Dublin's Fair City!

Well, another wonderful trip to Dublin. We had the luck of the Irish, good weather, not a drop of rain. The Gresham hotel is still a grand old lady, friendly staff,a good breakfast, comfy beds. http://www.gresham-hotels.com/ . (A horrible view of the inner courtyard, pretty dire, but, as it turned out, a blessing in disguise. It meant that the room was very quiet, thank goodness, if we had been at the front of the hotel the traffic in O'Connell street would have kept us awake for sure.)

We had a very busy four days. Apart from the usual trips to the shops, lunch on the green at Trinity, coffee at Bewleys etc. we went to the Gaiety theatre to see a performance of The Rat Pack. http://www.gaietytheatre.ie/ . They were all brilliant, especially "Frank Sinatra", he looked like him, had the mannerisms, and sang like him, great! Some of the women in the audience, who were old enough to know better, were in ecstasy, practically throwing their knickers, (personally, we think it was the drink!) But we did enjoy the show, I recommend it if you get the chance to see it, do.

The next night we went on the Musical Pub Crawl, another excellent night out. Book it at the tourist information centre. The blokes running it were excellent musicians, and shared the history of Irish music with us, everyone was singing by the end of the night. (And, no, it wasn't the drink, (or maybe it was!))

The last night we saw a performance of Noel Coward's Private Lives at the Gate theatre. http://www.gate-theatre.ie/ . It's still funny, even after all this time. The male actors were great, the female ones hadn't got the upper class accent quite right, they were rather too high pitched and squeaky. But we still enjoyed it.

A trip to Powerscourt Gardens was well worth it. The gardens really are spectacular,

especially the rose garden. http://www.powerscourt.ie/ .

The most fun thing we did on this trip was a sightseeing trip around Dublin on an ex-army amphibious vehicle, ending up in the Liffey for a tour around the docks. It is run by Viking Splash Tours http://www.vikingsplash.ie/ . We were trained in the Viking Roar and then proceeded to terrify "Celts" (any group of people) around town during the tour, complete with Viking helmets atop Viking maiden's heads!

All in all, a fantastic trip again, don't you just love the Irish! And I'll still go again when I get the chance!