And that auld triangle, went jingle-jangle, all along the banks of the Royal Canal.

I was going to do a short Prologue post last night, but had too long of a travel day and couldn’t be bothered. After our 24 hours of travel, we finally got to our hotel in the afternoon and everyone crashed immediately. I was however too hungry for such nonsense, so opted to go pick up some pizza from Il Capo, a great little Italian place in the city. We ate that in the hotel room, and then we all went to sleep (I stayed up a bit longer, as it was only about 6pm).

After we all caught up on sleep and awoke, it was around 6:30am. We had plenty of time to wake up, get ready and head out in our own pace. I did some research on things nearby to see in the city and found a few restaurants and some interesting places which came highly recommended.

So at around 9am, we headed out to find the Kilkenny Cafe (actually a cafe within a retail shop) to get some breakfast. A short walk later, and we’re standing before a large buffet of pastries, cakes, sweets on one side, and eggs, sausages, bread, juices on the other.

We loaded up our trays, paid for our (very reasonably priced) selections and ate vigorously. After consumption had concluded, we paid a visit to Trinity College which was right across from the cafe. The campus is nice to walk around and had some interesting installations.

The main tourist attraction for the college however is the Book of Kells exhibition and Old Library. No photography was allowed in the exhibition, but there were various super old books (including the Book of Kells of course), with information about the history of them etc. Amazing how well preserved they are, and the detail which went into them.

After seeing those books, we went through to the library. It was huge.

So many old books everywhere, as well as busts of some old geezers.

After that, we had a quick trip around Merrion Square Park. There was an Oscar Wilde monument which was cool.

It was at this point that the day took a turn for the worse… The family wanted to go shopping… Wasn’t too bad actually as I just wandered around the busy streets, took some photos/video and listened to the buskers.

Oh and we did have a short detour to stop into the National Gallery of Ireland. There was a Vermeer exhibition I wanted to see, but the next session wasn’t for a little while, so we just looked around for a bit before moving on.

When the shopping was done, we started walking over to Dublin Castle, but stopped to get some lunch at another highly recommended place, Umi Falafel.

A delicious meal later, and we stopped into the Olympia Theatre to book tickets for the musical Once, for Friday night. Will be great to see it in Dublin for that authentic experience. But that’ll come later on. For now, we were heading to Dublin Castle.

There were some interesting things to see inside, with some quite ornate furniture and room displays.

By the end of all that, everyone was tired and sore, so we limped back to the hotel. Upon return, everyone else basically fell asleep, although it was only about 5pm (sunset is 10pm). We might head out later for dinner if they wake up, but it seems unlikely at this point.

Tomorrow we might take the car and drive out somewhere out of the city. Not sure where exactly yet, time will tell. Find out next time, on Dragon Ball Z!