DAY 4
We awoke to another wonderful breakfast at our hotel, and great conversation with Carmel, our host. Dublin has great transportation available, the local hop on bus, your standard city bus for all your in town exploration, bus lines for surrounding areas, and the DART, or Dublin Area Rapid Transit. This is a train that goes North and South of Dublin for about 15 or so miles to local attractions. Today we caught the DART North, to visit Malahide Castle. An organized tour to the Malahide Castle attractions is about 30 Euro per person, and the Dart roundtrip ticket was only about 4. More savings for a night out! This is what you expect a castle to be. It is not in ruins as many are, even though the ones in ruins are great to see also. Malahide was founded in the 12th century, and is wonderfully restored, with furnishings from the 17th-19th centuries. The descendants of the founder lived in the castle until 1973. The grounds are also beautiful, and a great place for a picnic.

Also located on the grounds are two other attractions. The Fry Model Railway, and Tara's Palace, a great collection of antique dollhouses and toys. All 3 of these sites have free admission with your Dublin Pass, by the way. When you arrive, before you go to the castle, you really need to walk around the small town of Malahide. The shops are beautiful, as are the people that you meet there.

After our Malahide visit, we returned on the DART to Dublin, where we had tickets to the Abbey Theatre, the famed national theatre of Ireland. We saw a great production of Shakespeare's The Comedy Of Errors, updated to modern times. It was still done in the original English verse, but done in modern times, it gave it a unique twist, plus the show is hilarious!

It was Saturday, and one of the fun things to do in Dublin on a Saturday evening, is go to the dog races. It is really an event for them there. We caught a cab, and went to join in the fun. We met a great guy, not an unusual trend you see, who showed us how to do the bets, and just how to enjoy the evening. He said that you don't come there just to bet, that is only a small part of the experience. He said that meeting new people, as he had with us, was the best part of the evenings. He had 7 sisters, and all of them come on the race nights, and have dinner, play a few of the races, and generally have a great evening. None of the kindness that you will find in Ireland is put on just for tourists, it is genuine, and that makes it something that you cannot buy. It really is a family event. That evening had apparently been a first communion, or a confirmation for some, as many of the small girls were still in their beautiful white dresses from it. I think there are 11 races or so, we stayed for the first 7, actually picking 3 out of 7 winners. Okay, I picked 1, and my wife picked 2, but that is still 3, right?

We caught a cab back to our hotel to wrap up the night. As we approached the hotel, the great smell of Pizza caught our attention, and we just had to stop. Apache Pizza is right next door to the hotel. We had smelled that delicious aroma every day, and knew that it was time to try it. We were not disappointed, as it was great. Small place, but great food. We went through our lobby on the way to our room, and heard the sounds of the Irish Show going on in the lounge. We started to go in and see it again, but as it had been a long day, we went to crash and get ready for Sunday, our last full day in Dublin.

DAY 5
Sunday morning, breakfast of course before our adventure. Today, we caught a double decker bus, south about 12 miles to the beautiful Powerscourt House and Gardens. Once again, tours are offered if you like that sort of thing, but our tickets were about 4 Euro, tours about 40, do the math! Powerscourt House and Gardens were designed about the mid 1700s, and are spectacular. With the estate covering about 1,000 acres, ponds, statues, gardens, gift shops, restaurants, you could easily spend the whole day and not see everything. You have to try the cafe, but be careful, you will catch yourself drooling as you go through the lines, the meals and the desserts are to die for. But go hungry, because the portions were huge! One note about the bus trip. When the bus dropped us off at the town of Powerscourt, it is still a very long walk to the House and Gardens. I did not know that before we went. If you have trouble walking, it would be a problem. The town is very lovely, and very small...so small there is no public transportation. Since you can't call a cab, you have to walk,or find a way. We got lucky, as we got off the bus, our driver explained that to us, and he happened to see a taxi driver that was returning from the House to drop off wedding guests. On his own, he flagged down the driver, and pointed him to us. The driver came to us, picked us up, drove us to the House and Gardens, and would not even let us pay him! How often do you see that anyplace? I can't stress how nice the people are. Since we knew there was no public transportation, when we entered the cafe for lunch, we asked the hostess what would be the best way to get back to town, to catch the bus. She said she would look into it, and let us know. This is a large restaurant, but later during the meal, she hunted us down, telling us that she had found a taxi driver that was eating lunch also, and told him about us. He searched us out when he finished eating, and drove us back to town to catch the bus. We should not have been suprised! We looked around the little town while waiting on the bus, meeting more nice people, then caught the bus back to Dublin, enjoying the scenery along the way.

Since we had missed most of our first day due to the cancellation of our flight coming in, and that was the day I had tentatively scheduled the hop-on, hop-off bus to familiarize ourselves with Dublin, we took the mid part of the day to do that now. The tour stops at about 23 different sites, and covers a lot of territory. Even though we had already seen a good portion of what is covered on the tour, it was nice putting it in perspective to the other attractions, plus there was no walking!

For our last evening in Dublin, I had planned something a little different, that many tourists do not see, and turned out to be one of the highlights of our stay in Ireland. The oldest pub in Ireland is in Dublin, The Brazen Head Pub. It was founded in 1198. That would be enough to bring me in, as I enjoy finding things older than I am! But if you go on line before you go, look up An Evening of Food, Folk, and Fairies. This is a great evening, hosted by a wonderful storyteller, Johnny Daly, upstairs in The Brazen Head Pub. Johnny used to work in the travel industry, doing the average tours, etc. He finally had enough people asking him about the history of Ireland, and many of the tales of folklore, elves, fairies and such, that he has started a wonderful business of his own. It is an intimate evening, so you usually have to book in advance. He starts with some of the history of Ireland, goes through the famine days, not to try to evoke sympathy, but more to show what the country experienced, and why some things are like they are today. Many times when people cannot understand why things are happening, they make up their own ideas, or folklore, and it can become fact to them. Hence, many of the stories of fairies, etc. As the evening goes on, you are served a great meal, hear live Irish music, and get to chat with each other during the breaks. Johnny weaves his story with perfection. There was total silence as he softly spoke of the history, the problems, and the way much of the Irish folklore originated. You will certainly enjoy your evening, and if you are not careful, you might even learn where to find some of the fairies in Ireland! A definite must-see if you get the chance! As we wrapped up our wonderful evening of storytelling and friendship, we headed back to the hotel to pack, and prepare for the real excitement to come tomorrow, driving the Irish roads!