Wednesday, May 7th, 2025
Today had a leisurely start, waking up feeling fairly well rested, rejuvenated, and pretty good considering the time change. On the agenda for today, the Dublin Walking Tour at 2:00 PM.
Although we woke up at 8:00 AM, we didn’t actually get ready for the day until around 9:00/9:30 AM. But then we got ready and made our way to our first destination for the day, Tesco. Sav was very excited to try it out, as she has heard great things about it from TikTok. At Tesco, we purchased Raspberry Creams and Jammie Dodgers, two cookie treats with fruit-flavored insides (one more creamy, the other more jam-like; as the names would suggest). Both were very yummy.
The walking tour was set for 2:00, which meant we were expected at the Centre at 1:45 PM. Today, we had to find our own way, so we set off. We found a path that took us straight through St. Stephen’s Green, which was our first experience at this prominent Dublin park.
Our tour began with an introduction from Dara (please forgive me if that is not the spelling of his name, we only got verbal introductions), a nice person and a very knowledgeable tour guide. Dara began the tour by giving a “10,000 year history in 10 minutes” that covered… well exactly that. He gave immense amounts of detail about so many aspects of the city and Irish history I was truly amazed by his ability to remark on it all.
Some pieces of information that stood out to me include:
- Female revolutionary leaders like Constance Markievicz (who fought in St. Stephen’s Green and was the first woman elected to the Dail in 1918).
- Gunfire during the Easter Rising in St. Stephen’s Green was halted every day to count the ducks and make sure that they weren’t getting killed in the crossfire.
- The rumor that German U-Boats were surfacing in the St. Stephen’s Green lake (literally impossible and therefore hilarious).
Something I found especially intriguing was how Ireland reached an agreement with the British government with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, which was exactly 200 years after the death of the prominent figurehead for Irish independence, Theobald Wolftone, who died in 1798. This small bit of information stood out to me because although it may have been a coincidence, it still portrayed the vast amount of time that it took for Ireland to actually achieve independence from the United Kingdom.
The tour took us all around Dublin, walking through St. Stephen’s Green park, Grafton Street, Christ Church, and Dublin Castle. When the tour ended, we went our separate ways, some of us heading back towards Grafton Street to eat. Myself, and a few other students, got dinner at a pub called O’Donoghues. I ordered a beef bacon burger, which was decent, it had Irish bacon on it. But my favorite part of that meal was just getting a chance to hang out, unwind, and chat with my fellow classmates. Additionally, after dinner, we saw the Molly Malone statue, which was not only super cool to see such a prominent statue, but also transcending because of her notoriety as a symbol of Irish heritage and culture.
After a long afternoon of walking around and site-seeing, we all turned in for the night. But now that we have a bit more background on where we are, it’ll be easier to not only get around, but understand Dublin and its history.
