Our first real "trip" after being stationed in Germany! We've never been to Ireland so we were excited to go, but I have to confess that the reason for going specifically at this point in time was Lorcana. What is Lorcana you ask? It's a card game, basically Pokemon or Magic the Gathering but with Disney characters and Disney art. I like it for the artwork (I don't really play...I've played a couple times but I'm really bad), and have been collecting the cards since it first came out in 2023. Disney and the company that does the game (Ravensburger) will occasionally do special releases of special cards, but only at the Disney parks in America, Disney Paris, and the Disney store in London and the Disney store in Dublin. As you may have gathered by this point, there was going to be a special release on Friday July 17th, and since the American parks were out, and we've already been to both Disney Paris and London, we decided to go to the Disney Store in Dublin and then spend some time touring Dublin!
We booked our hotels and plane tickets (yay points!) and Thursday July 16th, landed in Dublin at like 9 pm. We took the uber to the hotel - driving on the wrong side of the road never fails to feel weird - and got settled by a little after 10 pm. We were staying at the Moxy Dublin City, which was really downtown/central and a decent price. The Moxy chain is usually a decent price for downtown hotels but the tradeoff is very tiny rooms; we got lucky that our room was a decent size.
We walked a few minutes to grab McDonald's for dinner since that was basically all that was open. Not a bad view as we walked!
We always like to try McDonald's in different countries and see what they have on their menu. It was...fine. Not amazing but fine. Then done with dinner, we (I instigated but still we :) ) decided to walk the 15 minutes to the Dublin Disney store. It was long closed, but I'd seen online reports of 200 hundred people already in line at the Disney store in London, and so wanted to check out what the situation was here in Dublin. Hopefully a lot fewer people!
As we approached I was like "oh hey no line!" and then we got closer and there was indeed a line - about 30 people or so at 11:15 or so at night. I had a brief moment of FOMO where I was like "OH NO I SHOULD WAIT IN LINE" and then sanity took back over and no. I'm too old and too tired to wait overnight. And at least the line was only 30 people or so? Trevor was saying that hopefully that mean everyone who was going to be crazy overnight was already there and it wouldn't get too much longer overnight. Hopefully!
The next morning I woke up a little before 5 am and decided to get up and go get in line. I was on my way by about 5:20, but Trevor was still sleeping 'cause he's not insane. It was already a bit light out:
When I got to the Disney store, there was definitely a bigger line than before! I had Trevor count when he joined me later and I was about 120/130 people back in line. Thankfully the Disney employees were on top of it - they handed out little tickets to everyone in line and while they only got 260 boxes for this special release, they decided to do 1 per person so more folks in line could get one. Yay! They also opened up an hour early (8 am vs 9 am) to start selling the Lorcana box. 3 hours later (I know), at 8:35 am, we entered the store and bought our special boxes (me and Trevor each got one - one to keep and one for me to trade) and got a couple booster packs of the new Lorcana set that was also releasing that day. Yay! We also got a couple special promo cards that they were giving out with this release as well. Not too bad!
We did do some other shopping in the Disney Store cause of course we did. They had lots of big statues up so Trevor took some pictures with them. :)
That accomplished (well sort of, we got breakfast and then went to a card game store in Dublin to try and buy more packs of the new release), it was time to start touring Dublin!
We booked a guided tour at the Little Museum of Dublin, so headed that way. It's a fun little museum with various donated artifacts. There's a bunch of taxidermied animals, a giant dollhouse, a first edition of James Joyce's Ulysses (open to the last page so we all can say that we finished reading Ulysses!)...just all sorts of random stuff. I had fun playing with the grip strength machine that they had. Our tour guide was fantastic - enthusiastic and funny, it was great. We discovered that we are very ignorant of Irish history but we learned a lot. And still had fun. :)
Then, we dropped stuff off at the hotel and hopped on the train to Howth. Howth is about 30 min away (by train) from Dublin, and we'd heard that you could do a very scenic cliffwalk, so that was our plan for the afternoon/evening. The train ride was easy and fast, and as we were heading towards the cliff walk, we passed a crepe place and decided to get crepes for lunch.
So yummy! Trevor got nutella and banana; I got strawbery and nutella.
Then off we went on the walk! There was a lot of good signage so super easy to find. We were basically walking around the edge of the peninsula on the Irish sea. It was way more sunny than I expected - we should have brought sunscreen. But it was a great walk, though my fear of heights definitely played up a little bit, as at some parts it was just the path and then the cliff. I spent a lot of time looking at my feet to make sure I didn't trip or anything! But it was gorgeous.
We (mostly me) walked slow so it took us about 2 and a half hours. But worth it! We got dinner at a place on the pier and then back on the train to the hotel. Not a bad day!
Saturday we toured Trinity College (yes we did the guided tour again), and saw the Book of Kells and the Long Library. The guide was great with lots of fun facts about the college. We got to go in one building (I think it's the geography building) that had amazing carving and mineralwork inside.
Then we got to see the Book of Kells, a 1200 year old illuminated manuscript. This was cool but the page that they had the book open to wasn't that exciting. The pictures they had of other pages looked really neat and intricate, especially thinking about it being made 1200 years ago!
But we then went to the Long Room and this was my favorite part. It's the library, and it was AWESOME. They're actually starting a renovation so most of the shelves are empty, which they haven't been for hundreds of years.
They also had an copy of the Irish Republic proclamation from the original print run, as well as the harp used as the model for the coat of arms of Ireland, as well as for the Guinness brewery logo.
After the Long Room, we had to run to our next thing: a food tour of Dublin! We've done a couple of these in other cities so figured we had to do it here too. We had a great time - there were only six of us on the tour and our guide was very entertaining and informative. And the food was delicious! First up, we got a demo of Irish coffee - the other tour members got to try the coffee but since we don't drink either alcohol or coffee, we got hot chocolate and it was the best hot chocolate I think I've ever had.
From Vice Coffee in Dublin. Yum.
Then we went to the Tram Cafe and got a breakfast bap: pork sausages, clonakilty black pudding, smoked streaky bacon and butter on a brioche bun with ballymaloe relish.
This was really rich, but also good. I liked the ballymaloe (basically tomato) relish. And also apparently irish black pudding is not blood pudding - we all made faces when he said black pudding so the guide talked to us about how it's beef not pork, and not really blood. Which did reassure us all. :)
Next up, we went to the Temple Bar area and looked around for a bit, before going to a little cafe nearby for cheese and crackers:
This was really good too - I liked the middle plate best, with Carraig Beag cheese. I didn't like the bleu cheese though. Gross.
Next, oysters!
I was wary but figured I had to at least try them. The taste wasn't actually bad, just that texture. I did like the red wine vinaigrette with scallops that went with the oysters, that was good.
Then, we went to Boxty House for some Irish Stew and Dublin Coddle:
This is the stew: I don't like stew really but this was good for stew? :)
Dublin Coddle - basically stew but using up leftovers apparently. Same as above - I don't really like stew but good for what it was. Sadly I didn't like the bread really at all, though Trevor did.
Then time for the final stop (dessert): The Gra. They had potato ice cream which was surprisingly good, but I got raspberry ice cream for my scoop instead of potato. :)
This was a cool shop - ice cream but also they had artwork on totes/t-shirts, etc from local artists. Trevor saw a piece that depicted Howth on a t-shirt, so he wanted to get that. They didn't have his size but the cafe also does print on demand, so they were gonna do that for Trevor. :) We took advantage of the time we had to wait by going to a nearby store to buy Trevor an Irish wool sweater. But when we came back the t-shirt wasn't ready (something about a miscommunication?) so we just hung out and waited (and got more ice cream as a thank you/sorry for waiting).
T-shirt acquired, we headed off to do a round on the hop-on hop-off bus around Dublin. On the way, we passed the Molly Malone statue:
Then on the bus we hopped! We got to see Phoenix Park and the Guinness brewery complex which is HUGE.
And ended at St Stephen's Green and the Fusilier's Arch:
At this point we were hungry so we headed to an Irish pub recommended by our tour guide earlier: Darkey Kelley's. They had live music so it was hopping. :) The food was fine, but the experience was a lot of fun.
Sunday morning we hopped on the train to go up to Belfast. It was nice to see the countryside! Trevor did a timelapse on the way up but it's not uploaded yet so you lucked out this time ;). Our hotel was right next to the train station which was super convenient. We checked in, dropped off our stuff, and then headed to St George's Market for lunch! We got several things: crepes, Trevor got a large spicy hot dog, and then a chocolate-covered frozen banana. All was delicious.
We also looked around at the other stalls that were selling non-food things; I didn't get anything but Trevor got a leather crossbody bag.
Then it was time for us to go to the Titanic museum! Titanic was built in Belfast so they have a big ol' museum about Titanic there. We'd booked a guided tour but we had a few minutes so of course we were taking pictures.
On the tour, we ended up being the only ones, so private tour! It was very good too - we got to see Mr Andrews' office (the designer of the Titanic) and the room where they designed/drafted the plans. We also got to see the slips behind the museum where they built the Titanic. It was a really informative and interesting tour; I'm glad we booked it. We also got to tour the SS Nomadic, which is the last surviving ship of the White Star line, and was used for (among other purposes) tendering people to the Titanic from ports like Cherbourg where it was too big to actually dock. That was fun to wander around.
Then we went into the museum itself. It focused (as you'd expect) way more on the building of the ship vs the maiden voyage and the sinking, but it was really interesting. There was even a ride! Like you got in a carriage-like thing and it took you around a life size replica of the Titanic's rudder, dropping you down and raising you back up. Nuts. They had some interesting artifacts, including a deck chair and the violin the band member was playing.
Then at the end they had a brief exhibit on Titanic's legacy, including movies and books and such, and even had a place to re-enact the "I'm the King of the World!" moment from the movie. Shaggy Trevor is king of the world!
Overall we really enjoyed it and learned a lot. But we were a bit tired, so we headed back to the hotel and then off to dinner. We found this place called Darcy's Belfast that looked good, so off we went. It was super cute - we liked the candles they had on each table:
Notice that it's from Titanic! :D
Trevor got the salmon:
While I got the Sunday roast. I don't usually like Sunday roasts but with horseradish the prime rib was delicious and it was all pretty good.
We also got sticky toffee pudding, which was good but not quite as good as that pudding we had at the Abingdon in Kensington a couple years back.
Not a bad day at all!
Monday was our final day to tour - we were headed back to Dublin that night at 6, but plenty of time to tour stuff in the meantime! First off, we went to Belfast Castle. This was gorgeous on the outside - the inside was pretty bland (since it's basically an event center now)
They even had a labyrinth that we got to walk through, which was neat.
We then took an uber to CS Lewis Square - apparently he was born in Belfast? They square has a bunch of statues of characters from Narnia:
The robin
The broken stone table
Aslan
Mr and Mrs Beaver!
the creepy wolf that worked for the White Witch
Mr Tumnus
Prof Kirke heading into the wardrobe
the White Witch
The statues were super neat to see - glad I found out about it while we were still able to get over there to see it!
From here we headed to City Hall - we were gonna grab lunch and then our next tour picked us up at City Hall. The tour we were doing was a black cab tour, where the driver was someone who lived in Belfast and was part of the Troubles - we correctly guessed that our guide was Catholic. Once again we felt very ignorant of Irish history, but we learned a lot. We didn't know that there are still gates between some of the Protestant and Catholic communities that close every night. Or that in the Protestant communities the street signs are only in English but in the Catholic communities they're in both English and Irish. The murals were beautiful, though we felt a little odd smiling when the guide took our picture in front of one of the biggest/longest walls.
Look how tall that wall is! Below is one of the gates that closes every night - the hours are posted on that yellow sign.
Another one where we felt a bit odd smiling - Bobby Sands mural.
Overall, it was a really interesting, informative, but super sad tour. Highly recommend though.
After that our, we had one more thing we wanted to do: tour City Hall. The City Hall building is gorgeous:
And they offer guided tours for a couple pounds so we wanted to do that. It ended up being yet another private tour - it was crazy how not crowded it really was, just everywhere. The tour was yet again very interesting - we've found we like the tours cause otherwise we just are like "huh that's cool" but with tours we end up learning a lot and actually absorbing stuff. The building is ridiculously ornate inside too.
So much stained glass!
We finished a bit after 4, so back to the hotel we went. We packed up, and then headed to the train station. We ended up getting there a few minutes before 5, so we were able to catch the 5 pm train back to Dublin even though we'd booked the 6 pm train. It was nice to get back a bit early - we were tired so it was nice to get back to the hotel and just crash. Our plane the next morning was at like 9 am, so we had to be at the airport at like 6/6:30 am. Thankfully we again got to use Trevor's lounge access - made it so much nicer to get to the airport so early!
When we boarded, we saw something on the plane we'd never seen before:
A welcome message from the flight crew! Kind of fun. :)
The flight home was uneventful, and we made it home by like 1 pm.
Overall it was a whirlwind trip but we had a great time and got a lot done. We want to go back to Ireland and see things like Giant's Causeway and other things more on the west side like Galway, etc. We'll see!
