Trip to Dublin of the Republic of Ireland

5th April, 01 (Thur) - Day Two

Horrible weather

Today was Ching Ming Festival in the Chinese tradition, during which people would visit their ancestors' tombs. Our mood was as serious as those descendants since the weather was as bad as the one we used to have on the day of the festival in HK - raining all the time.

Our aim was the Malahide Castle, which is on the North-East of Dublin. The whole process was not interesting at all. First much time was spent on finding out the bus stop. After taking a half-an-hour bus trip, there was still a distance between the bus stop and the entrance to the Castle. We were under the attack of Uncle Windy and Auntie Rainy on our way. It's really horrible!

We were introduced to the life of the Talbot familiy who had lived there before in a guided tour. We took some pics later outside the castle. The pics could have looked much nicer if the weather had not been that bad.

Next to the castle was the Fry Model Railway, which only introduced the history of Irish transport with its miniature railway including a collection of beautiful handmade models, and there was little else to see in the museum. But we were impressed by the old man and another staff there who specially served us, when it's supposed to be their lunchtime. A female staff at the Malahide Castle was also nice to us, asking about us when finding we sat tiredly at the reception.

Back to the city centre, we spent the afternoon exploring all the shopping lanes and centres. In fact, it didn't take us long to stroll around as many shops such as Marks and Spencers could also be found in England. On average things were more expensive than their counterparts in the neighbouring country.

This evening we tried something different for our dinner at Bewley's Cafe in the Jervis Street Shopping Centre. I ordered panini (a kind of bread) with ham and cheese inside, which was really nice and mouth-watering. Bewley's seemed to be quite popular and got a lot of its cafes around Dublin.

We still had the same room-mates tonight. The US guy was still cool and only talked to the short-haired girl who was looking for jobs.

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