My First Trip to Ireland - Day 3

Having woken up in Belfast, I had no concrete plans for the rest of the day except to explore Dublin and other areas a little bit more.  I partook in another full Irish breakfast, which was a tad different than my first.

Day 3 Full Irish

I really have no idea what the bread-like things were. One actually tasted a bit like a fried, breaded pork cutlet, the other like greasy fried pita points.  Either way, the sausages were delicious as well as the rasher.

I decided to explore Belfast a little.  I wanted to see some of the areas where The Troubles had taken place, and some of the famous wall murals, so I headed for The Falls Road area.  Unfortunately, this was a fairly busy street, so it was difficult to get good photographs, but below are a few of the better ones.

Notice the Red, White and Blue curbs. Union flag colours!

I stumbled upon an Asda store at one end of the road and stopped in. Asda is basically the UK equivalent to a Walmart, because unfortunately, it's owned by Walmart.  Anywho, I needed some hand cream because I didn't pack any and my hands were starting to get sore.  I ended up buying a few more UK food items, including the best flavour of crisps ever invented:

Roast Chicken & Herbs Crisps

I first tasted these little lovelies years ago in Canada. The US needs to get its arse in gear and come out with this flavour!  I also had the joy of seeing one of my favourite beverages, and favourite brands, in a jumbo size container:

Strongbow cider in 2 litre bottles...yes please!

Oh, and I found this stuff (No, I didn't buy one):

After leaving Asda, I decided to head to Kildare.  What I found very interesting was on the motorway heading to Kildare/Dublin, was almost every single car that had passed me was from Northern Ireland.  It seems they must all head down to Dublin on Saturday's! Anywho, Kildare is a town that I wanted to make a point of visiting as it's the town my daughter has chosen to move to when she moves to Ireland. She did a report on the town for one of her classes in school, so I figured I'd check it out for her, to make sure she'd be happy there. Will she? Absolutely!  It's a quaint little village with several pubs and a nice downtown area.  I arrived right about lunchtime so I popped into the Silken Thomas pub for lunch.  I ordered a BLT and cream of mushroom soup, with a Bulmers (Magners in the U.S.) cider.  The BLT had what we American's would refer to as deli ham, rather than bacon. After lunch I walked around a tad, and then headed out of town, north.  I wanted to explore some of the less traveled areas of Ireland, basically getting lost like my first day.  I drove around for a couple of hours before deciding to head back to Dublin for the evening.  But first, some pictures of Kildare:

On my way out of town I stumbled up an old graveyard that was down a worn dirt road.  I love Celtic crosses, so I snapped several pics.  Here are a couple:

By the time I arrived back in Dublin, it was about 4pm.  I found my hotel room (this time a Hilton which I found through Hotwire) and checked in.  My room was extremely nice, and the hotel itself was grand.  I decided to relax a bit and watch some TV.  When I checked in, I had inquired about the distance to the Grafton St area, as it didn't seem too far on the map. The front desk associate stated it wasn't really within walking distance. I decided to walk anyways, as the exercise would do me good. Well, it was quite the haul. It was a good two, maybe three miles.  One plus was that I did pass the Guinness storehouse on the way, but the back side.  That's ok, one of the gates was open and I saw what seemed like a million kegs.

Guinness

My goal was to try and find the pub I was looking for on Thursday night. I tried and failed again, however I did see some areas of the city that I had not seen the previous days, including the famed Ha'penny Bridge. I also saw one of the larger Cathedrals, Christ Church Cathedral:  an amazing Building. I walked the streets for a couple of hours with no luck finding the pub (I couldn't remember the name, so I couldnt ask anyone).  Nothing else was catching my fancy, so I decided to walk back to the hotel, where I ordered room service and enjoyed a nice plate of Fish and Chips.

Fish and Chips with mushy peas

After dinner I watched Mr. Selfridge...the current episode...on TV.  I love this show and was excited to be able to watch it "live".  I started making plans for Sunday, which is Castle day!

Day 4 to follow...