Day 10: Dublin, Guinness, Glendalough, and Irish Cabaret!

Here’s the ninth post sharing our adventures in the British Isles and Ireland from September 29 to October 17, 2025, for genealogy, business, and sightseeing. Hope you enjoy it!

In Dublin, we stayed at the Clayton Hotel Ballsbridge, a four-star hotel located in a posh suburb of Dublin, an area where “ladies lunch.” I’d love to be a lady who lunches! 

The Clayton Hotel is housed in the restored 19th-century Masonic Female Orphan School of Ireland for the daughters of distressed Freemasons. It sits next door to the British Embassy and is near the Laya Arena (multipurpose) and Aviva Stadium (rugby and football). There is also an actual Ball’s Bridge nearby.

Adele was our Dublin guide. She narrated an informative tour around the city on our coach. Here are some of the highlights of what she shared with us:

• Dublin was founded by the Norwegian Vikings, and the city is more than a thousand years old. It was known as the second city of the British Isles during the Georgian period.
• The Shannon (not in Dublin, but Limerick) is the longest river in the British Isles.
• Museums and galleries are free in Ireland.
• The five-star Merrion Hotel is rumored to be where the Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington, was born. Wellesley was a highly celebrated commander and statesman.
• There are no high-rises in Dublin.
• The streetlights have shamrocks on them.
• Higher education is free in Ireland.
• The Guinness family lived in Ivy House. The family set up the Irish Georgian Society in the 1960s. The society preserves and protects Dublin architecture.
• The Guinness family saved St. Patrick’s Cathedral from destruction and then restored it. 
• The Guiness family provides housing for the poor and does much philanthropic work.

• Nobel Prize winners for literature from Dublin include: William Butler Yeats (“The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” my second-favorite poem); George Bernard Shaw (playwright); Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot); and Seamus Heaney (a poet during The Troubles).
• James Joyce was from Dublin. He wrote Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Finnegans Wake.
• Oscar Wilde, who wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest lived in Dublin.
• Dublin was the first place that George Frideric Handel’s Messiah was performed, where he wrote it.
• Dublin has relics of St. Valentine at the Whitefriar Street Church, given by the pope to the city. On St. Valentine’s Day, people who have trouble with their love lives come to the church and write their troubles in a book, for St. Valentine to sort out. They also light a candle. It is said that the priest sits down at the end of the evening and reads all the interesting stories.
• Grafton Street has the best shopping in Dublin.
• The Temple Bar area is a cobblestoned cultural quarter on River Liffey and has wall-to-wall pubs. Tourists and pickpockets are rampant there.
• O’Connell Street is the home of the 1916 uprising, which called for Irish independence. It was badly planned, and the British put it down right away. Approximately 500 people died in the uprising, but made people think seriously about independence. In December 1921 Ireland gained its independence from England, but six counties remained part of the UK. That area is now known as Northern Ireland. 
• Ireland was a neutral country in World War II, so it wasn’t bombed, but it did experience a lot of shelling in the 1916 uprising.

• Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847) was a Catholic leader known as “The Liberator.” He won the right to vote for Catholics in the 1800s.
• Rotunda Maternity Hospital was founded in 1757 and was the first of its kind. It is still in operation and offers free Guinness to mothers after they give birth.
• Trinity College houses the Book of Kells, in which the four gospels were copied in 800 AD.

Guinness!

We had a morning tour of Guinness, and a free pint was included. That was a lot of Guiness and a lot at ten in the morning! Adele had given us the tip to head straight upstairs for the free sample, rather than looking around first. We were the first ones to reach the bar. 

I had never tried Guinness and never want to again. I took about four sips, and Jim drank about half of his. He’s not a fan either. If they had given us some pretzels, I could have made it further. Well, if you’re like me and find Guinness too bitter, you can order a Guinness and Black, which adds blackcurrent liquid. 

Just after we walked out of Guiness, a fire alarm sounded, and everyone was ushered out. Great timing on our part! Also, by the time we left, the line to enter the building was crazy. I suppose many of those were waiting to re-enter after the fire alarm.

Pilgrimage to Glendalough

After the tour of Dublin and Guinness, some of us headed off on the N11 for an optional tour of the ancient monastic site of Glendalough (pronounced Glen-dah-lock).

Glendalough sits in a glacial valley in Wicklow Mountains National Park. The name comes from the Irish Gleann Da Loch, meaning “valley of two lakes.” It was founded by St. Kevin, an Irish monk and hermit.

Born into the royal line of Leinster, Kevin was ordained as a priest and eventually became a hermit. He wanted to live alone with his God, so he founded Glendalough in the sixth century. Soon, people found out and joined him. It grew into a monastic city and was one of Ireland’s most-important religious and educational centers. English forces destroyed much of it in the 1300s, but many ruins remain. It is a place of peace and is said to have healing powers.

After a nice ride back to Dublin and a quick stop in the hotel, we hopped in the bus again for Taylors Three Rock Irish Night and Cabaret. It looks like a giant barn, and it apparently has the largest thatched roof in Europe. We sat in a large dining hall at long tables and watched the show. It was so fun!

After a long day, full of good food and drink, we nearly fell asleep on the bus as we motored back through the country roads to the hotel. Tomorrow, Kilkenny and Waterford!