Irish Details - Dublin Part 1

This morning we woke up in Portstewart, on the Northern Irish coast, knowing we needed to be in Dublin by midafternoon, and also knowing we needed to do it using multiple forms of public transportation.

And you know what?  It really wasn't difficult!  We caught a local bus a few blocks from our B&B, which took us to the Coleraine Train Station.

From here, we were able to reach the bus and train center in Belfast, and from Belfast, we could get the same coach bus line that brought us up to Belfast from the Dublin airport at the beginning of the adventure.  About five hours later, we were standing in downtown Dublin, crossing our fingers and hoping our connection with our lodging would show up to meet us.

See, instead of booking a hotel, we used VRBO.com to find a small apartment in a great location, for an extremely reasonable price.  The building we stayed in is the one just to the left of the street light in the picture above.  It was such a nice base - laundry, refrigerator, cooktop - and in a wonderful location.

The little alleyway we were off of is called Cow's Lane, which also housed a great restaurant and a very nice local bookstore.  I was in heaven  :)

For our first Dublin meal, Justin requested something from the Asian spectrum.  We lucked into this little Malaysian restaurant, located right on the river.  It was some of the most incredible food of any type we had all trip.  I had some sort of spicy, peanutty, shrimpy stuff.

A few more scenes from that first day:

The Ha'penny Bridge, a pedestrian way over the River Liffey.

The bookstore in the alley.  It was called The Gutter in homage to Oscare Wilde, whose famous saying is hanging in the window.

And this is Trinity Cathedral, one of the city's landmark buildings.  It was about one block up the street from us, and one evening, its bell tower played for around an hour.  It was quite lovely.