Today was our day to leave Belfast and travel to Dublin. After another good buffet breakfast in the hotel, we packed up and made the 5-minute walk to Belfast’s Lanyon Place train station. We got there nearly an hour before our train was due to leave, but people were already lining up for it. So we joined them in line.
At 10:15 they allowed us to board. There were no seat assignments, so we just went into one of the cars, put our luggage on the racks at the end of the car, and sat in a free row of seats, 2 on either side of the aisle. The train filled quickly and left on time at 10:35.
Right away, we could tell it would be a noisy ride: most of the passengers were talking excitedly, laughing, and drinking already. And a large number of them were wearing green and white striped jerseys. We figured out that they were on their way to a soccer match in Dublin. The Celtic F.C. was playing a friendly match vs. the Wolves F.C. at 2 p.m. For the entire 2.5 hour ride, it was very loud and boisterous.
The train went through some beautiful green countryside and several towns both in N. Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It stopped in 4 towns along the way to pick up more passengers, several of whom had to stand for the remaining trip. During the last hour, we had short views of the east coast shoreline. At about 1 p.m. the train glided into Dublin Connolly station and after all the soccer fans departed, we gathered our bags and got off.
We navigated our way to our hotel, walking along the River Liffey which runs through the middle of the city. Our rooms weren’t ready yet, since it was only about 1:30, and we were hungry. We left our luggage with the front desk and went into the hotel restaurant for lunch. It started to pour rain outside, so we were really happy with our decision to eat in the hotel. While we were eating our sandwiches and salads, we noticed two women at the next table with champagne and a fancy collection of dainty foods. We later saw that the restaurant offered a variety of fancy “tea” menus, as in high tea.
We rested in our rooms for a while and then about 7 p.m. we walked across a pedestrian bridge over the river to the Temple Bar area, full of restaurants and bars and tourists. We enjoyed dinner at an Italian place that Rick Steves’ guidebook recommended, Luigi Malone’s.
Lori's Travels 