Trip to Dublin

10th June 2006

Trip To Dublin.

Early morning on 10th June, we left for Dublin by taking a bus. We had to get endorse our return tickets to India, since the travel dates had changed. We had started from Galway at 7:30 am and reached the airport at 11:15 . Yes it really takes quite a bit of time in travelling. By the time we got our tickets endorsed and had some grub, it was 12:30. We took a local bus from the airport to the city centre. We quickly found the details of the buses which take one around for the Dublin Tour. We got into one of the Buses. The fares are quite decent ie 15 Euros, and the good part of this is that we can travel with the same ticket for 24 hours, and get off the bus anywhere on the route and get on any of their other buses. That really makes the tour really good. And the number of buses plying on the route are quite a number. At first we decided to see the complete tour and then decide where do we need to see in more detail. The trip was fantastic.
Dublin I must say is very beautiful old city with lots of rich history linked to it. Probably all the important names that we have read in our history books from the UK area have in some point of time have stayed out here. Some of them include Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill etc .
In the city we can see a huge tower. It is made up of steel and is the tallest tower in the world. On the top , for around 10 feet long , there are perforated holes in there and specially designed diodes emit light at night. It would be a lovely sight at night. There are manu statues of in the city , and each of them have a beautiful history linked in some way to Dublin. Most of them have an important hand in the development of Dublin. The dates are from the 1700 onwards. The walls of the city then built are still seen at some places, and not much of development was allowed at that time outside these walls.

Dublin is also supossed to famous for it pretty women, and hence a statue for the same is also there. And yes I did get the proof for that. The shopping areas are huge and being a weekend there was huge turnover of people. Lots of buildings in this city have a very great historic significance. One of the hospital is the first hospital built in the entire Europe. And to support the funding the hospital an entertainment zone was built just next to it. I must say that planning was really good too in those days. A huge library was also started some time in 1700 odd. It was used very extensively by Bernard Shaw and the reason that he would use it because, he didn’t want schooling to ruin his education.
One more of the important Business in Dublin which is world famous is the Guniness Brand of Beer. It was founded in 1759 and till date is one of the biggest businesses in Ireland. It would then employ around 5000 people , but now it is around 800 only due to huge amount of automation. Their store houses are immensely huge and massive. They have also started the famous Record Book, which we all know as Guiness Book of World Records, which is one of the highest selling book in the world. The founder of Guiness , I guess MR Anthony Guiness had apparently 21 kids.

Near the Guiness office and buildings there is the Phoenix Park. It is definitely one of the biggest park ever seen by me. Apparently it is twice as big as the National Park in NewYork. It is really massive. One side of the park there is a zoo, which is famous for its Lions. One of the famous Lions here is Steven, who is seen in the MGM movies banner. This park also houses some important government buildings and in one of the houses there Winston Churchill has spend his childhood. I also saw some cricket matches going on. They all played with such professionalism. All were dressed in Whites and it indeed looked like a game meant only for Gentlemens. Only if they had seen us playing in India. There is also one Huge Cross. Once Pope John Paul II had come and to attend the session one third of Ireland were present in that park. Well the park is huge enough to address such a large number of people, but it also means that the population of Ireland is not all that big. One more Surprising of this park is that, there are no gates to his park. The story goes that, when a lot of meetings were held during older times, a huge gathering would occur, and to allow the entire crowd, they would remove the gates, and later on no one knew where the gates were kept. They were never replaced later on.

These are just some of the history that I remembered on my tour. But the ,list is pretty huge. The pictures will relate some more details.
It was definitely one of the best One day trips I ever had. One day is very less to see all the places, Hence I thought that it is best just to see everything from outside and come back later some time to see in detail.

For pictures, please check this link.
http://flickr.com/photos/paintingwithlight/