Sunday, June 30, 2013 @ 3:51 PM in 2013 Europe
Day 4
After dinner last night I ended up having a couple drinks and then went down to The Auld Dubliner with my bunkmates plus two other Germans. I had two more drinks there and then we decided to leave because they had stopped playing live music. We ended up at the Temple Bar again and listened to some more live music. It was a mix of traditional Irish songs and songs by request. I didn't want to stay out as late as the last few nights so I left a little after midnight and came back to the hostel. The Temple Bar area is pretty touristy and was especially packed on a Saturday night. It was still cool to hang out in the area for a couple nights but I think next time I'll look for something a little more authentic. An Irish girl was telling us that locals don't even go there because it's nothing but tourists.
When I woke up this morning I didn't really feel like doing the Guinness or Jameson tours and figured they'd probably be more packed on a weekend so I decided to head north again and go visit Malahide. It's a small port town about a 20 minute train ride north east of Dublin. The Malahide Castle had been home to the Talbot family for around 800 years. The castle and the surrounding gardens were really nice and relaxing. It reminded me a lot of Blenheim Palace in England with the extremely expansive gardens.
The only way to go through the castle is by purchasing a guided tour ticket. The tour is about 25 minutes long and takes you through most of the rooms in the castle. The ticket also gives you access to the "Walled Garden" and the west gardens. The Walled Garden is a nice garden that also has some green houses with various types of plants from around the world. the west garden is a 22 acre park that's filled with walking trails that takes you around many different types of trees and plants.
When the castle was sold in the 1970's (due to the woman who inherited it not being able to afford the inheritance taxes), many of the paintings and furniture were sold so a lot of what was on display is loaned from one of the big museums. There was still enough original stuff there to get a feel for what it was like though.
After the tour I ended up having a muffin and apple in the park in front of the castle then headed into town to walk around. I didn't realize it but there was an actual beach there and it was low tide so the sand area was huge. When I got to the beach it started to rain a bit so I headed back into the town and walked around a little more. I thought about getting something else to eat but nothing really sounded good. I checked the train schedules and saw that there was a train set to depart in a few minutes so I went ahead and jumped on it and headed back to Dublin.
I'm not planning on going out tonight. There are a lot of people from Spain at the hostel so there's some talk about watching the Spain v Brazil football match tonight so I'll just stay in and watch that then head to bed early Edit: Apparently the game doesn't start until 1am in Dublin so I guess I'm not doing that, lol. My throat's been a little sore today but I'm not sure if it's from having to yell to talk to anyone in the bars the last few nights or if it's just a normal sore throat. Either way, taking it easy tonight will be good. Going hard for 3 nights in a row was a lot of fun but it's time for a little break.
Teaser photos:
Tags: daily journal, ireland, dublin, malahide
Posted from: Ireland