Dublin Denouement: Northern Ireland, Days 11+

We’re going to wrap up the last few days of out trip a little bit differently. It’s not that we don’t *want* to tell you more about Ireland, it’s just that it (the trip, not Ireland) really isn’t interesting; part of this was by design and part of it was just dumb luck. Fortunately, we can still give you some (hopefully) interesting stories of travel in Ireland. You’ll see, hang on a sec. On the other hand, this covers enough time that even a seriously pruned blow by blow would make for a small novel. True, love means never having to monitor word count on a blog, but still. So we’re going to talk about what went down in the last few days, and then next time we’re going to talk about where we ate, which was notable on multiple occasions.

As I said at the end of the last post, we had a plan to see some last sites before dropping the car off in Belfast. Well, the weather gods had been unreasonably kind to us for this whole trip, and they just couldn’t help themselves any more. It was sheeting rain; windshield wipers were barely keeping up. We gave it until a key highway exit to get better and when it didn’t we just pressed on for Belfast. Naturally, the rain let up, but seriously who knows what direction the clouds were moving? (Anybody with a compass I guess, but … shush you.)

We arrived in Belfast and dropped our car at the airport. I’m not 100% certain that we needed the comprehensive coverage this time, but like all insurance, you don’t need it until you do, and then you really need it. Chalk it up to my excellence at driving on the left. (Ho! It is to laugh.) We scooted back to the same hotel we stayed in last time, not because we loved it so much as that it was a known quantity and after the last few quaintly idiosyncratic (ahem) places we stayed we liked the sound of known. We did have a lovely dinner at a place just down the street, Gnostic, and it truly is worth a visit if you’re ever in Belfast. Other than that, though, it was a laundry day and a reset for Dublin.

The next day was comprised of a bus ride to Dublin, a check-in to a shoebox of a hotel room (we have had the strangest run of hotel rooms this trip, I swear…) and brunch at a tasty spot in the neighborhood, 31 Lennox. (Hold that thought.) Other than picking up an ersatz cheese board in the local SPAR that was it. See what I mean about quiet, almost not worth mentioning? And yet, here you are.

The day following, which was a Tuesday was filled with…. shopping. Here’s the thing: neither of us likes to shop. We did not have a fun, free-spirited romp through the luxe markets of swanky Dublin. No, we needed shoes and the Portuguese seem to have uniformly narrow feet. The Irish are not similarly afflicted, so we knew we could get better-fitting shoe there, and thus we did. A couple of other mundane sundries were crossed off the list, and though it took some time it was once again desultory.

Wednesday, our last day in Dublin, finally had a bit of action to it. We packed up, checked out of our hotel and had them hold our bags so we could stroll across St. Stephen’s Green to the Irish National Gallery. In my limited but growing experience, art galleries come in two flavors (they all have “nice art for people to look at” as part of their purpose, that’s a given): either the gallery exists primarily to demonstrate that its home belongs in the constellation of great place, by exhibiting a selection of work from the greatest artists in the world, or it exists primarily to raise the visibility of home-grown artists for their glory and the reflected glory upon those artists’ home. The Irish National Gallery is definitely the latter; it has multiple floors of art by Irish artists, often portraying Irish artists (authors in the main), and then a capstone gallery of art by “European masters” in which the pieces were created in, or which portray places or people in, Ireland. None of this is to take the piss out of the gallery; it’s well organized and a treat to ramble through. Plus they have a Vermeer so it would never be a complete waste. After the gallery we gathered up our things and took a bus to the airport, thence on to our flight to Lisbon, and a check-in to a literally-one-week-since-opening Hyatt. Seriously. We’re pretty sure we’re the first people in this room, they are clearly still working out some bugs with the elevators and such, and they upgraded us to a pretty amazing suite simply out of gratitude, it seems, that somebody is staying with them. It’s a lovely place and surely won’t be empty for long, but it is kind of weird to be practically alone in a gigantic hotel.

Since we didn’t do a lot of interesting things in Ireland those last few days, we figured we’d point you towards some stories where more happened. Our honeymoon, as it happens, was a little more than 10 years ago and covered parts of Ireland and Scotland. I’ve linked some of these posts below, please do have a look. 🙂

Day 1 of our Honeymoon which kicked off in Dublin.

Day 2, when we went to Newgrange and the Hill of Tara.

Day 3, including Trinity College and the Book of Kells.

Day 4, including Hadrian’s Wall and Vindolanda.

You can use the “Show More Posts” function at the top of each post if you want to see more in the series. It’s a pretty good trip… at least, if you’re enjoying The Ramble, it’s more of the same just slightly older.