Kev n Jens Adventures: Dublin Ireland

May 17-18, 2025 - We're headed to Dublin! Indianapolis has a new direct flight to Dublin that will make our trip super easy. It's an 8 hour flight which leaves Indy at 7:50PM and gets into Dublin at 8:00AM. Since we weren't in a hurry to get to our Airbnb we took the Airbus 700 from the airport to O'Connell St. The bus was 10 Euros each and dropped us just a few blocks from our apartment. We stopped for a coffee (we only got about 2-3 hrs of sleep on the plane and the coffee helped wake us up a bit). Next we went in search of SIM cards for our phones. The ATT international plan costs $12/day for 10 days and then is free for the remainder of the billing cycle. The second phone on the plan is only $6/day, so between the two of us it would have cost us $360 since our trip spans 2 billing cycles. The SIM card plan we decided on is unlimited data for $22/month. So we should save over $250. We found a 3 Co store where they helped us with the cards. We took out our current SIM cards (while our phone was still in Airplane mode, and added the new card with the EU phone number on it. Once the card was in the phone we turned off the airplane mode and we were able to use our apps and we will use What's App for text and phone calls while we're here. It sure was nice to have access to Google maps with the new card. We had a few navigation problems while trying to find some place that sells SIM cards, since I didn't download the Google maps that I needed! We got settled at our Airbnb and then headed out for some exploring.

We're going to Dublin!

That's Ireland down there...

Our Apartment is only a few blocks from the Spire. We should be able to walk to most of the places we want to visit this week.

A coffee on O'Connell St

Home sweet home for the next week

there are some pretty buildings in Dublin. This one was decorated with painted tiles.

We found the most famous bar in Dublin...Temple Bar.

It was hoppin' on this Sunday afternoon and they had live Irish music which we really enjoyed.

We started off with one of Kev's favorites a Smithwicks

Then it was time for a Guiness, which I had never had before. It didn't look like a beer I would like, but it was actually quite good.

I love all the flowers

The Temple Bar area is cobblestone streets and pedestrian only in certain areas.

More tiled buildings

The Ha'penny bridge (a pedestrian bridge) over the Liffey River. The bridge was built in 1816 to replace ferries that were taking people across the river. For 100 years a ha'penny was charged for crossing the bridge.

We're happy they don't charge a ha'penny any more

The Church Cafe is just a few blocks from our apartment, so we stopped there on the way home.

Each night at 6 they have live music and dancing, so we'll have to stop back later this week, because we're a little tired tonight

pretty bar

May 19, 2025 - We went to bed at 8:00 last night and slept until 7:00 this morning. I think we're caught up on sleep! Today we're headed first to the Leprechaun Museum, a 10 minute walk from our apartment. This isn't a typical museum. Our guide led us through several rooms in the museum, and told us stories about leprechauns. He was quite a good story teller and we learned a lot about Leprechauns, Fairies, Banshees and Pucas. The image of Leprechauns that is widespread today (green jacket and red beard) was how Walt Disney chose to portray Leprechauns in the movie "Darby O'Gill and the Little People" and the image has stuck.

Another view of the Ha'penny bridge

The Leprechaun Museum

Our story teller shrunk us

beautiful bench at the museum

Next we had lunch and a beer at the Brazen Head (the oldest pub in Ireland). The beef stew was amazing (it's got 3 dollops of mashed potatoes on the top!)

Christ Church, pretty cool bridge across the street

We wandered around the church courtyard

but decided we'd do the tour of St Patrick's instead

The entrance into Trinity College

beautiful bell tower

It was graduation day at Trinity College, which was fun to watch the grads take pics in the quad

The 1200 year old Book of Kells is housed at Trinity college. We did a self guided audio tour ($22/each). This is Ogham which is old Irish writing from the 4th-7th centuries written on stone. We weren’t able to take pictures of the Book of Kells. It was smaller than I expected (not as big as the Guggenheim bible we saw in NYC). The Book of Kells are the Gospels (Latin text) that are beautifully scripted and decorated. They were crafted by monks on the island of Iona and moved to Kells after Vikings raids.

The tour led us through the Narrow Room in the Trinity Library.

The hall was lined with sculptures of notable philosophers, scientists and authors.

Many of the shelves were empty as they are doing a conservation project.

They have added 4 sculptures of notable women. We were happy to see Ada Lovelace the first computer programmer (we get this clue often in crosswords).