St. Steven's Green, St. Patrick's Park, and Christ Church Cathedral

The Great Ireland Voyage, 2011. I went to Ireland, from October 24 - November 2, 2011. I attended a conference in Dublin, and then had some vacation days in Dublin and elsewhere, including Galway. I took a good number of pictures.

This part covers St. Steven's Gren, St. Patrick's Park, and Christ Church Cathedral.

Click on the thumbnail images to get larger ones (around 100-300K). Click on the "huge" link to get the full size pictures (around 3M). Around 60 pictures included.

St. Steven's Green

Saint Steven's Green is a nice park in the south east area of Dublin. It has grass (hence the green part) ponds, and monuments to various artists along the permimeter. It was also suffering from the flooding from the previous day's record-breaking rains when I went there. I was there the first day of my trip (Tuesday).

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First is a map of the area. It was very faded, the plastic that protected it was fogged. At full resolution ("huge"), the text associated with the monuments is readable.

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A few shots of the pond and a picture of the arch by the western entrance to the park, er, green.

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The first is a monument to "Jeremia O'Donovan Rossa", although the text on the monument looks like "ÓOOMOḂOM ROSO." (Wow...that was a pain to write...I had to look up the unicode character for a capital B with a dot above it, and that was only because I could not find a unicode character for a capital B with an acute accent above it. Yes, I know it actually is a dot, but it looks like an accent or apostrophe to me. And the D's look like O's. As do the C's. But I digress.)

Anyway, the second picture is of the pond with some ducks in it and the third is a fountain.

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Here's a panoramic shot of the flooding. THe way the mound at the center is above the water makes the whole thing look intentional. At first I wasn't even sure, until I noticed the irregularity of some of the other "ponds" and how they were filled with grass.

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The flooding was pretty striking. In these two pictures, it's clear the 'mini-pond' around the reeds in the center is not intended to be there.

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A close-up of the edge of one of these "ponds" in which it's clear that there is grass at the bottom of the pond. And two more shots of the flooding on the greens.

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There was a house at the edge of St. Steven's Green. I'm not sure if it's part of the park or not. It was a nice-looking house and thus I took a couple pictures of it.

St. Patrick's Cathedral and Park

Saint Patrick's Cathedral is the largest church in Ireland. It originally dates back to 1192 (sort of), with a long history, beyond what I can easily summarize (or follow). Jonathan Swift (author of Gulliver's Travels) was the Dean of the cathedral back in the day (1713-1745). In the 1800s, major rennovation was done, as it was in danger of collapse. The reonnovation removed and replaced much of the building and no records were made of what is medieval and what is Victorian. The park, adjacent to the cathedral, was created in 1901. It was getting late in the day, so I only took pictures of the outside. This was getting to the end of the first day of the trip (Tuesday).

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I took a few pictures outside the fence that surround the area. It is a big cathedral.

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The required shot of a sign identifying it as St. Patrick's Cathedral, and two pictures of a shadow of a spire with a cross-ish thing on top cast onto one of the stone walls of the cathedral.

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Here are two pictures, looking up to the top of the cathedral. The second one focusing on the top of a spire. I would imagine the stonework up there is not original and was among the stuff that was replaced or rennovated in the 19th Century.

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Another shot looking up the side of the building. And a close-up of a clock in the side of the building. 5:20 p.m. From the shadows, it's getting close to sunset.

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And then onto to Saint Patrick's Park, which is next to the cathedral. Given that the sun was probably setting around 6pm when I was there, I imagine the park is open until dark. The park was pretty, with a courtyard, fountain, benches, path, and grass. The area is on a hill, so the far end of the park is lower than the surrounding street. It was about 2 blocks away from the hotel where I stayed. At the far end of the park (visible in the background of the second picture) is a wall with a stone fence. It's a small gallery that overlooks the rest of the park. The third picture is of Saint Patrick's Cathedral from the park.

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There was a fountain in the park. I took a few pictures with the fountain in the foreground and the cathedral in the background.

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The last two pictures are of the park from the gallery on the far side of the park. The entrance gate I used is visible (in the huge version of the picture) next to the cathedral tower. The fountain is in the middle. In the first pictture, I blocked the sun while metering the shot, so everything was brighter and visible. The second picture was using the normal metering given that I was shooting into the sun and is probably a little darker than it really was, but it was getting towards sunset. According to the clock (in the first picture), it was around 5:30 p.m.

Christ Church and Vicinity

The first few days, during the conference, I didn't have a lot of time to wander around, be a tourist, and take pictures. I generally had an hour or so of free time at the end of the day before it got dark. So I did some wandering around. This was the third day of the trip (Thursday), between the conference sessions ending and the conference dinner.

I wandered around by Christ Church and vicinity.

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An Irish sigh about Irish dogs making Irish poop in Irish. I imagine the gist of it is we'll fine you €150 - €3,000 if your dog poops and you don't clean it up. But it's possible there are essential details of the sign that escape me. Kind of odd that the is no English translation of the sign.

The second picture is of a steet with some apartment buildings, looking uphill. The third picture shows a street sign indicating various points of interest. As usual, English is the second language, and the Irish words are not at all similar to English for someone who doesn't know the language. The twisty streets make navigation a pain, but it isn't all that hard to get around Dublin.

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The sidewalk surrounding Christ Church had some cool stuff in it. I'm really not sure waht it meant. The plaque in the second picture says that the pavement commemorates the wooden buildings and pathways that were excavated in the area from the Viking age.

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An archway connectt Christ Church Cathedral to Dublinia, a place that shows what Dublin was like in the medieval and Viking times. I did not go there, since it was getting late. I took a picture of a sort-of double-decker tour bus (with 1/3 of a roof). And, of course, a picture of the sign in front of Christ Church Cathedral.

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Here's a panoramic, stitched picture of Christ Church cathedral, constructed from about 6 pictures. Again, I did not do any editing or cleanup afterwards, so the borders are a bit weird (but the alternative was to lose too many bits of the picture. And the perspective necesesarily distorts the overall shape of the cathedral. Services were starting 10 or 15 minutes after I got there, so tourists we no permitted inside. Which is why all the shots are from the outside.

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Here are a few close-ups of parts of the of the church. The first has a rooster at the top of a spire, the second has a stone cross-y/circle thing at the point of a roof, and the third is a close-up of a window.

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The first picture is of a clocktower in the distance, not part of the church. I think I wanted to show the time and the general weather and lighting. The third picture is of a small area where the remains of the site of the chapter house from 1637 (according to the sign). Note that the sign is in English only, since they do want people to understand it. And unlike in the US, all that's there is a sign saying don't go there because you'll ruin the ruins (so to speak). No fences, cameras, alarms, etc. The third picture is of the windows in the side of the cathedral. They're not broken, they're just reflecting the light of the setting sun, the sky, and bits of the (dark) buildings nearby.

Dublin Neighborhoods

Next, I wandered around Dublin in general, getting a bit lost, enough to discover different neightborhoods, but not enough to be of concern for either getting back or getting back on time.

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A picture of more sidewalk art, probably commemorating the viking era. There were a few people in horse-and-buggy tours. I thought it seemed like a quaint way to tour the city and took a picture of two that passed by in succession. It's blurry, but the people were waving at me in the third picture.

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Wandering around Thomas Street, there was some modern art, some kookey brightly colored wire scultures of heads. It was an interesting landmark. (Hint: they come back in Part 6 (Rainy Monday) when I was trying, unsuccessfully, to find the Kilmainham Gaol musuem).

Then I turned down a narrow alley, surrounded by low buildings and fences. Kind of looked like a bit of an urban ghetto area. Not horrible, but just not the greatest area. Then, off to the left, looking through a fence, I saw a wide, open cement playground, like for soccer. And in it was a horse tethered to the goal tended by a guy. I imagine it is the source of (or at least way station for) the front half of the horse-drawn buggy combination. It made the place seem less ghetto-like.

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Walking further, I came to a more residential street. I took a picture of both sides of the road and the street sign (Ash Street). As with most things, the English name was below the Irish one on the street sign. Oh, and the street signs are on the sides of buildings (when they are present) just to make it a bit more challenging to find. (Yeah, of course that's my perspective, since I'm used to looking for them elsewhere. I'm sure it's just as confusing to have signs on poles in the corners of the street. I don't care.)

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There was a memorial for a hospital. I'm not sure of it's history. There are a lot of historical artifacts from the last millenia or so in Dublin.

And then, on the more modern side, there was a street sign. I have no idea what the image means. It looks like there's noice coming from the tire, perhaps it'sa blowout. And then this beefy guy (I think he looks like Clark Kent) is running out into the street. I think he's trying to save the guy in the car. Perhaps the next streetsign will have the silhouette of Superman's cape. I suppose it's also possible, based on the arms, that he's just thrown the car and the lines are actually speed or zip lines indicating the car is flying away from Superman. A friend of mine thought it might be a racecar heading to the pit with a mechanic running out, and the sign meaning "NASCAR ahead."

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There was anther street sign, about a block away, for a school zone that's a lot easier to understand. And then there's one that says "Disc parking area" which I really have no idea what it refers to. When I see "disc" I think of a frisbee, but that's mostly because I play ultimate frisbee. Oh, and the "7" in the part of the sign that says "loc 7 Taispeáin" is a special character that means "and" (well, think &). It's the "pay and display" part. Also, the "i"s have no dots in them which is also part of that character set. As far as the capitalization goes, I don't know. And technically, there's an acute accent over the "l" but I'm not going to search unicode characters again to try to see if I can find that character. The days, "Luan" - "Domhnach" seems vaguely similar to Monday - Sunday in other languages (like Lundi - Dimanche, in French).

This page last modified Dec 19, 2011.
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