Ireland: Part 2

Here's a picture of "The Spire." It's a monument in the City Center that cost a ridiculous amount of money. The tour guide explained that there are many tiny holes at the top, so it emits a beam of light. However, I would disagree with that; it looks like it emits a toothpick's-worth of light. It's unimpressive and weird.


Anyway, Day 2 in Ireland began with our Dublin Bay and Castle Tour. We took a bus along the Dublin Bay and stopped for a few minutes to take pictures. The view was spectacular and the weather was gorgeous.

View from the bus window.

Cute Irish houses.

View of Dublin Bay.

View of Dublin Bay.

View of Dublin Bay.

View of Dublin Bay.

View of Dublin Bay.

View of Dublin Bay.

We went to Malahide Castle and took a tour. The castle had been lived in until fairly recently when the city bought it from the last heir, who is now 90 years old. The castle grounds are open to the public and kids were playing there. It was cool. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the castle, which was lame.

Malahide Castle

Malahide Castle. I would like to live in a castle.

Part of the grounds.

Irish road. They drive on the wrong side, FYI.

A pretty church.

This picture is for Aisha. You can see the Cadbury factory -- it's that brown building and it says Cadbury. We were bummed that they didn't give tours of that because we could have used some chocolate!

So after the tour, we got back on the Dublin Tour bus that goes around Dublin Center and went to the Kilmainham Gaol (jail). We took it around a lot of the city again, so here are some pictures.

Daniel O'Connell monument

OK, this is a bad picture because my camera delayed. But, look behind the telephone pole and you'll see a slab of rock, which was put there by the Vikings when they landed centuries ago.

Dublin City Hall

For some reason, I saw quite a few horse carriages in Dublin.

So the tour of the jail was my favorite tour. The tour guide was very informative, and we got to see cells where Eamon de Valera and other famous Irish prisoners stayed. During the famine years, the jail was extremely overcrowded; at one point, there were 180 cells and 9,000 prisoners! Crazy! And we saw the yard where people were executed; that was sad.

Door to a cell

Hallway

Cell

Eamon de Valera's cell (one of them)

The newer wing of the jail. I walked in and thought, Gosh, this looks familiar; it looks just like The Green Mile jail. Then our tour guide announced that many movies have been filmed here, so maybe it actually was the jail in The Green Mile. How exciting!

Afterwards, we took a tour of the Jameson Whiskey Distillery.

It was a cool tour, and Katie got picked to try out 5 different kinds of whiskey. We got a glass of Jameson and had a choice of mixers, so I picked ginger ale, but the cranberry juice turned out to be a lot better. Live and learn.

After the tour, we walked home and then went to dinner and some pubs. Here's a picture of the hotel Bono of U2 owns. (We passed it during our walk.)

We were hoping to run into U2, but had no luck.

And here's a picture of everyone at the pub.

We got back to the hotel after midnight and went to bed because we had to be up by 6am the next day for our Blarney Castle tour.

Ireland: Part 3 is soon to follow.