Dublin, Ireland

Thursday July 24, 2025

Today we docked in Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Dun Leary) which is the gateway to Dublin.

This was our first tender port which means the port is not deep enough for the big ships to dock so we anchor out in the water. This slows down getting off the ship considerably because they tender you back and forth to the shore in the lifeboats. They had four lifeboats going this morning, we estimated about 130 people per boat (and about 3500 passengers on the ship), and it took 30 minutes each way. So you can do the math and figure out yourself that there was a lot of waiting around this morning. 

Once we got through the tendering we were able to quickly walk to to the train station (about a 5 minute walk), buy a return ticket for the day (only about 5 Euros) and get on a train to Dublin.

We planned to go right into central Dublin to the Pearse station, which took about 20 minutes so that we could get right off the train at Trinity College. Something strange happened at our second last stop. The train just stopped and sat with the doors open. Then they made an announcement that sounded like the Charlie Brown teacher. No one really knew what was going on, so people started getting off the train because the next stop sign on the train said “this is the last stop”. After about 5 minutes on the platform waiting to see what was next a lady walked by and told everyone to get back on the train… so we did. Then it carried on and we were able to get off the train at the next stop, Pearse. I have no idea what the delay was about, but was grateful we actually ended up where we wanted to be!

On our last visit to Dublin (I think in 2019), my very favourite thing was the Trinity College Library, so we wanted to see it again. Our plans were foiled. Don’t make the same mistake we made. You need to book your time to go in, ahead of time. We were there at about 10:00 in the morning (we couldn’t have gotten there any earlier with the tendering and train situation) and the next available time to go in was 4:00. This was too late because we also had to train and tender back to the ship. So I didn’t get to see the library this time. I wasn’t too sad (just a little bit sad) because the library is currently under renovation so they only have three rows of shelves filled right now. Instead, I can just remember the splendour of how it looked in 2019 when we visited. If I can find a photo I’ll insert it here so you know!

This is a photo from our visit in 2019.

We walked down Grafton street which is the fancy shopping street in Dublin and only bought a book! Good job Steve and Lisa!

Next we headed to the donut shop that we also were quite fond of when we visited last time. We found it pretty easily and headed in to see what we could find. 

Side note: I keep seeing references to Dubai chocolate, which I haven't heard of before (probably because I'm not on TikTok... I had to look up how to spell it!). Turns out it is pistachio paste, shredded filo dough and tahini encased in chocolate. A true demonstration of how social media is driving economic trends. The words Dubai chocolate are everywhere!

We did find 3 delicious donuts (although they didn’t have the ones with the Irish Cream creme in the middle this time… which was also a bit sad!) and took them across the street to St. Stephen’s Green to eat them in the park. They were quite yummy, but not as delicious as we remember them. Do you think it’s possible that we’d built them up so much in our head that they just couldn’t live up to the memory? Anyway, we ate them and enjoyed them. 😀

St. Stephen’s Green is a lovely park in downtown Dublin which I would say is kind of like Beacon Hill Park where we live, but not as good? But still good! It’s hard to live up to the parks and gardens in Victoria, Canada!

Since we didn’t visit Trinity College Library we had a bit of extra time so decided to head to one of my back up places on my list (Yes, I had a list of places to go that included back up places if I had extra time!)

We set our map to go to Dublin Castle, but somehow ended up at our alternate choice of Christ Church Cathedral. I’m not really sure how that happened, but when we found out you could go into the crypt of the cathedral that sealed the deal for us!

We enjoyed visiting the cathedral and even more so the crypt beneath it. Steve took approximately 10 billion photos and we both thoroughly enjoyed it!

Christ Church Cathedral is a medieval Anglican church which was founded in the early 11th century by a Viking king. It has been rebuilt and expanded many times since then with the most recent rebuild being in the 19th century.

The crypt is the largest cathedral crypt in Britain or Ireland and was originally built in1172 - 1173. It was renovated in the early 2000s to allow for visitors.

Next we decided that we had to visit an Irish Pub while we were in Ireland. It is our mission to find an Irish Pub everywhere we go… although in Ireland they just call it a pub. 😉 We found a lovely pub with interesting ambience (some photographic evidence below) and they even brought us our cokes in “soulmates” bottles. This was a great end to our time in Ireland. 

We headed back to the train station and caught our train back and walked right on to the tender boat. 

On the train!

On the tender boat. If you ever wondered what it looks like inside a cruise ship lifeboat... this is it!

This turns out to be lucky as we later found out there was some sort of medical emergency that slowed down the tenders later in the afternoon and the lines were more than two hours long. The boat ended up leaving late so they were able to get all the people tendered back to the ship. We were oblivious to this and enjoyed the eating, relaxing and being entertained part of our cruise!