The alarm woke us up at 7:00 this morning. We could have set the alarm for later but we wanted to beat the breakfast rush. We sat with the couple from the Ottawa valley that have a beef farm. Graham and Marianne. After a nice breakfast of back bacon, sausages, baked beans, eggs and delicious bread we were good for our walking tour of the area.
Vanessa our Dublin guide started by taking us to see an old food market. On the wall of the market is a plaque written in Latin with the words "an obedient city is a happy city". It closed due to Covid but they are considering opening it again. She also showed us a small hotel called the Hacienda that is almost all surrounded by a bigger hotel. He was offered over 4 million but refused so the hotel was built around it. If you want to stay there you knock on the door and if he likes your looks he'll let you in. Cash only. Many celebrities stay here when they are in the City.
We crossed the Liffey River on one of the 23 bridges. The English word for Liffey is life. When we got to the Ha'penny Bridge she told us about the ferries that used to operate across the river and when the ferry was not operational anymore the officials at the time told the operator to fix his ferry or build a bridge. He decided to build a bridge and charge the same price as the ferry, a half penny.
Ha'penny Bridge
We continued on to see Christ Church and Dublin Castle then on to the George Street arcade which is a shopping mall.
From there, we passed through Powerscourt Centre. The centre dates back to 1774 and contains over 40 shops and restaurants. David Letterman once purchased 4 hats at one of the shops. The tour ended at Trinity College that was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth I. If you were Catholic you were not allowed to go. Now it is opened to everyone.
We came back to our hotel to freshen up and go for a late lunch. We saw a show on Netflix "Chef's Table - Noodles" that had a chef from China open a restaurant in London with a restaurant called Biang Biang with hand pulled noodles. There is a restaurant with the same name across the street from our hotel. After waiting for half an hour it was finally our turn. We were seated with a couple from Australia that had come here yesterday and liked it so much that they wanted to come again. It did not disappoint. It was very good and reasonably priced. Jacques had the pork belly noodles while I had the braised short ribs noodles. Both dishes were good. We also had a dish of dumplings. Mine were vegetarian while Jacques opted for the beef dumplings.
The diner and Celtic music show was good. All the
Canadians were seated at the same table along with 2 American ladies. The food
was good with a good variety of choices to choose from. We both chose the same thing, for the 1st
course duck terrine and for our main a Guinness beef stew hotpot. Both were
delicious. The music was lively with lots of riverdance type of dancing. The
only negative about the evening was the bar bill that was given to one of the
men in our group. Since all the Canadians had only one drink each we decided to
divide it evenly among ourselves. The
ladies at the end of our table had 5 glasses of wine so they were given a
different bill. All in all it was a fantastic evening.
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