After breakfast in the hotel we took a bus out to Phoenix Park which is located north of the river, 3 km west of the city centre. It’s the largest enclosed park in Europe and was 350 years old in 2012.
We enjoyed a walk along the main avenues and left the park by a different exit in order to visit Collins Barracks nearby.
This building was a former army barracks and since 1977 the building has been home to the National Museum of Ireland, Decorative Arts and History. The museum was extremely interesting and is definitely worth a visit if time allows.
It was now approaching lunchtime so we headed to Grafton Street, the home of Dublin’s upmarket shopping and full of life with shoppers, street entertainers and tourists.
We looked around Brown Thomas, the exclusive department store and then enjoyed lunch on the outer terrace of a rooftop restaurant along the street. The lunch was delicious and we enjoyed the added bonus of seeing some fluffy seagull chicks that were nesting by the balcony.
Contnuing to the end of Grafton Street we came to St Stephen’s Green, a Victorian city centre park with an ornamental lake and waterfall. As it was such a warm, sunny day the park was filled with office workers and families enjoying the Irish sunshine so we sat on a park bench and soaked up some sun a little while too.
Before returning to the Charles Stewart hotel to collect our luggage we took a look in Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre, a glass roofed emporium containing 94 stores.
It was then back to the airport for our evening flight back to Edinburgh. To summarise, we had very much enjoyed our three days in Dublin, a city I could happily return to at any time.
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