Sun, 06 Jul 2003

author Tim	location Onboard Stena Line ferry bound for Fishguard, Wales
posted 21:24 BST 07/07/2003	section Europe2002/Europe/Ireland/Ireland 2 ( all photos )

Dublina, Temple Bar ( 11 photos )
Sunday morning, our decision to have a light night payed off as we let ourselves out to explore a bit more of the city while the late-stayers slept for hours more. Breakfast was at a cheap but not to amazing cafe, a far cry from our favourite morning-after food at Nulla Nulla cafe, in Cronulla.
We decided that a visit to Dublina was worth a visit, and it proved a pleasant way to kill a few hours and learn something in the process. Set in Christ Church Cathedral, there is a wander through where you learn plenty about Medieval Dublin - the best I thought was the scale model of the city as of 1500 with commentary where they talk you through each part in turn. Correlating this with what we already knew about the city was a great geography lesson.
We just had to drop next into The Old Jameson Distillery, but this time no tour, just a quick stop in the gift shop which had nothing in store for us, we headed on to partake in the final part of our Dublin experience - the musical pub wandering.
There are a few official such things around the place, but ours was from the guide books. This was basically a wander through the more famous pubs in Dublin, with a view to finding some traditional Irish music to our liking. The basic outline was something like this: the Patrick Conway, nasty but filling chicken burgers somewhere, John Mulligan's (where Liz chatted to members of the Wexford hurling team who were drowing their defeat), a fantastic dinner at an American-style Diner, some great music at a pub under a hotel (where Liz had a chat to the old Norwegian flautist after the show, getting his recommendation on where to get an Irish wood flute from), then the Temple Bar. This was enough for us, having had our fill of music and other things, and needing to get home for Gail to let us in.

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