Day 2 & 3: Dublin & Belfast

 Well…there was no post yesterday if you are keeping notes. Let’s recap here:

Saturday, June 15: We woke up around 9:00 and took our time getting ready for the day - it was “festival day”! Bloomsday is June 16 but the festivals happen over a series of days in the city. We planned to stop into the Bloomsday James Joyce festival in the morning and then head to the Taste of Dublin festival in the afternoon. Instead, we decided to hop on the Hop On, Hop Off bus tour and get to know the city of Dublin better! We are so glad we did—-the guides were all wonderful and we got to see literally everything.






We hopped off and on a few times. We booked the Book Of Kells experience at Trinity College for 6:00pm (only time slot available when we stopped in around 11:00), then we hopped off and had a tour and tasting of Jameson’s Distillery triple distilled whiskey. The history lesson was quite interesting even for the non whiskey drinker! It was also much different than the Guinness Storehouse tour from the day earlier. 



Before Jameson we got off at Merrill Square and attended the Taste of Dublin festival for a few hours. It was GRAND! We watched a Masterclass demonstration by a former two Michelin star chef, Majken Bech-Bailey. 



There were two stages across the large park with live music and multiple vendors with food samples throughout. Our bellies were happy!

Our final stop of the day was Trinity College for The Book Of Kells Experience. It was in plain and simple terms: breathtaking. I can’t even begin to do it justice by explaining about it here so I will just add many beautiful photos:













We ended at Quays Irish Restaurant and had lovely meals - can you guess by the photos? We can play this game each day perhaps?! After all, we are planning to eat our way through Ireland!




OK, it’s now 10:30pm and tomorrow is the day we pick up our rental car and head to Athlone! So, our readers will have to wait another day to hear about our Belfast Tour today. I can leave you with just a couple of photos for now and explain more about it all tomorrow!
On tap for tomorrow: Kilmainham Gaol Museum and picking up our rental car to drive our first hour to Athlone for the night. Stay tuned!





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