Dublin Day 2

Woke up relatively early and lazed about the hotel for a bit.  Once we headed out we walked along the river into town and headed for the Bakehouse for brunch. I've been there a couple of times with Gem but K has never been. K got the potato farls topped with fried eggs and bacon and I got what they call beans on toast on the menu but is actually so much more. The food arrived and mine is 2 thick slices of cheese and toast topped with a mix of fried red onions, mushrooms and spring onions with a separate pot of beans and wee thing of home made salsa. I gave K my mushrooms and she slipped me a rasher of bacon and then we devoured it - delicious! I also had a jam jar of fresh apple juice and K had some proper loose-leaf Irish tea.

After our delicious brunch we went a walk over the river into Temple Bar and strolled along enjoying it while it was quiet for once. Our first stop was my favourite shop in Dublin, Gutters book shop. It is named after the Oscar Wilde quote "we're all in the gutters but some of us are looking up at the stars" - this was my class quote for the 6th year yearbook fact fans.

Afterwards we walked over to Dublin Castle and had a stroll in the delightful gardens.  There are pig statues all over Dublin just now, all differently decorated for charity and we saw a few of them in the gardens too.

We walked about a few more shops including the lovely shopping centre Powercourt but our next stop of note was the pop up tayto shop. It is basically like the irn bru shop with all the tayto merch you could imagine and the added bonus of crisp sandwiches. We both got salt and vinegar, the were €2 a sandwich and €1 of that goes to charity.

We took our sandwiches down to St Stephens Green for an al fresco lunch. The Green is lovely,  we had a wee stroll about enjoying the many statues including a Henry Moore statue of Yeats.

We went to a pub called Pmacs that yelp told me about for a while after that, it was ace, the type of place I could imagine all my friends hanging out in of a Sunday. Lots of wee knooks,  excellent beers and loads of games.

Before dinner we went our usual trip to Hard Rock for John and Lorna but they didn't have John's shot glass this time.  For dinner we went to Smokin' Bones which is a bbq joint recommend by yelp. It was good but not wonderful. I had pulled pork with mac cheese and chips and k had brisket with chips and slaw.

We went a final potter about and then hopped on the bus to the airport.   Everything went smoothly and we're now in a taxi home from the airport.

Until our next adventure...