The good news is I have seen quite a few of the nice parts of Dublin. Phoenix Park is fantastic. It is a huge city park with deer rocking around in it, sports pitches, and it is the home of Dublin Zoo. The weather was nice and the picnic was super. Visiting the park highlighted some real differences between London and Dublin. Like I say, it was a nice day. On a nice London day, any spare bit of grass is rammed full of garden-less London types drinking Pimms and making merry. In Phoenix park it was empty....there was no-one else within 400 meters of us. There was also 6 empty football pitches and it was early on a Sunday afternoon! This is all without mentioning the 100ft Papal Cross dominating one side of the park.
There is also a huge obelisk in honour of the Duke of Wellington who was born in Dublin. On each side of the base there are brass plaques denoting important battles cast in bronze form cannons captures at Waterloo. Running up the obelisk itself are all his great victories which I, of course, recognised from my extensive reading of Sharpe.
Buoyed by this sense of shared history I then headed to the National Museum of Ireland.. If you are British I suggest you give it a miss. It should be renamed the Museum of Inciting Hatred of the British (particularly the English). I came out hating the ruddy murderous Brits as much anyone else....Well not quite. After reading how much better the world would have been if the Spanish Armada had won or if Napoleon had crushed the English , I got in a bad mood and then went home.
Last night went for a lovely walk on Dun Laoghaire harbour wall..beautiful
