Dublin day 2: cow market, temple bar, metal aliens and old photos

So today was our first real day in Ireland, yesterday was our first actual day but we were both so bloody tired from the 3am start that it doesn't really count. We started they day with brekky at the backers that we are staying at, they include a basic brekky with the price of the bed that consists of toast, cereal, tea and coffee but for 1 Euro more you can upgrade to a full "Irish" breakfast so I went for the upgrade while Em stuck with the basics. I really enjoyed my brekky but I can't exactly work out the difference between this breakfast and a regular "English" breakfast. It consisted of bacon, eggs, sausages, hash brown and beans pretty much the same as an English brekky but i guess it just gets it's name from the place or country you eat it, I guess that means all the times I have been in Aussie and ordered an English brekky I have actually been eating an Australian brekky?
Enough about breakfast now, this by the way is why I try to encourage Em to write these things as I spend far too much time on rants about silly things like the naming of the morning meal and far to little time on things that may be of interest to anybody reading the blog :)

After the already to well described breakfast we head out to see the city, we didn't have high hopes I must say as our impression of it from yesterdays outing was far from positive, the city gave off a drab, run down vibe and didn't seem to have much worth looking at. I am putting that down to a combination of exhaustion and lack of direction as we didn't have a map, or plan of where to go yesterday so we just wandered. Today however we had a plan. Em had seen in our trusty Lonely Planet book on Dublin that there was a market in Cow lane in the Temple Bar area that she wanted to see so that was our destination, not hard or too far to get there and it allowed as to get a good feel for the city as we made our way through it. We stopped and had a look at a book market in the main drag of Temple Bar on the way and then found the market with little trouble, a much better experience than trying to find Portabello market in Notting Hill, London that was a march and a half and by the time we got there it was closing up shop. The Cow lane market was very small though and the prices where out of our range but the stuff was cool, lots of really artsy, hip jewlery, crafts and clothes but my fav was a store that had figures from movies made out of scrap metal, they were fantastic and I nearly bought a star wars one but decided that it was both too expensive and too heavy to send home. There was a massive "alien" one that we got a pic of that I shall insert below: (see below)

Metal Alien

After the market we headed back into the Temple Bar area and went into the pub called, wait for it.... Temple Bar and had a pint, I wasn't feeling up to a pint of the black stuff as it was a tad early so I instead had some lager. It is a cool pub with live music from 12pm so we just chilled in the dark corner that was about the only spot not already taken up by tourists doing exactly the same thing as us. I think this is a good time to bring up my biggest issue with Dublin, the bloody price of everything! its fricking ridiculous, basically everything costs in Euros what it would normally cost in AU back home so a pint is 6EU so that's about $12, a hoody is about 60EU (i was cold so was eyeing off jumpers and hoodys at some of the shops we went into) a pie at a bar is about 9EU and a sanga is about 5EU so basically it's double the cost. This puts a dampener on the plan of going out for several drinks tonight and enjoying some of Dublin's night-life as I just don't think we can afford it, might go out for one drink and nurse it while soaking up some free music somewhere and then come back to the backers nice and early like nannas for a nap. So anyway back to Temple bar (another tangent, and I just realised that I put far too much stuff in brackets!) I was eyeing of the idea of having Guinness and oysters but as I mentioned before it was too early for my "Pale Ale" bread constitution to handle the black necter so we headed back out into the on again - off again rain and now you see me / now you don't sunshine to do some more exploring.

Temple Bar

Em enjoying a bevvie or two at the Temple Bar

We walked around for ages dodging the saturday crowds doing a bit of a loop through the main centre of the city, looked at a couple of shops, bought a travel organiser thing to keep our passports, vouchers and other important bits and bob together and ended up back in the temple bar area at the food market they have there on Saturday. It's a bit like a mini "taste of Tasmania" or "taste of Ireland" I guess, lots of stalls selling stuff like cheese, bread including my now favourite soda bread, crepes and other stuff. After a couple of laps we made up our minds on what lunch would consist of and lined up. That on again off again rain I was talking about decided to change to "on a lot" rain just as we got our grub but it wasn't too bad, there was some shelter provided by the stalls. After lunch we headed back to the backers and have been sitting in the kitchen area nerding it up on the computer!

Tomorrow we are heading to the home of the best "meal in a glass" available, Guinness so stay tuned for lots of photos of black stuff I guess. :)

written by  Chris and Emily on May 23, 2009 from Dublin, Ireland
from the travel blog: Europe 2009
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