We landed at the Dublin airport late morning. It took us a while to deplane since we were sitting near the back of the plane. There was a bit of a walk to immigration where we found long lines for non-EU citizens. The kids and I tried out our Irish passports and went through the E.U. line. M and I had a bit of trouble getting the facial recognition to work with our passports, but C made it right through. I think it took M two tries, while it took me three. When it worked it was easy: just place your passport face down on a reader and look into a camera that auto adjusted for your height. Several seconds later the gate opened and you could walk through. Luckily we all eventually got through as I didn’t see anyone around to help if the automatic system didn’t work. In any case, the three of us were through in less than 5 minutes and we waited for and retrieved Angie’s suitcase from baggage claim. We then waited for Angie to make it through immigration. We eventually spotted her in line and after 20 minutes or so she joined us. We then exited the airport and got a taxi after a short wait to take us to our Airbnb.
It took was a while to find and get let in to our Airbnb. I had purchased an esim from Jetpac before leaving the U.S. , which worked well. It was a data only esim, so when voice calls were needed, I either had to use WhatsApp or use our U.S. (xfinity mobile) sim to make calls. Making calls with Xfinity was $0.20 /minute and I only needed to make a few calls. Once we got in to our Airbnb, we settled in a bit and then people went to sleep. Angie and I set alarms so we wouldn’t sleep too long and then went out looking for a grocery store. We made dinner in and went to bed early.
We spent the next two days exploring Dublin enjoying one day of unseasonably sunny warm weather and another of cooler, windy, grey skies.
E found a report of a local market that happens every Saturday so we decided that would be our first stop of the day. What we originally understood to a flea market type of thing, turned out to be a farmer’s market (mostly food trucks) in St. Anne’s Park that is in the north part of the city. Figuring out bus routes and fares was too much for us so we used the Free Now app to call a taxi (no Uber/Lyft in Dublin). The taxi driver hadn’t heard of the farmers market and our directions took us to an entrance to the park where we got out and started our search for the market. It wasn’t long before we found it. The only real gluten free option of the food trucks was a baked potato truck so Angie, M and C each got a stuffed potato, while I ate the lunch we had packed. We then spent a while walking around and exploring the park.
After spending a few hours in the park we were tired of walking and ready to do something else. We thought it would be good to see the tourist sites while on a hop on hop off bus and were sitting down figuring out how to get to one of the bus stops when a local woman stopped and asked us if we needed help. She help us figure out where to catch a bus that would take us close to where we wanted to go and even gave us a few euros to help us make bus fare as we hadn’t had the opportunity to get cash and Dublin buses only take coins unless you have a transit card. We caught the city bus and made our way to the Hop on bus stop. We just missed a hop on bus so figured we’d have a 30 minute wait until the next one came. After waiting more than an hour M downloaded the hop on bus app and saw that there weren’t any hop on buses nearby. We eventually figured out that a bridge had closed for a big soccer match between England and Ireland (England won) and busses were not coming to our stop. We figured out how to walk to a stop that appeared to be open and were relieved when a hop on bus finally showed up.
We had dinner at Krewe, a cajun themed restaurant with good gluten free options that was a 10 minute walk from our Airbnb. The food was good and we all thought it ironic that after spending a couple months in New Orleans this summer, E’s first meal in Dublin was cajun.
Our second day in Dublin included walking around the Temple Bar neighborhood, more Hop On bus riding, a visit and tour of the old jail – Gaol Kilmainham, a quick visit into Trinity College, and souvenir shopping. We had an early dinner at an old restaurant in Temple Bar area (Gallagher’s Boxty House). We had a relatively early morning as our tickets for Gaol Kilmainham were for 11:00 and we planned to walk into Temple Bar and take the Hop On bus out to the jail.
