Days 9 & 11: Dublin & Manchester

Day 9: Dublin
Today we spent the day wandering around Dublin, exploring the city. We went to a couple of museums. The museum of natural history turned out to be a building full of taxidermied animals. The most bizarre thing we saw was some sort of demonstration or rally that involved lots and lots of taxis driving down one of the main streets with large amounts of balloons tied to them and people with special needs riding in the taxis. Not sure what it was about but I'd be interested to find out.  We also visited some parks and did some people watching. We walked around the Trinity College campus which houses the Book of Kells. We didn't actually go see the Book of Kells because Todd had already seen it and I had never heard of it before today. After wandering around the Temple Bar area, we went to a pub and watched the Irish national football team play Andorra. Walking home we realized that the stadium was less than half a mile from our hotel. Had we realized this sooner we may have attempted to get tickets to the game.

History of Natural History
Tasmanian Wolf

Trinity College

Molly Malone

Christ Church Cathedral

Day 10: Travel

On the ferry, Hollyhead in the background.

Waiting for the train at Chester station.

Day 11: Manchester

After saying good-bye to Ireland yesterday, we borded the ferry and headed to Holyhead. After a couple of trains we arrived in Manchester and settled in. We spent today wandering around Manchester. I really like the feel of this city. The day included museums, parks, people watching and Chinatown. We are staying in a beautiful building in a cute little apartment. We were very excited to see that it had a washer/dryer. Little did we know it takes about three hours to do a tiny load. We put the last load in before going to bed and woke up at 2:00 am to what sounded like someone mowing the yard. Sorry neighbors...

Manchester City Hall

Picadilly Square