Dublin Neighborhood Walk & St Patrick's

Day three in Dublin continued with a walk from the Guinness Storehouse through the Liberties neighborhood and then the Coombe on our way to St Patrick's Cathedral. Walking through that area you could get a sense of how the working people from the brewery lived in their tight row houses and tiny streets. Suddenly we came to an open boulevard with large parks and churches in the

distance. We were walking toward St. Patrick's Cathedral which was our next destination. We like going to old churches while exploring cities in Europe because of their culture and art. This cathedral certainly did not disappoint. It was a very interesting place and spectacular to look at. Amazingly it was founded in 1191 and is designated as the national cathedral for all of Ireland. There is certainly a lot of history in that building especially because of all of the religious strife in the country caused by the British invasions of Ireland over the centuries.

We left the cathedral and as we were heading toward St. Stephen's Green we came across Marsh's Library which turned out to be the first public library in Ireland founded and opened to the public in 1707. Very cool.  We wandered around there for a bit and perused it's collection of over 25,000 books from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The library still has it's originals fittings, shelves and seating. There was an exhibit of the books used by Bram Stoker while writing Dracula, Very interesting.

I follow Marsh's Library on Instagram and every day they post an image of a document from their collection.

We walked around St. Stephen's Green for a while but we were getting very tired. It was a long day. We headed back to the rail station but stopped at Insomnia Coffee Shop along the way for some coffee, tea and goodies. We got on the tram at Jervis Station and headed back to the hotel for a much deserved nap.