So after a quick flight from Teeside International to Dublin Airport we took the Air coach to downtown. The bus kicked us off early and when I commented to the driver he gestured down the road that Mcconnell street was 300m that way and patting my stomach said ”you can make it, don’t let us big guys down’.

Welcome to Ireland.

We had a slow Sunday and to be honest a slow week – we needed to catch up on sleep and rest our legs. We did the hop-on hop-off bus, we did Temple Bar (I had a Guinness in Temple Bar in the Temple District which is as Irish as it gets – I still don’t like Guinness).

We did walk across Ha’penny Bridge

One of the most interesting tours we did was the National Cemetery Glasnevin which was very interesting. The palace tour of the old English fort was interesting as well.

Ireland was very sad in some ways – the UK had occupied Ireland for 800 years and though England was blamed for the potato famine, most of the Irish history discussed was focused on post 1921 – even the Civil war they had post the UK treaty was rarely discussed even though it is a source of shame in Ireland. Basically there was one side which wanted to be like Canada and one side the Republic that it now is. As a British person it is not that they became independent – its that none of the Irish history pre 1916 was even discussed – where their kings had come from etc. In India and other countries you have the history of the country and then the British Impact – while in Ireland, it is as if the British impact is the only thing. Ireland was a collection of Kingdoms prior to the Normans in 1169, and it would have been interesting to hear about that.

We also discovered many of the tours we wanted were only available Wed-Sun. There are a lot of US companies HQ’d in Ireland to avoid taxes which was apparent.

Here is the sunset on our last night is Dublin.