Ireland Day 1 - Dublin Castle

After the Guinness Storehouse we grabbed a cab over to Dublin Castle in time to catch the last tour of the day. One of the things I really loved about doing this vacation as an indepedent tour was that we were running on our own schedule. Sometimes that was stressful, because we had to decide every stop, but at times like these, where we were still out sightseeing when the light was turning lovely made it worth it.

I thought the face coming out of the ceiling was kind of creepy.

Louis wasn't Irish but they still had a bust of him.

this was out trou guide giving us the overview of one of the rooms.

This is the Throne room, the tour guide told us how when the current Queen was in Ireland for a visit they never let her in this room, in case she wanted to sit down and try to crown herself Queen of Ireland.

This is one of the rooms they use regularly for state occasions, it had gorgeous murals on the ceilings.

The tour ended by taking us down into one of the old medieval towers and foundations. The big curved wall was the outer wall of the tower on one of the four corners of the castle. The pile of rocks at the bottom of the pit is apparently the remains of the original wall of the viking settlement.

This is the one tower that remains standing.
The castle was our last real stop of the day. We grabbed tea (or hot chocolate in my case) at a quaint tea shop called Queen of Tarts across from the castle and then headed back to the hotel. The jet lag was really catching up to me at this point. We made it back out for a meal of mediocre Indian food and another Guiness for Mike at a pub before we crashed.