Dublin

Radiohead @ Malahide Castle

Muffin and I caught our Aer Lingus flight to Dublin (the tube ride turned out to be longer than our actual flight!) and then caught a cab (EUR17) to our castle ...

 

After pissfarting about in the room, we remembered that we were meant to meet Kaz for the Radiohead concert in Malahide ...

 

The stage wasn't really in the castle as I hoped ... (was hoping for some atmospheric pics of the band playing in a castle) but it was outdoors. Luckily it was a nice sunny day! Pity the smokers were out in force ... I was already suffering badly from hayfever, but the smokers pushed my allergies over the edge so I was sneezing non-stop ... (damn smokers! I hope you all DIE SOONER)

 

The support band for Radiohead was Bat For Lashes, which I liked -- the lead singer was one cool wacky lady (kinda reminds me of Kate Bush). Must look for her albums later ...

 

Alas, when Radiohead came on everyone started standing and surging forward ... hence I could hardly see much ...

 

They played lots of old favourites in between their new unfamiliar songs ... and their encore routine seemed very familiar -- they did almost the same acts in the Sydney Entertainment Centre!

Getting home was an interesting experienced ... we were crammed onto the DART with hundreds of merry drunk Irish men ... (all singing a medley of 80s pop tunes)

Wandering about Dublin, Kilmainham Jail

 

Muffin and I caught the bus down to town, had Maccas for breakfast, then to a little Italy type town for some coffee (in Cafe Caglistro). When Kaz finally made it to town we went for a long stroll and then finally found Kilmainham Jail, and we did a quick tour. In summary, we learned that the English shot lots of Dublin's heroes ...

We were hungry and tired, so caught the bus back to the city, then walked around for a place to eat. Kaz found us a really nice place in South William Street called The Port House which was very dark and atmospheric, and had tasty tapas to boot!

Fresh air in Howth

We caught the DART to Howth, and ducked into the first restaurant we encountered ( Ivan's Oyster Bar and Grill). After our tasty meal we went for a stroll around Howth -- we saw people fishing, and a couple of seals!

 

Later that night, we headed into town to meet some ex-collegues over a Guinness (and discovered that you're meant to wait till all the bubbles floated to the top before drinking!) and some soup. Later Rob drove us all around Dublin (beats the yellow and red tour buses!)

Killing time on the last day ...

We planned on having breakfast in the castle today, but woke up too late -- and barely just on time to check out at 12pm!

Instead we accidentally picked a crappy cafe in Temple Bar (Muffin had the worst chicken Caesar salad I've ever seen, while I picked a open BLT sandwich, which had those instant parmesan that you find in plastic bottles on it). Feeling depressed we decided not to try the coffee and went into Joy of Coffee, and had some coffee and an Irish apple pie.

We walked around and ducked into a couple of tourist shops and sent some postcards to our parents. Bored, we decided to head to the airport earlier by bus. Hometime ...