A Sunny Tuesday in Dublin

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 a visit to University College Dublin, more downtown Dublin wandering, as wall as walking along the River Liffey, the Docklands on the eastern edge of town, Henry Street at night, and the trip home.

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.

University College Dublin

Pavel Gladyshev, a professor at UCD, picked me up in the morning and took me to the campus, so I could get a tour of the place and talk with some of the people working there, including Pavel.

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To avoid the Tuesday morning, post-Halloween traffic, we left somewhat early 7am. The sun was coming up through the stadium as we were heading south to UCD. The second picture is of the main entrance to campus, and the third is of the fountain and O'Reilly Hall behind it (which is a large meeting, conference, assembly space).

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Two pictures of me and Pavel outside of the computer science and informatics building, and another picture of the fountain and O'Reilly Hall. UCD has a nice looking campus.

Downtown Dublin

After UCD, I took a bus back to downtown Dublin, right in front of Trinity College. The previous web pages details my travels and exploration at Trinity. After Trinity, I went to the Temple Bar area for lunch.

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A statue of Molly Malone, subject of a folk song, stands at a street corner, with her basket of cockles and muscles. I had to wait a bit, as there were a number of people standing in front of the statue, waiting to get their picture taken. Certainly, Sweet Molly wins the prize for the "statue with the best rack", considering how they are a polished bronze color, while the rest of her is dark and weather-worn. My shadow is (deliberately) in the second picture getting the side-view of the statue.

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A close-up of the plaque by Sweet Molly. And then a picture of The Temple Bar in the Temple Bar area. It's fairly iconic as one of the more happening, touristy bars. I had lunch at a good Italian restaurant across the street from it (it would be off the left side of the picture).

Along the River Liffey

Next up was more walking along the river.

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First a shot of the Ha'Penny Bridge and then another picture of the River Liffey.

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There was a Guinness tanker truck. I kind of figured they delivered it in bottles and kegs, not 8,000 gallon tanker trucks. Another of the Ha'Penny Bridge on the north side of the river, looking east. And a picture of yet another bridge.

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The still-unidentified bridge. OK, I just looked it up. It's the O'Connell Bridge. And then two pictures of a statue, probably near O'Connell street, with a pigeon on the statue's head (yes, that was why I took the picture).

The Docklands

As I walked further east by the river, I came to the Docklands, which is the area of Dublin on the east side of the River Liffey (I think on the north side of the river, at least that was the side I was on).

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Since I'm looking up bridges, this one is the Talbot Memorial Bridge, with the white arching support of the Becket bridge visible behind it. I then walked by the Custom House. The top of the building (on the left side) had cool stonework on it, a lion and a unicorn flanking a harp (doesn't look like it has 12 strings), with a crown on top. The third shot is of the whole Custom House building, a "neoclassical 18th century building" that now houses some goverment offices. Originaly, it was there to collect custom duties, hence the name. The building was burned down in 1921 during the Irish War of Independence and then restored later.

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And a more detailed picture of the front of the Custom House, made from stiching together two pictures.

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Two pictures of the Millenium Bridge, and then one of the Becket Bridge.

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I walked past a drawbridge, parallel to the river, and took a few shots and stitched them together. It was an interesting looking mechanism.

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An old sailing ship was tied up at the dock. I assume it gave tours or something. I took a few pictures of it, as the sun was setting behind it.

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The Samuel Becket Bridge is a cool, Irish Harp themed bridge. The Convention Centre is a cool, glassy building that looks sort of like some large key of beer tipping over. The third picture is looking south into the inlet. The stadium is visible beyond the river.

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I took a picture of a single seagull on one of the ropes tying a boat to the dock, and another picture of a lot of birds on a different part of that rope, closer to the boat. I'm not sure if the one bird is the odd one out, or that's first class and the rest are together in coach.

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There was a big Ferris Wheel in Dublin, reminiscent of the London Eye. I thought it was a permanent fixture, but it turns out it opened in July 2010, closed and was dismanted in November 2011, not long after I was there. Every so often there would be a black gondola among the white ones, that would be labeled "VIP". They're all the same size and they're all going the same place (that is, around and around) so I don't really see the point of it.

Henry Street at Night

I went back through the touristy area on Henry Street and took a few pictures at night.

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I passed by a "men at work" type of sign (OK, it's "end construction" but it's the same idea). In the U.S., the figures seem to be leaning on their shovels or possibly urinating. In Ireland, they are working!

There were various food carts in the Henry street market area. And people were out and about, and in the third shot, the 3/4 moon is visible in the sky (note that the week before it was a sliver at 37,000').

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The area was quite lively, lots of people around doing their post-Halloween shopping. I imagine the decorations are Christmas-y. It doesn't appear as through there is any November holiday in Ireland (obviously not the U.S. Thanksgiving), so Christmas is probably the next big shopping holiday. There was a place called "The Church Restaurant". It looked interesting, though I didn't eat there (I was playing the game of "how close can I get to spending all my money (in euros) while leaving me with enough to get a taxi to teh airport).

The Trip Home (or Traffic at Flight Level 350)

On Wednesday morning, early, I got a cab to the airport (spending all of the rest of my Irish money/change, hurray!). Interestingly, for flights to the U.S., you go through U.S. customs before the flight, in a separate area of the airport. Arriving in the U.S. was like arriving on a domestic flight. Walk out of the jetway and into the terminal. I took a few pictures on the trip back.

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Just my comment on how cryptic sign symbols are. Obviously, the restrooms are straight ahead. However, one sign indicates that with an arrow pointing down and right behind it is the same thing with an arrow pointing up. Perhaps there's some subtlety I'm missing. It just confuses me.

Then a few pictures of taxiing getting ready to take off.

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Just after we broke ground, a vapor (or maybe vapour, since it was still Europe) stream appeared over the wing. I've seen that before, but never got a picture of it. Fun. It was a cloudly, gray day, so there wasn't much to see pretty soon after that.

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When we were back in the U.S., probably between Boston and New York, I started to spot some other planes nearby, by their trails. The first picture there are two planes off our wing. If you go to the "huge" version of the picture, it's pretty easy to identify the closer plane as a British Air 747. The second picture has the second plane and the leading edge of the wing. The third picture is a close-up of the BA 747.

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The first picture shows the trail from the closer plane, and the other plane and its trail in the distance. Oh yeah, looking down, I saw a third plane near us. I can't quite make out its tail markings, even at full resolution, nor can I identify the plane beyond a twin engine jet. I'm sure those skilled in such areas probably could. And another picture of the third plane and the wing.

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Two pictures of one of the planes flying over some snow-capped mountains. Not sure exactly where. The third picture, I think, is of the downtown Boston skyline from the water.

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Another picture of Bostom (maybe) and then two of Philadelphia as we were getting close to the airport.

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Flying over the Delaware River just before landing in Philadelphia and then touchign down on Runway 27-Right.

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We passed a taxiway as we slowed down (with the spoilers deployed). I was back in the United States and thus ends the Great Ireland Voyage.

This page last modified Dec 25, 2011.
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