Dublin's North Bank

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I had only one goal today: to see Phoenix Park and the Dublin Zoo. It took me the whole day to get there (I kept doing sightseeing en route), and I wasn't ready to go to the zoo until half an hour before closing time. So the zoo will wait for another day.

I headed north on O'Connell Street, which is currently dominated by Barry Flanagan's sculptures of hares. This one is called "Acrobats" and strikes me as somewhat touching, even tender.
This one just reminds me of Donnie Darko.
Outside of the spillover collection of the National Museum (a former barracks built in 1700, which now houses folk/decorative arts and other miscellaneous items), there is a lovely garden where I saw a bee and a butterfly nestled among the purple flowers. Here is the bee:

In the museum courtyard, they displayed one of the first postboxes in Ireland of this particuular type (from the 1800s):
The highlight of the trek, without question, was an impromptu (on my part) tour of Jameson's Old Distillery. (From Jameson's point of view, the tour was simply one of 10 or 15 tours scheduled throughout the day.) The guide was wryly funny about the fact that the tour is basically an advertisement for Jameson's whiskey. There was a highly entertaining whiskey tasting at the end of the tour. All four tasters chose Irish whiskey above scotch and American whiskey -- although the decks were stacked because they were comparing Irish whiskey with the best-selling (rather than the best) scotch and American whiskey. Three of the four liked Jameson's best. I enjoyed my cocktail of cranberry juice and Jameson's, and it left me with a happy glow throughout the afternoon.

Since a biking trip was my excuse for going to Ireland, I liked seeing these old bikes in the distillery. However, I didn't see any explanation of their connection with the distillery. (In any event, it turned out we had newer and more comfy bikes for our trip.)
When I reached Phoenix Park, I found a few surprises – an obelisk, a large grassy field dotted with yellow and white flowers, and a wild deer herd, which appeared surreal in the soccer field (a comment on Ireland’s prospects for the World Cup?).



In Phoenix Park, a bird's interactions with a snack wrapper kept me entertained. It was the same old story: bird meets wrapper, bird chases wrapper, bird loses wrapper.


Everyone raves about the Liffey Bridge, but I preferred the Millenium Bridge:

In the evening, I saw a play called Dandelions, which was well done if not as filled with groundbreaking insights as its author may (or may not) have hoped.

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