfortunately when we got there they didn’t have any tour slots available until 5:20pm, so we decided to have a few drinks at the bar. After that we decided to take a walk to the Merrion Square Park where there is a statue of Oscar Wilde. We walked through St. Stephen’s Green to get there and popped into the National Gallery of Ireland to check out some of the artwork (and so Gina could use the toilets). Then we hopped back on the bus, and rode it to the Temple Bar area to walk through and check out some of the bars and to go to a few of the souvenir shops in the area (turns out I didn’t pack as efficiently as I thought and I am running out of clothes, so I grabbed a few sweatshirts to hopefully get me through until I have a washer and dryer!) Then we grabbed some dinner and headed back to the AirBnB to drop off our purchases before heading back out to check out some bars.
We dropped our bags off at the AirBnB and took the DART back downtown. We started at this really cool looking bar called O’Reilly’s which was right under the Tara Station. The bar had a very cool gothic vibe, but it was pretty early and there weren’t many people there so we decided to move on to another bar. It had been recommended to us to check out the Cobblestone Bar, but when we got there it was very packed and so we decided to try somewhere else. The only place we really knew to go was the Temple Bar section but all of the bars there were of course crazy packed as well (Saturday night, duh) so we decided to just grab some drinks and snacks at the Tesco in the neighborhood and head home. We’ll try again for some nightlife tomorrow night! We have a fun filled day ahead of us, checking out the Dublin Coast (we had a Dublin Coastal Tour included with our GoCity Pass). Then we’re doing the Jameson Tour and then we have an Escape Boat booked for tomorrow night!
