And now..back to my 4th day - Dublin

I went on a fantastic free walking tour with Sandeman tours. They do it strictly for tips. We walked for over 3 hours and Connor, a Senior at Trinity University who was born and raised in Dublin, told us all kinds of interesting facts and stories (notice anything odd about this statue of Justice?). The offer these free walking tours in a dozen cities in Europe and we hope to catch them in Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Edinburgh, London, Munich, Paris and Prague.

After the tour, there wasn't much time left to actually go into anything, so I used the free bus pass for one of those hop-on, hop-off buses that RailTours had given me to see the further reaches of the city that had been too far to walk to. As it got dark, I took a walk along the river and the Temple Bar area (which is what most people come to Dublin for - the drinking).

One nice surprise was the smoking was not allowed in public places including hotels and bars. In a way though, this was a negative for me because I didn't go into any of the bars - I just walked around outside and all the smokers were relegated to standing outside and smoking!

I am off to meet Ian and Sean at the airport but will leave you with one more picture - At left is the oddly painted royal quarters of Dublin Castle which give it an appearance of being fake.