A man hurries past the Trinity College bell tower, one of the most distinguishing landmarks of the university.
LOCATION NOTATIONS
Sorry for that title. I had to.
Today, my friend and I took a three-hour walking tour of the city, which started at Dublin Castle and ended at St. Stephen’s Green in the city center. Visiting such sites as Christ Church Cathedral, Johnathan Swift’s house, Trinity College, the Wolfe Tone statue and Temple Bar, we learned a lot about the history of the city, including its Viking origins, its many famous writers and the devastating potato famine in the 19th century. This free tour by Sandeman’s was probably the best way to see a lot of the major tourist attractions in the city center. It might be three hours long, but it actually does not involve a lot of walking. It’s a lot of standing or sitting and listening to a wonderfully entertaining tour guide paint vivid pictures of Irish history. It’s wonderful; it really is.
Our tour guide was quite funny, but not exactly because he meant to be. He said he’d done the pub crawl his tour company offers one too many nights in a row, so he was having trouble forming words and sentences because he was speaking so quickly. He was very animated and gave a lot of information, connecting a lot of dots throughout Irish history, and his speech didn’t get bad until the tail end of the tour, after he’d been talking for three hours straight with no water. He could not string two words together and kept mispronouncing things because his throat was so dry, and he tried valiantly to continue, but I lost it. I was laughing so hard–as was he and other tour members–that I was crying. Our guide ended the tour right then and there, a few minutes early, sending everyone away laughing. That was probably the best part of the whole tour.
My friend and I ended the day by taking in a Riverdance show at the Gaiety Theater. We sat in the nosebleed seats way up high, but the show was worth every penny, with its stunning production that included Irish dancing, tap dancing, singing and a lot of Irish music. It’s like Braveheart the musical (even though Braveheart was technically set in Scotland). All around superb.
Photographing Praha and Beyond 