We started out with a guided tour of the city a good chunk of which we did over the last two days but we did pick up more information and saw a couple of things that were new. The first was a chance to take a photo of St. Patrick's from the other side which was a much better view than we had before.
As you can see we had another beautiful day. One thing we did learn was that the spire is not original, it was added in the 19th century during a restoration funded by the Guinness family. Apparently the church was in very bad shape as Oliver Cromwell had hated Catholic churches, which is what it was at the time and so during his time in Dublin he used the church as a horse stable. On this side of the church is a garden area. In 1901, construction activity unearthed six Celtic grave slabs and one of them was found to be covering an ancient well that some believe was used by St. Patrick to baptize new Christians. Who knows, but it makes a nice story. Here is the site of that well.
Just past the church there is welfare housing that had been financed by the Guinness family. As a memorial to Jonathon Swift who had been Dean of St. Patrick's there is a plaque above the doorways showing scenes from Gulliver's Travels. Here is one of those plaques.
St. Patrick's was built outside of the walls of Dublin and Christ Church was built inside the walls. Between them we came across this section of the medieval wall which is still standing.
On the way back to our hotel we got this view of the rugby stadium. It is built so that the stands are covered but the field is open.
After we got back to the hotel we walked across the street to the Grand Canal which connects the River Liffey in Dublin to the River Shannon in the west of Ireland. It was begun in 1757 but after multiple failures was finally finished in 1804. It was used for commercial barge traffic until 1960. Now it is used primarily for pleasure boating. Across the street from the hotel the have a couple of boats that do dinner cruises on the canal and that is what we did. Here is a photo of our boat.
Here we are sitting down to dinner. This not a very wide boat and it was pretty cramped.
Just downstream from where we boarded the boat there is one of the locks. Her is a photo of one of the dinner boats going into the lock.
Here they are closing the upstream lock.
The boat is sitting high as they begin to drain water out of the lock.
Here is the water rushing out of the lock.
And here is the boat lower as it gets ready to head down stream.
and here is the canal as it continues on it's way to the River Liffey.
Tomorrow will be an early day as at 8:30 we board the bus and head to Belfast, Northern Ireland. We've been using Euros so far but in Northern Ireland we will have to use pounds and shillings.
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