Ireland - Day 9 - Dublin

Dublin is a great city. The population is about 1.5 million but spread way out because they don't have a lot of high rise housing. Like everywhere else in Ireland the roads are narrow and so are the sidewalks. They also twist and turn and change names, which is only relevant if you can see the names -- not always possible. Street name signs have been rare and elusive in Ireland. Where you have them, they are up, waaay up, attached to the side of the buildings. There's a lot of serious cobblestone, some of it on the sidewalks too. The narrowness and roughness must be very difficult for people of limited mobility as well as parents with children in strollers.

There's lot's to see in Dublin, as elsewhere, and we only got a little taste of it. We sampled Guinness at the top of the Guinness Storehouse, which has a bar area on the 7th floor surrounded by glass with a fabulous view of the whole city and surrounding area. Perfect for getting your bearings after driving around the city in a bus. Then we, the Viking family, went to Christ Church Cathedral which started in 1030 on the site during the time when the Vikings were building their settlement that became Dublin. In addition to it being an impressive building where Strongbow is buried there is an exhibit in an old church building across a medieval footbridge that shows the Viking roots of Dublin and medieval Dublin along with an excellent educational section on archaeology and how it's done. It was very well done with reproduced living quarters and details about daily life in a Viking settlement.