Ireland: Day 1

Jeff, my sister Kathleen, and I left for Ireland very, very early in the morning on Saturday, June 8th. We got into Dublin, Ireland about 10:30 Ireland time on Monday, June 9th. We got our rental car and headed to our first hotel, The Harcourt Hotel in downtown Dublin. It was perfectly located near most of what we wanted to see, so we could walk instead of trying to drive in the crazy Dublin traffic!
This is our hotel lobby:

Jeff & Kathleen chilling while we wait for our room to be ready:

The front of the hotel:

After we got all our stuff in the room, we headed out to explore!

We stumbled upon this cute park:

It was very pretty with lots of people laying all over the grass. On a Monday morning....which made us wonder.....does anyone have a job in Dublin? ;0)

Then we went exploring some more.

We made it to Dublin Castle!!

We were a little early for the next tour, so we went to the Dublin Castle Tea Room and had a little snack.

Jeff & I had cappuccino and shared this yummy cake. It was lemon & raspberry with a toasted coconut top. It was SO good!

Kathleen also had the yummy cake, but she opted for tea. I thought it was fun that they give you an entire pot to our for yourself.

Then it was time for our tour. This is an artists rendition of what the town of Dublin looked like when the castle was built: 

The castle has been rebuilt upon ruins over time. This is one of the original turrets that was the powder room.

These are some of the original stairs to the castle.

The inside was beautiful, but fairly modern. There were some gorgeous tapstries throughout the castle.

This chandelier was one of many throughout the castle. They were made by Waterford Crystal.

This harp is the official symbol of Ireland.
Fun fact: Guinness, the beer of Ireland, had the harp as their symbol long before Ireland wanted it as their national symbol, but Guinness had the "copyright", so they compromised and let them use it as king as the harp was turned in the opposite direction as the Guinness harp.

I loved the details in everything! This fireplace is beautiful!

That throne was huge!

They still use the castle for foreign dignitaries. This is the ceremony room.

These paintings are up on the ceiling!

The Star of St. Patrick medal:

After Dublin Castle, we went to Christ's Church, which is the oldest church in Ireland.

We got to go down to the crypt too.

These are Tudor style clothes:

On our way back to the hotel, we saw St. Patrick's Cathedral. We didn't get to go in though because they were closed for some kind of event.

When we were on our way to the hotel (we had to park a few blocks away in a parking garage, so we had to walk with our luggage), a nice local man asked if we needed help finding where we were going. He pointed out where we needed to go and also told us about a pub that was by our hotel; that was both good and had good prices. :0)

We had our first taste of Guinness!!



Kathleen and I shared this one:

Together, we drank this much:

And we were pretty excited we got that far! ;0)
Jeff drank all of his and drank it several times more throughout the trip. I eventually got used to it and didn't mind it actually. Kathleen never got used to it though.

After the pub we went back to the hotel where we were all exhausted!! It was a good first day!