Dublin - Monday 25th May 2009

This was my last day in Dublin and my flight wasn’t until later in the afternoon, so I decided to make the most of my day. I went on the Malahide Castle and North Coast bus tour (I got a discount as it was run by the same company that I did the Dublin Bus Tour with). The first short stop was along the roadside where the Marino Casino was – it is not a casino as we know then today, it was a building built for the purpose of housing guests and having parties. The building was designed to deceive the eye – it looks a lot smaller than it actually is. The building contains about 16 rooms, plus kitchens, bathrooms, dining rooms etc. The window at the front of the building actually goes across two stories, and the urns on the rooftop are actually chimneys. Next stop was the beautiful, quaint Malahide Castle. The castle is set on a large portion of land that has a large manicured lawn along the entrance to the building. Inside the castle, were took a tour through the lovely rooms with its extravagant furnishings and paintings. Unfortunately though, the last descendant in the family just passed away earlier in the year, so the family line has come to an end. A fair few years ago, Rose, the last descendant moved to live with other family members in Tasmania and sold the house and all its contents, as she could not afford to tend to the house and pay the fees of the land.
After the castle we took the bus along the majestic coastline towards Howth. Across the water you could see Irelands Eye – a small island just off the shore. The day had turned overcast and a mist had settled across the hill tops – it was very pretty. We stopped at the port of Howth, and were able to get out and go for a wander along the dockside. While I was taking a photo of some of the fishing boats, I spotted a few seals that were floating around near the boats. There were about 5 of them in total – they kept moving from boat to boat in the hope of a fish being strewn into the water. There were also a lot of seagulls that were flying above the fishing boats and diving down to eat any of the fishy scraps that may still be on the decks of the boats.
We then went up the hills in hope of seeing the normally breathtaking view of the coastline. Unfortunately the fog was so thick up there we only got a few glimpses of the coastline below – I did find the fog over the water and hills very pretty though, so I was still happy.
After the bus tour, I still had a little bit of time to visit the National Library of Ireland and have a look through the William Butler Yeats exhibition before collecting my bag and heading off to the airport and back to the UK.