If you missed the first three blogs on our stay in Dublin, find them here and here and here. Warning on that last one: I just added a new picture of Fiona hugging a lamb that my mother-in-law caught. It is ridiculously adorable.

When planning our trip to France, we took a bit of a departure from our previous methods and decided to make a pretty specific plan for what we’d try to do each day. (In the past, we’d mostly tended to just have a rough idea of what we wanted to do for the entire trip and then decide as we went). I really preferred this way of doing things because it generally meant we had things planned in a logical order, and we were never surprised by showing up at a museum and finding out it was, for example, closed on Mondays.

Because we’d figured this out in France, I’d had every intention of trying to get very specific about planning day-by-day in Dublin. Well, life kind of got in the way. With just three weeks between the two trips, I got bogged down by playing catch up from being gone, trying to get ready for Ireland and (most of all) trying to finish several writing assignments before we left. Our trip was by no means “unplanned” — for example, we’d had our tours and rental car booked, Guinness tickest purchased, van-taxi from the hotel sorted out, etc — but a couple of times not having thoroughly researched everything kind of bit us. For example: we tried to go to the Kilmainham Gaol on  Monday and had no idea that it was so popular that you absolutely need tickets ahead of time. Whoops!

Luckily, we managed to get into the Goal after all on Wednesday because there were still two times available when we went online to buy them. I’m relieved that we did because it ended up being one of my favorite parts of our trip.

So the Kilmainham Gaol was built in 1796, and it has an overall a long, sad history (unsurprisingly for a prison, I suppose) that includes people committing crimes on purpose to get sent to prison, and thus fed, during the Great Famine. However, it is best known because of its association with the Irish revolutionary movement. Many Irish revolutionaries were imprisoned and/or executed here, among them the leaders of the 1916 Easter RIsing.

Our guide for this visit was excellent. Throughout the tour, which lasted a little more than an hour, he explained the history of the jail and its political significance in an interesting, easy-to-follow way that didn’t drone too much. Fiona was asleep in my carrier during the majority of the tour, but Owen was pretty interested. I do recommend that you use a carrier for toddlers and younger — it is a tight space and some of the steps can be pretty steep.

Note: I didn’t get many decent pictures at the jail because it was mostly quite dark and I had a kid to haul around. 

Throughout the tour, our guide shared a lot of anecdotes about people who had been prisoners in the jail over the years. Among these was Joseph Plunkett, one of the leaders of the Easter Rising. Plunkett was allowed to marry his fiancee, Grace Gifford, just hours before he was executed by firing squad at the jail. Afterward, Grace went on to be promote Sinn Fein policies and became a political cartoonist. She was imprisoned herself in Kilmainham in 1923 during the Irish Civil War, during which times she drew inside her cell. This one, which you can see only through the peep hole in the door, is called the Kilmainham Madonna.

I’m not sure our guide would love this pic, but this is right outside Grace’s cell. 

This is the site of the executions of 14 people in May 1916 in the aftermath of the Easter Rising.

This marks the spot where General James Connolly, a man already mortally wounded in battle, was executed. Connolly had to be brought to the jail via ambulance because he was already nearly dead, then ultimately tied to a chair so that he could be shot after he lost consciousness. According to our guide, this was so outrageous to much of the Irish public that it actually took a movement that didn’t initially have a ton of support at the time and magnified it.

The tour ended here, but there was also a nice museum at the jail to peruse, which we did for a little while. Overall, I’d say Kilmainham Gaol is at the top of my list for Dublin recommendations, followed closely by the Guinness Storehouse.

The jail was actually the second stop of the day. We’d purchased a three-day pass for a hop-on,hop-off bus on Monday — incidentally I do not recommend this — and planned to use it to get to all our sights on this particular day. We decided to hit up the National Museum of Ireland – Archeology first, then hope to get to Dublin Castle after the jail since it was open later than the museum. Unfortunately, the hop-on, hop-off turned out to be a bit of a hassle and it took so long to get to the museum that we were left with not much time to explore. Luckily, it was free so we didn’t feel it was a waste to go in and have less than an hour there, and it did turn out to be really interesting.

They had a lot of Viking artifacts, including a lot of gold jewelry and some weapons, that Owen and Fiona were interested in, but for the grown ups the highlight was the “bog mummies.” These are bodies that were perserved in peat bogs in Ireland and other northern European countries, retaining their skin and organs even. They are a little creepy to look at — one even has fingernails! — but fascinating. The bodies on display died violently more than 4,000 years ago, and were possibly human sacrifices.

We had taken a taxi from the National Musuem to the jail so that we wouldn’t waste another hour on the bus, and after the jail we decided to try a taxi in order to make it to Dublin Castle before close as well. It worked out in the sense that we made it there with a little less than an hour, but there wasn’t room in the final tour of the day and we ultimately decided that the price tag wasn’t worth it for only having 45 mintues to wander by ourselves. Oh well!

We ended up wrapping up our final night in Dublin with a nice dinner and a little walking around. Overall, we really liked Dublin. Everyone was very friendly and the city was just kind of low-key and fun. Chris declared several times that he could live there, but part of that may have been that we got extremely lucky with the weather. We arrived during what several locals described as a “heat wave,” with temperatures rising to about 70 and, best of all, NO RAIN!

Next on the agenda: The Blog Where I Endlessly Scared Christopher While Driving On The Left Side of the Road. Stay tuned, folks.

The post IRELAND, Day Four: Last Day in Dublin first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post IRELAND, Day Four: Last Day in Dublin appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

In case you missed it, my account of our low-key first day in Dublin is here.

With Monday came the first of what we lovingly termed “the death march days.” It is a running joke (maybe a joke?) that I try to drag Chris and the kids to the very end of their tether every single place we go, and I guess Gail and David got to experience this as well. Whoops. I’m working on it, truly.

That said – Monday was great. We started with a tour of the Guinness Storehouse, with tickets we had purchased online in advance. I highly recommend this, by the way – it is an extremely popular attraction and you don’t want to miss your chance to go. When you are buying the tickets, your pricing depends on what time of day you want to go. Mornings are cheapest, and things get progressively more expensive as the day wears on. Naturally we chose 9:45 in the morning – and even though that sounds too early for beer, the storehouse takes ages to explore and by the time you get to the beer it’ll be a much more reasonable beer time. Like noon.

We loved Guinness. I had a mental picture of basically seeing bottles being filled or something, but it was more of an interactive museum. With beer! You walk in and immediately (next to the gift shop, ha) you see the original lease for 9,000 years signed by Arthur Guinness in 1759. It is right at the bottom of the seven-story “pint glass” in the middle of the museum; if filled, it would hold 14.2 million pints.

Guinness has since bought the land on which it sits, so no worries about the lease. 

Fiona by a pool of grains

The place included explanations of how the beer is made, company history, advertising from throughout the years and across the globe and – the best – beer tasting and instruction for making a perfect pour.

I will freely admit that we did not see a ton of other people with young children at the Storehouse, but we found it to be perfectly kid friendly. Possibly because everything was so visually interesting, the kids really seemed to enjoy themselves.

At the end of the tour you can take your (perfectly poured) Guinness and go up to the glass-walled Gravity Bar on the top floor for awesome views! It was really cool, but the only problem was that it was quite crowded so we didn’t linger long.

We also ate both snacks and lunch at Guinness and were really impressed. Everything we got was delicious and not outrageously priced like you’d expect at a major tourist attraction.

From there, we hit up Phoenix Park, the biggest enclosed park in Europe. It is absolutely enormous, about twice the size of Central Park in New York. Apparently there are 400-something tame deer living in there, though we didn’t run into any of them. Chris was interested in seeing a monument to the Duke of Wellington, the Irish-born general Arthur Wellesley who ultimately defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.

This was the tallest obelisk in the world until the construction of the Washington Monument, at least according to our hop-on, hop-off bus driver. 

We also try to stack activities that we want to do with stuff we are sure the kids will like – though honestly they often end up liking the activities we think they might be bored by after all. Example: we planned to follow our visit to Napoleon’s Tomb in Paris with a visit to the Luxembourg Gardens. This time, we decided to let the kids play at the playground in Phoenix Park for a while so they could recover from the Guinness Storehouse. Us too.

For such an enormous park, I was a little surprised that the playground wasn’t larger. Especially because we noticed as soon as we got to Ireland that there were about a zillion kids everywhere, much different than Paris. We googled and Ireland does in fact have one of Europe’s highest birth rates.

We were already pretty tired at that point but decided to go see the Book of Kells at Trinity College (see: death marching) for fear of not having time on our only other day in Dublin. I’m so glad that we did because it was really impressive. If you are unfamiliar, the Book of Kells is an illuminated book containing four of the gospels in the New Testament, created by monks around 800 AD. It isn’t super clear how it managed to survive when so many other manuscripts didn’t, but it did and it is beautiful. I couldn’t take pictures of it, but it is something to behold. This one, I will admit, the kids weren’t overly impressed by.

Another part of Trinity College. This library would make Belle jealous even after Beast gives her his.

From there, it was a quick dinner in Temple Bar and then a return home after we were all basically falling asleep at the table. Literally, in Fiona’s case!

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The post Guinness Storehouse and Trinity College with kids appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Our 6 days in Ireland: Visiting Dublin with kids

Well, we’re back from what Chris has officially dubbed “my favorite place we’ve been.” High praise! We spent 6 days in Ireland, including Dublin, a day trip to Glendalough and a road trip to the west of the country.

Our trip kicked off with 3 days in Dublin, where we met my in-laws, Gail and David. We had a great time seeing Dublin with kids — it is a wonderfully child-friendly city!

Ahem, we also thought it was an “adult-friendly” city as well. Guess why? 

Note: if you are going to Dublin with young kids, I’d say 3 days is about the minimum you want to have to make the most of Dublin. With strategic planning and a little older crew, you’ll be able to get a lot out of 2 days in Dublin!

Things to do in Dublin with kids

Note: this post has been updated to reflect Chris’ April 2018 visit here! 

If you are headed to Dublin with kids, rest assured there is plenty to do! Here were our favorites for the entire family.

1. Guinness Storehouse. Sounds like it wouldn’t be child-friendly, but you’d be surprised. Whether you are headed to Dublin with kids or without, this place should be on your agenda. Read more here.
2. Phoenix Park. The perfect spot to run off some extra energy, climb some playground equipment or search for deer. Read more here.
3. Kilmainham Gaol. Fascinating and educational; even our 4-year-old was interested in the 1-hour tour of this place. Absolutely do not miss this place — and remember to book your tickets ahead. Read more here.
4. National Museum of Ireland — Archeology. If your kids are little museum buffs like ours, they’ll love the National Museum of Ireland! Especially the peat bogs, which are pleasingly creepy. Read more here.
5. Dublin Zoo. Located within Phoenix Park, this is a spot we didn’t hit on our May 2017 trip. Chris, however, had the chance to visit in 2018 and said it was outstanding. We won’t miss it next time.
6. Trinity College. Going to see the Book of Kells might not seem like a big thrill for kids, but the place itself was so visually interesting (think Beauty and the Beast) that I wouldn’t skip it. Read more here.
7. Dublin Castle. We only saw the outside of this one due to time constraints, but next time we are in Dublin with kids we’ll be touring it! We’ve heard great reports.

When we next have the chance to check out Dublin again with our crew, I’d also like to plan to visit an indoor waterpark — AquaZone — and Imaginosity, billed at the Dublin Children’s Museum.

But, I’ll get into these sites a little more below and in the posts to come!

Why 6 days in Ireland?

Gail and David were planning to come see us this year, but we also wanted to do some kind of a trip together. To be honest, I have no idea how we finally settled on Ireland given that when we first started discussing it Gail said she was basically interested in everywhere in Europe except Portugal. And then David chimed in that he thought Portugal would actually be cool … as you can imagine, narrowing it down was tricky! None of us had been to Ireland and we all wanted to see it, so it eventually won out. One bonus was that it was an easy, nonstop flight from Chicago. (My in-laws live in Indianapolis, but since overseas flights from Indianapolis tend to be dramatically more expensive they chose to drive to Chicago to fly from there). Overall, all four of us were (I think!) thrilled with our choice, though we wish we’d spent more time there.

Chris, the kids and I arrived in Dublin around 1 a.m. Sunday morning because Aer Lingus offers just two nonstop flights between Catania and Dublin per week at this time of year, so choices were limited. We picked a hotel near the airport so that we could get to bed quickly (wishful thinking) and as an easy meetup point with Gail and David when they arrived later Sunday morning. We also arranged for a large taxi-van with car seats to pick us up from there, and arranged with our AirBnB host to drop off our bags early.

Day 1 in Dublin with kids: Dining at Ireland’s oldest pub and taking it easy

Sunday was a low-key day in Dublin because we were exhausted from our late-night flight, and Gail and David hadn’t been able to get any sleep at all on the plane. We decided to have lunch at The Brazen Head, which was founded in 1198 and is reported to be the oldest pub in Dublin. It also proved to be a rather further walk than we thought – sorry, guys. I didn’t love my food, but everyone else really liked theirs and it was generally a fun pub atmosphere.

I had optimistically booked us a free walking tour through Sanderman’s Walking Tours for the afternoon, but by the time out 2 p.m. meetup point came around we were exhausted and drinking beer in The Brazen Head felt like a much better idea. If we had more time, I would have rebooked though – I’ve heard really good things.

From there, Chris and the kids and I just explored Dublin a bit while Gail and David got some sleep at last. We walked through Temple Bar and had some snacks, including possibly the best wings we’ve ever had. Temple Bar seemed like a fun area, if you don’t have two cranky preschoolers in tow! Speaking of the kids – Owen and Fiona were asleep by about 5:30 and 6 p.m., respectively, and slept until the next morning. Poor guys were tired!

We took turns grabbing dinner while they slept – it was SO NICE to be in a place where you can eat before 8 p.m. if you are so inclined. And even nicer to have a date opportunity with Chris! We went to the Bleecker Street Café – it isn’t super impressive looking on the outside, but it was good food and good times inside. I recommend the chicken curry.

The post 6 days in Ireland: Dublin with kids first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post 6 days in Ireland: Dublin with kids appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.