Our second day in Dublin was a long and exhausting one. After breakfast, we took a bus and a short walk to Temple Bar and the Irish Rock ‘n’ Roll Museum . Our tour guide was an adorable young man named Reese who is very passionate about Irish rock music and we learned a lot from him. I now know the true origin of the band name “U2” and it’s probably not what you think. I also learned where Bono’s name came from. The tour was excellent although it involved a lot of stairs as we moved through the museum and the Temple Lane Rehearsal Studios. If you’re interested in Irish rock stars or Michael Jackson’s pajamas (really!) this is the place to go.
From the museum, we made our way to St. Patrick’s Cathedral for a presentation about the cathedral a hundred years ago, in 1926. The presentation was informative, although I wish I could have turned on the captions as I do when watching a British or Irish TV show. The presenter had a lovely Irish accent that required a level of concentration I just didn’t have today. The cathedral itself is beautiful and worth seeing.
After the cathedral (and an ice cream cone) we had a short walk to Trinity College where we saw the Book of Kells and enjoyed the Book of Kells Experience, a self-guided tour. The tour ends in the Long Room of the Old Library where most of the shelves are empty due to an ongoing restoration project. It’s still impressive.
We decided to have dinner at a nearby, very noisy pub. Many of the pub’s patrons were watching a cricket match and cheering enthusiastically. I do not understand cricket; I barely understand baseball.
We ended our day at the Gaiety Theatre for a production of Eugene O’Neil’s A Moon for the Misbegotten. It’s a lovely old theater, but our seats were in the very last row of the balcony, so again we had many flights of stairs to climb because the theater has no lift (elevator). The seats were cheap though, and the production was excellent.
Tomorrow we will visit the National Gallery of Ireland in the morning and meeting up with our Trafalgar tour in the afternoon. Planning and transportation will be out of our hands for the rest of our Ireland adventure.
