Last (full) day in Ireland. To zero surprise, I was up before everyone. I thought about where to go for breakfast – we’d had a few other ideas on our mind – when a thought crept across… Premier Inns had a “deal” where kids ate for free.
My kids liked what they made. They’re effectively full-grown adults. I wasn’t gonna get my money back from this extra room horseshit, but I was gonna get every Euro’s value I could get.
Choo Choo was, once again, not up for an excursion. (We might have to stop travelling with her. This is a common theme.) Alex, Monkey, and I headed out to see a church.
There’s a couple of major ones in Dublin, both on the south side of the Liffey: Christ Church Cathedral, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Alex hadn’t a desire to see both, but … well, you know me and cathedrals. I had to see them both.
Christ Church was undergoing renovations. Nothing overly serious – windows needed repairing (and some stained glass was being fixed), along with some roof leakage. Hey, the place has gone through a lot in its 1,000-ish year history, not to mention several rebuilds. And though we love the Victorians, they were competing with one another.
There’s three features of Christ Church I love (seriously, love). The first is the crypt. It’s a museum now, but the construction is late 12th century. The second is the nave’s floor, which is tiled using a technique where the pattern is created using clay, not paint, which allows the tiles to wear and not loose the design. While most of the tiles are very high-quality Victorian reproductions, some are still the original 13th century creations. The last is, of course, the stained glass. A lot of it is typically gorgeous, but there’s one near the south entrance that has always captured my eye: a modern style that features the Virgin Mary with Baby Jesus, and Saint Luke recording their story. I don’t know what it is, but I just love that design.
After some debate, I convinced them that I also wanted to see St. Patrick’s. Monkey wasn’t too interested and Alex definitely didn’t want to see “another church I’ve already seen”, but there was a cache down there, so that won the debate.
It was a race: who would finish first – me in St. Patrick’s, or Alex finding her cache? I gave myself 20 minutes, which is far too short a time to truly give it justice, but you get what you get.
St. Patrick’s reminds me more of Westminster Abbey. It’s got special designations, too. While Christ Church – less than a half kilometre to the north – is the seat for the Archbishop, St. Patrick’s is the national cathedral for the whole of Ireland. That’s not to say that they didn’t have disagreements, including who’s was the more important. They even had to draw up a covenant to ensure they’d play nicely in the religious sandbox of medieval Dublin.
Like Christ Church, St. Patrick’s went through periods of neglect and outright abuse (thank you, Oliver Cromwell). Unlike Christ Church, however, St. Patrick’s was saved by beer – the Guinness Family provided the funds to repair and upgrade, including adding the park on the north side that exists today.
I had to race through. Not having the time (or, frankly, the lighting conditions) I had in 2006, I made a few selective stops to remind myself… ah, who am I kidding, it was a poor decision. I needed an hour in there and I wasn’t going to get it. I made a choice in desperation to get a few good shots of a cathedral, knowing my photography skills had improved, but without the time to properly scout and decide. Yes, I got pictures, but they weren’t great pictures.
Alex and Monkey were waiting for me when I got out. They had found something interesting in the park: a guy wearing an Apple-branded backpack with a bunch of electronics. It was an Apple Maps recorder. So we did what anyone in their right mind would do: we posed.
[Ed. Note: It took a few months, but we showed up. Look dead centre.]
We went back to the hotel to get Choo Choo. Lunch was needed and she hadn’t eaten much in the last couple of days. Instead of the usual pubs, we opted for Brewdog (which, bizarrely, isn’t my choice, though I certainly don’t disagree with it). It was another long walk down the edges of the Liffey, which although should be interesting – Dublin is a very old city – the eastern end is beset with all new construction (the old shipping infrastructure having been swept away) featuring large glass blocks that house Salesforce, PWC, Docusign, Accenture, Wix, and JP Morgan.
The Brewdog was surprisingly empty. But it had a good lunch, so who are we to complain? We took it leisurely. Although we had two more events to do, both weren’t until much later. Suffice to say, we lazed a bit for the bulk of the afternoon.
We got to EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum at 5pm for the “last call” visit, which is a discounted rate. The museum is built into an old shipping warehouse (the last remaining one on the shores of the Liffey) that had been derelict for decades. Today it’s effectively a mall above, museum below. It was created and funded by a former Coca Cola executive who was from Ireland.
It’s the story of the Irish emigration: how they left and where did they go. And, probably more importantly, how did they affect the rest of the world in the process? It’s a neat process, where you stamp your passport (which Alex loved) going through the various parts of the museum, learning the story. It’s far better presented than Guinness (which is more lore and legend), with enough interactivity to make it engaging. And because it’s the end of the day, we had the place almost to ourselves.
We had a quick dinner at a nearby Pizza Express, which is inexplicably known as Milano Pizza in Ireland. Then it was off for the next event…
The Ghostbus tour.
We’ve done ghost tours before, notably Edinburgh (BARKING!) and York (with a fairly inebriated guy who was still hilarious and awesome). This tour was on a double-decker bus that would take us around the city. And that’s about all we knew…
The bus was waiting for us on O’Connell Street just north of The Spire. It was purple, the upstairs windows all blacked out, the lower windows covered over. We had no idea what to expect.
At the proscribed time, we queued at the side to board. And then Ghostface exited the bus. We would later learn this was the driver, but at at the time, we had that moment of “did we choose the right thing?” with a fair bit of trepidation. Monkey, of course, decided to be “brave” and try to talk back at Ghostface, who only stared at her. My comment to her (which, yes, would absolutely come back to me): “Not so brave now, are ya?”
Then we were told to board … in our groups. Mostly couples, we were one of only two groups with more than two people. Why in groups? Because then you could hear the thumping and screaming from the passengers.
Once inside, we discovered that the inside of the bus had been heavily overhauled into a small maze. Down the entrance side was a narrow passageway that led to the back of the bus, which then curved around back towards the stairs. It was dark, the walls lined with creepy pictures, a diorama with a freaky-ass doll sat in the corner. We laughed nervously, realizing that there was a second bus person lurking in the shadows somewhere, who was doing the thumping and scaring. For all intents and purposes, we were in a haunted house on wheels.
Up the stairs, we took a seat more towards the back. The bus seats were standard, but the upstairs had also been decorated. The windows were covered with heavy velvet curtains, some seats at the front had been turned backwards to face inside, and next to the stairs was … well, it looked sort of like a small kitchen.
The screams and thumps continued until everyone had boarded. The bus shuddered to life, and we lurched away from the curb. Let me rephrase that: I assume we lurched away from the curb, because we couldn’t see out the windows. And it was disorienting. Although we could feel ourselves turning and stopping adn starting at stoplights and such, we had no clue where we were going.
Then the second person revealed herself, climbing up the stairs, her microphone announcing her arrival in as best a Vincent Price as she could manage. This was our performer. At first, I wasn’t sure if she was going to be entertaining, or if this was going to be someone trying to be scary and failing miserably. We quickly learned that she was going to be both: faux frightening and hilarious. I’m fairly certain she must be a stand-up comedian in her other life.
Thus began the ghost stories: tales of things that happened in Dublin, often by foul people. Only twice did we open the curtains – when so instructed – as we looped around the areas near centre of the city. We disembarked only twice, as well.
The first stop was a former church-turned-park, now known as St. Kevins Park. There, our host switched off her faux persona and went to proper tour guide, giving us the history of the land, why all the headstones had been lifted and moved to the outer walls, and the hollowed out interior of the former church. The major part of the story was about an Archbishop who had been tortured and martyred and thrown in a mass grave, then later interred in the church (before it was razed and left abandoned).
Then we were invited to come into the supposedly haunted church and and climb into a coffin that had conveniently been left behind.
Did I mention that this tour was a hoot?
The second place we stopped was St. Audoen’s Church. It wasn’t to see the church, however, it was to go down to stairwell that led down to a gate in the old Dublin Wall to be regaled of a story of how the prostitutes would leave their children for the church, and how their spirits would return to cry for them. Or so the stories go…
Remember Ghostface? He was the driver. Every time we got back on the bus, he was hiding somewhere to scare people. Did he get his revenge on Monkey? Nope. He got me, zapping me on the sides. Figures.
When the tour finally ended, Ghostface removed his mask to reveal his true self, and we had to shake his hand. It was a great tour, and he was half of it. He also put the mask back on briefly so Monkey could get a selfie.
We walked back to the hotel, tired. It was a great way to end our stay in Dublin. Tomorrow morning, we head home.
