To be honest, the walk, though short, was deeply unpleasant. The wind and rain were terrible and feet got soaked and our poor umbrella kept popping with the wind no matter what direction I held it and it kept dumping water on top of Jessica, but we did make it to the Trinity College and were ready to begin our day. Except no. Turns out you can’t buy tickets to the Book of Kells Experience at the college, you /have/ to follow a QR code or go to the website to purchase them. Listen, I’m with the Boomers on this one, I think people should be able to buy tickets to an event or experience without having to use their phone and input a bunch of information just to get into something, there should be a place to buy tickets on location. I give you money, you give me a ticket, transaction over. But whatever, the only way to do it is online. Well, we’d wanted to pay in cash, cause we already paid for that cash, so we hadn’t booked anything before getting there and then the only other time available was 4pm. The whole experience is apparently 90 minutes so we’d miss our tea time if we did it. So, bang went that plan.
We tried to walk around the college a little bit to see if there was anything else to do but the wind and rain and cold were actually dealing us psychic damage at that point so we turned around to see about hitting one of the cafes we’d passed on the way to regroup. As we trudged back through the dark, wet streets we saw, like a beacon of light, a Butlers Chocolate Cafe. It looked beautiful, warm, inviting. We glided through its doors and let ourselves be welcomed into a place of sanctuary. Inside we delighted in ordering a hot chocolate each, on Oreo and one Praline with cream and basked in the knowledge that each hot chocolate purchase came with a free piece of chocolate of our choice. Happy days! We got our two chocolates right away and toasted slainte as we horked them down. Our hot chocolates were ready shortly after and we had ourselves a pleasant little warm up with our hot beverages.
As we drank a woman came up to Jessica to ask if she’d forgotten her rain jacket and we had a laugh telling her that her hair was wet because I kept dumping the rain water from the umbrella onto her! From there were had a genuinely merry time, laughing at any nonsense that came out of our mouths as we tried to make a new plan for our day. We found on our phone that we were right next to some kind of National Library of Ireland so we decided to head that way and see what it was. Shaking of our umbrella and stuffing it back into it’s very convenient zipper case we headed inside to find a giant Lego replica of the library. There was a little scavenger hunt of sorts to find certain Lego pieces inside the library so we entertained ourselves finding the golden harp and Santa beard urinals and roast chicken. Behind that was a doorway to a free WB Yeat’s exhibit which seemed like a good use of our time so we followed the signs to check it out. What is traveling for if not going to museums?
The WB Yeats exhibit was quite well done! It was a small exhibit, just one large, dark room that had been designed as a circular path of artifacts and documents from Yeat’s life on display in chronological order. There were four little rooms along the way that you could sit in to watch little five minute or so programs about WB Yeats life with experts and critics weighing in. We particularly enjoyed the one about his mysticism. How convenient that just as he was getting obsessed with the spiritual and mystical his wife George discovered she was a medium. Funny how that worked out! Jokes aside we learned a lot and had an excellent time and were quite glad we had found this delightful exhibit in our pursuit of something to do. Having exited the exhibit we looked into getting something called a Readers Card to go see the rest of the library, but the process seemed rather long as you had to fill out a digital form and then stand in line outside the ticket center to get a physical card so we decided to skip that and head next door to the Archeology Museum.
We’d been to the Archaeology Museum before on our last visit when we were set loose in Dublin by our relatives but it was free and out of the rain and right next to us so back we went to see what had changed. Nothing had changed, actually. Though I only had vague memories of the place before entering I was immediately aware of how exactly the same the whole place felt. Still, we hadn’t really spent a lot of time in the museum the last time we’d been and we had all the time in the world to look around at our leisure as it was only 2pm. We got to read the placards next to the artifacts more carefully and goodness if they didn’t find almost all of this stuff in bogs. They really just chucked a bunch of their goods into those, didn’t they? There was an awful lot of empty spots where items had been removed but many of them weren’t label as such so it looked sort of like there’d been some kind of robbery at the museum! A very Carmen Sandiego experience!
Having had our fill of archeology we checked our location on our phone once again and discovered right up the street was the National Gallery which was, also, free to visit. We had an hour until our tea time so off we went to have a quick look about. We checked the gift shop first, obviously, and Jess found herself drawn to pink triceratops they were selling but she decided to consider that purchase as we explored the gallery. The place is, for starters, huge. It’s a labyrinth with so many hallways and stairways and doorways and signage isn’t really clear about where your headed but we weren’t headed anywhere really so we just wandered wherever we felt. We ended up through some hallway of stained glass art that lead to nowhere but more hallways adorned with nothing. While looking at a map of the place we found we saw someone ask a museum attendant about something they were looking for and we decided “They seem to be headed somewhere, let's follow them!” and we tracked them all the way to an art gallery of, guess who, Jack Butler Yeats! We found both of them in one day without even trying! His art really is gorgeous thought so I’m glad we got to see it.
Jack Butler Yeats artwork was only the first room of the gallery we had found our way so we spent the rest of our time going from room to room checking out each artists work. There was a room for more stained glass, which we’re quite fond of, so that was nice. We didn’t finish seeing all the art as we decided to turn back around and head out at the 4:40pm mark to make our 5pm tea time. On the way out we did indeed stop back into the gift shop to get Jessica her pink triceratops friend as she’d thought about it and decided it would make her happy to have. Stuffed toy safely secured in the messenger bag we began the 10 minute walk to The Shelbourne and the Lord Mayor’s Lounge. The place was gorgeous on the outside and stunning on the inside, the kind of place with a doorman to spin the revolving doors as you entered. Opulent. As we entered we found the Lord Mayors Lounge directly to our right and were first in line to be seated for tea.
The three other parties attending the tea were seated at tables by the window but we got this precious circular booth that felt like class itself. The waiter, Michel, explained that we had a menu for the food just to explain what it all is as it’s a fixed menu and we would be receiving everything on it and could as for anything we wanted more of as we pleased. We also had a tea and coffee menu and we would order the one we wanted and then as we finished it we could order another. We could have as much tea and coffee as we wanted also and we were encouraged to try as many kinds as we could. The tea menu was extensive and fully intended to take them up on the offer to try as many as we pleased. We got our first teas to get started then the tea tray tower came out loaded with four layers of hot scones, sandwiches, and deserts. As there were two in our party we had two of everything and it looked just darling.
We dug in, starting with the hot scones as suggested before moving on to the savory sandwiches. Jess like the tomato and cucumber sandwiches best while I really enjoyed the chicken and chives. We did both try the salmon sandwich and the egg and cheese sandwich, even though we’re not fond of fish or egg sandwich. We both finished the egg and cheese though as it was much lighter and less eggy than we’re used to, but we each only had half of the salmon as it was basically what we expected. Not bad, just fishy. As we ate the waiters came by often to ask if we wanted to put in an order for more tea. For each new tea we were brought a new cup and strainer for the tea to be poured into by the waiter. Each tea was fabulous and we ended up ordering, throughout the course of the dinner, four cups each. I say dinner because that’s really what it was! The waiter had explained to us at the beginning that this was, technically, a tea but it was designed to be filling enough that you wouldn’t have to go out to dinner afterwards. And that was perfectly true, we were good and stuffed after an hour of enjoying ourselves. We didn’t finished one of the carrot cakes, one of the peach desserts, and two of the scones by the time another waiter came round asking if we wanted anything boxed up to go. We likely could have finished everything but we’d asked for more of our favourite sandwiches partway through.
While our leftovers were being boxed up Michel came back around to ask what our favourites of everything had been and then asked if we wanted to try any of the coffees as we’d only had the teas but seemed to be interested in trying many new things. We said if he was offering we were accepting and we got a mocha and cappuccino as our final drinks of the evening. Both were, as expressed to us, delicious if perhaps a little sharper on the coffee that we’re used to. That seems to be the way all coffee here is served though, very heavy on the bitter coffee flavour. Still, it was excellent and we were glad to have tried it before leaving! We used the Shelbourne’s bathroom before leaving, mostly just to see what it looked like as we were only a 5 minute walk from our hotel, and we were right to do so as those bathrooms were as opulent as the rest of the place! Gaudy and luxurious with all kinds of seating and huge mirrors all over the place, just a great place for a pee.
The rain and cold had decided Dublin had had enough of it so our walk back to the Conrad was sunny and warm and we discussed how nicely the day had turned out despite our initial setbacks that morning. We didn’t get to see the Book of Kells, but we’d made quite a day of it and were ready to settle in for the evening. Up in the hotel room we watched some more Murder, She Wrote and then tried to find anything else on TV worth watching when that ended. Not a huge selection of programing here in this hotel, but they probably don’t expect people to spend a lot of time in their rooms while here in a hopping city. We found QI and then 8 out of 10 Cats to watch while we lounged. We’d considered going down to the hotel bar once again for cocktails but decided that we were actually ready to turn in for bed around 10:30pm so we just changed into our pajamas, finished the last of our Fanta, and went to bed with the intention of an early start the next morning!
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