Ireland, Day 5 | Dublin, Part II

Our second day in Dublin started bright and early because we had a lot to do today! There were so many sights I wanted to see, and we only planned for one day to do it all since we were going to take the train into Belfast for the day tomorrow.

We ate breakfast at the hotel and it was pretty damn delicious. I had over-easy eggs with toast and sausage and it was perfect fuel for the day ahead.

After breakfast, we walked over to the hop-on/hop-off bus stop that was right across the street from our hotel. I had bought the tickets for this hop-on/hop-off tour before we left the States because it came highly recommended by Rick Steves. I thought it would be an easier way to see the city.

We got to the stop around 15 minutes before the bus was scheduled to arrive but it actually didn’t arrive until 45 minutes after its scheduled time. We were growing very frustrated, especially since other hop-on/hop-off buses had come by multiple times while we waited, and I was beginning to regret choosing this tour rather than a different one.

Eventually, around 10:45, the bus finally arrived. We were off!

We saw some sights around Dublin, such as Phoenix Park, O’Connell Street, and the Ha’Penny Bridge, and decided to “hop off” at the EPIC Museum. I hadn’t included this museum in my itinerary but people on our train yesterday were raving about it (and honestly, this museum is so up my alley), so we decided to add it in.

I would highly recommend visiting the EPIC Museum if you’re in Dublin, but you definitely need a good chunk of time here (we were there for more than three hours) so if you haven’t planned much time in Dublin, I’d skip it to see some other sights.

It’s hard to express how much I loved this museum, though. My mom’s side of the family is Irish, so I had a personal connection to the stories of emigration. As I walked through the museum, I couldn’t help wondering what caused my own ancestors to leave Ireland and come to America.

The museum is super interactive, filled with 20-something different exhibits that you walk through one at a time. Each exhibit provides a different immersive experience – videos, touchscreens, games. In the room about Irish literature, you could tip out a book from the “library” and it would start reading the book to you! But my favorite experience had to be the room about sports in Ireland because there was just this giant air hockey table with a bunch of pucks on the sides. You picked up a puck (each labeled with a different sport) and held it on the table to reveal how the Irish people have contributed to that sport.  Sport is undeniably enjoyable, especially when you delve into the world of sports betting on platforms like qqmacan, where you can enhance the excitement and make it even more entertaining.

I was incredibly impressed with EPIC and all the time and energy that went into creating such an immersive place. My mom is not really one for museums but she was taking longer than me in going through each exhibit because she was so engaged! (Not a knock on my mom; I was so happy she was enjoying it because I was worried I’d feel like I was dragging her through the museum.)

It was also a lot of information to take in and I got really fatigued by information overload by the 10th or so exhibit. I wish I could have done half of the exhibits one day and the other half the next! There was just so much information to uncover. I learned so much about Ireland’s history and how the emigration experience changed throughout the years. (It’s not all about the potato famine, who knew?!)

It was a great experience, though, and I’m so glad we went even if it did eat up a huge chunk of our one day in Dublin. We didn’t leave the museum until a little after two, but we also wanted to poke around the bookstore for a bit. I saw a copy of The Chronicles of Narnia in the gift shop and I’m beating myself up for not buying it. (I thought I’d wait until we went to some other bookstores in Dublin to get a copy, but we didn’t really have time for bookstores in Dublin.) Ah, well.

After the museum, we walked to The Winding Stair to have lunch. My mom found this place during her Ireland research and it is half-cafe and half-bookstore. Perfect for me! Unfortunately, we had not looked at the menu beforehand and it was not our thing. (Also, very expensive!) Instead, we found a restaurant nearby to have lunch.

It wasn’t the best lunch. Although I enjoyed my sandwich, I wasn’t keen on the salad and the cider didn’t really taste like anything. But it gave us the fuel we needed to power through for the rest of the day. We also made the decision at lunch to skip our planned day in Belfast. We hadn’t seen anything on my itinerary so far (Trinity College! Book of Kells! The cathedrals!) and I would have been very sad to leave Ireland without at least touring Trinity College. So I canceled our train ticket. It was a hard decision to make because we were very much looking forward to going to Belfast but it would have been a really short day (we’d get to Belfast around 1 p.m. and have to leave before 7 p.m.) so I think we made the right call.

After lunch, we tried to decide what to do next. We decided to get back on the hop-on/hop-off bus to see the second half of the tour (and because our feet were screaming at us by this point!) We saw the bus pull up when we were kind of far away. I did not think we were going to make it and would have to wait for the next bus. However, new people were getting on the bus who needed help with their tickets, which meant we were able to hoof it and make it onto the bus before it pulled away. Woohoo!

Also, the tour guide who was driving this bus was soooo funny and he made our time on the bus 1,000x more enjoyable. My mom and I were just sitting there, cracking up, and it’s a memory I definitely cherish from our time in Dublin.

We got off the bus at a stop near Trinity College, intent on going to the Irish Whiskey Museum to take a guided tour. We got there just in time for the 5:30 tour, but it was fully booked. Womp! We weren’t too upset since neither of us particularly enjoy whiskey (at least not on its own). It just seemed like a cool tour to do!

Instead, we walked over to Hodges Figgis which wasn’t too far away. I thought I would have plenty of time to peruse the stacks of this bookstore but we got there within 15 minutes of closing time. Nooooo! I made a promise to myself to come back tomorrow to take my time looking at all the books to find exactly what I wanted to buy. (Spoiler alert: I did not make it back to Hodges Figgis. Sad face!)

At this point, all the tours and museums were closed and since we had eaten a late lunch, we weren’t particularly hungry. So we decided to get back on the hop-on/hop-off bus to go back to our hotel.

At this time in the day (after 6 p.m.), the bus was pretty empty and the tour guide was just playing a recorded message about the sights. As we were nearing our hotel by the Kilmainham Gaol, I got nervous that the bus driver wasn’t going to make a stop there because he said it was closed. I made my mom get up to tell him we wanted to stop at the gaol but the bus driver didn’t hear her correctly and dropped us off near the old Kilmainham hospital, which was 3/4ths of a mile from our hotel.

Lemme tell you – I was not happy about this. My feet were so achy at this point from walking around all day (and I was in boots, which aren’t the greatest for walking around a city) and I was so tired and so ready to be in the hotel. I was being grumpy about it and not my best self, for sure. My mom walked ahead of me because I’m sure my attitude was unpleasant to be around. I wish I wasn’t like this – I wish I could have been like, “Oh well! It happens! But hey, we’re in Ireland! Who cares?!” But no, that’s just not my personality. UGH.

We finally got back to our hotel and it was so glorious to shuck off my boots and crawl into bed. I don’t even think I did anything else. I just needed to be cozy immediately.

And then I fell asleep, waking up pretty disoriented a few hours later. At this point, my mom and I were hungry but there wasn’t much to eat around where we were staying. Instead, we went downstairs to the hotel bar where we had a pretty good meal! I had a burger and fries, and we ordered that s’mores brownie dessert again, which was just as good as the day before. I also enjoyed yet another Orchard Thieves cider – yum, yum!

Tomorrow was our last day in Ireland! Sadssss. We planned another full day in the city centre, but we’d be relying on public transportation this time and, lemme tell you, that was an interesting experience! But that’s a story for Monday. 🙂