Days 2-4: More Dublin and Dun Laoghaire

On one of our walks around the city, I was delighted to see an awesome pair of underpants in a dry cleaner's window.  It was a sheer black thong with a red Christmas stocking on the front.  Amazing that a) someone bought these, as a gift or for themselves, b) took them to the dry cleaners, and c) the dry cleaners had the brilliant idea to hang them in the window, to attract new business or perhaps shame the thong's owner into picking them up.  I deeply regretted not photographing them, but they were still there when we came back at the end of our trip!

After our drink at Davy Byrnes, we were determined to not have Chinese food on our second night in Dublin.  We ended up at Gruel on Dame Street in Temple Bar, on the recommendation of a friend.  Very good food, simple, and not terribly expensive.  It was this night that I also noticed the curious phenomenon of long queues for ATMs in Dublin.  Not sure if it is a sign of the unstoppable Celtic Tiger or just a lack of ATMs per person, but everywhere we went in the city, there was a long line:

Temple Bar seemed much more touristy on Saturday night, a bit like Greenwich Village in New York.  We opted for a quiet and disgustingly priced drink at the famous Horseshoe Bar in our hotel.  Amazing that they've kept true to the original design, which leaves little space for the hoards of people who want to drink there.  In America, they would have built a huge extension and ripped out the original bar in the interest of packing in more customers, but the Horseshoe is just the same as ever.  In the interest of saving some euro that we had been hemorrhaging left and right, we bought some whiskey at an off-license and had a nightcap in our room.

Sunday turned out to be a rather nice day, so we took the advice of several friends and took the DART out the lovely seaside suburb of Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Dun Leery).   We wandered around town and had a pint at a nice pub serving a typical enormous Sunday carvery.  All we wanted was a damn toastie sandwich, but all of the local pubs seemed to only offer huge buffets of Thanksgiving proportions.  The pier is lovely, though.

 

After enjoying some Marks & Spencer sandwiches (they really would make a killing if they ever opened in New York) on the pier, we decided to get back to Dublin, determined to try to see some museums before we left for Belfast the next day. We went to the National Gallery, which is small but has a nice collection, including a fabulous Caravaggio, which is totally worth the admission.  Uh, the free admission.  There was also a street performer's world championship going on in Merrion Square, but we didn't see much performing.   Not a mime in sight! They did have this cool installation in the park:

We then walked though St. Stephen's Green at last to try to make it to St. Patrick's Cathedral before closing:

This looks a bit dirty to me, somehow:

Not a great photo, but check out the chav family drinking cans of beer outside the cathedral.  Awesome!

Spent our last evening in a nice beer garden near the hotel:

Off to Belfast next!