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From Glasgow (see previous post) I flew to Dublin, arriving early Sunday morning, April 23.  I dropped my bags at the hotel – on the River Liffey, in the heart of the old city – crossed the O’Connell Bridge, and joined the throngs of people walking the Temple Bar (very Irish, but crowded) and the commercial streets that spread south and west from Trinity College.  Irish kitsch achieves its gaudiest art form here, but the place is still fascinating to walk.

A most pleasant surprise – and escape from the crowds – was a tour of the Irish Whiskey Museum.  Though in the middle of rows of tacky tourist stores, the museum is surprisingly authentic and blessedly free of kitsch.  The tour was historically interesting, finishing with a leisurely lesson in the finer points of appreciating the many forms of Irish whiskey.  Though a Scotch whisky man myself, I gained an appreciation for the varieties of ‘uisce beatha,’ the Irish water of life.  An odd way for a Texas Methodist boy to spend a Sunday morning, but the stuff was perfected by monks…

I wandered on as far as St. Stephen’s Green before turning west to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and park.  Tour buses were pouring people into the cathedral, so I soon walked on to the lovely, very old and quieter Christ Church Cathedral and Dublin Castle.  In the late afternoon I returned to St. Patrick’s to attend evensong service (I’ve made a tradition of attending these on every visit to the UK).  I finished the day with a hearty meal of Irish stew and locally-brewed stout at a pub in Temple Bar, enjoying the live Irish music far into the evening.

The next morning I made the long walk along the river to Phoenix Park and the Dublin Zoo, detouring through side streets here and there.  I was eager to see the Amur (Asian) tigers (the largest cat in the world) and the snow leopard, my favorite cat and, in my opinion, the most strikingly beautiful.  The park was quiet and pretty, but the zoo disappointed: the leopard never showed itself, and the tiger pair were in a space which, though realistic enough, confined them too much.  I don’t care for zoos any more, though I know many of them do good work.

I walked back into the old city to view the Book of Kells at Trinity College.  The manuscript is astonishingly beautiful (cats were a popular illustration!).  That was worth the 30-minute wait to get in.  I finished the afternoon by visiting the Irish Rebellion museum at the General Post Office.

I left early the next morning, taking a train across the island to Galway.  I would return to Dublin on the 27^th, walking a few favorite spots before boarding a plane home.