Dublin Weekend

One of the advantages of having a home base in London is that it's relatively affordable to blast out of town for the weekend to see other places in Europe. This time, Dublin, Ireland.

I enjoyed Dublin. It's MUCH smaller than London, and the pace was more relaxed. Some definite things to see/do include going to:

Trinity College to see the Book of Kells (spectacular)
A pub crawl -- either a literary crawl or, as we did, a musical crawl
The Writers Museum (focuses quite a bit on the big names -- Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw, Yeats, Wilde, Joyce, etc.)
Tour of the Guinness Brewery (very interesting even if you don't drink, and the view from the lounge on the top floor is fantastic).
Head out to a village on the Irish Sea for a relaxing day. The village of Howth (pronounced "Hoat") is quite nice.

Dublin is well-known for its "spike." Here it is:

The national symbol for Ireland is the harp and it is prominently displayed in statues all over the city.

James Joyce's statue

On a day trip through the Irish countryside, the tour bus stopped in Avoca, a small town famous for its weavers. Here's a demonstration of weaving.

Beautiful carved crosses dot the Irish landscape, many of them over a 1,000 years old.

The movie Braveheart, with Mel Gibson was about the Scots fighting the English. For some reason, Hollywood found Scotland scenery lacking, so some of the scenes were actually filmed in Ireland, as you can see below, near the Irish town of Glendalough. Note that the signs are in Gaelic on the top, and English on the bottom, which is typical.

The small town of Howth with some fishing boats.

There is an amazing abundance of fish in Howth -- Cod, Haddock, Flounder, Mackeral, Salmon, Sole, etc. The best fish and chips I've had was in Howth, with the fish incredibly fresh and tasty.

Pleasure boats in Howth. This town is also a vacation area, not just a place for fishing boats.