I’m on a mission to visit every country in Europe so when I’m doing an Extreme Day Trip, I tend to favour countries I’ve never been to before, but as the list of virgin destinations shrinks faster than the size of freddo bars, that’s becoming increasingly difficult so not every EDT is an imperial conquest of virgin soil.
Dublin fits into that category. Dublin and I have history.
Let me take you back to the summer of 2004. I came up with an idea that my then girlfriend of the time and I would each plan a surprise trip for each other. I was going to take her to London and Barcelona but, as it happens, a back injury put pay to that trip, but we did go ahead with her surprise destination, which turned out to be the Irish capital.
It was an interesting time in my life. I had recently gone on a medically supervised liquid only diet called lipotrim and lost 8 stone in weight. I was 21, about to enrol as a student at University, I was learning how to drive and I had a lovely lady in my life.
It was the lowest weight I’d ever been as an adult and the future looked rosy. We did all the usual things, a trip to the Guiness Storehouse (it turns out I don’t like Guiness, sorry guys), we ate at an Italian restaurant near Temple bar, we tried Irish Cadbury’s Dairy Milk and enjoyed the ambiance.
24 years later and everything had changed yet somehow things were still the same. My weight loss didn’t survive Uni. Turned out that stress was a big risk factor for me and that swapping food for 600 calories of liquid a day was unsustainable long term but over the last three years I’ve managed the same kind of weight loss with a different strategy, having lost 15 stone in that time. Still a long way off my 2004 peak, but it somehow felt cathartic to go back to one of the sites where I have a picture of myself at my lowest weight and take another one having again beat the odds to lose substantial weight.
Sadly, this time there was no girlfriend to accompany me. I went on to marry that lady and we had 20 good years together before having to completely rebuild myself as a newly single man.
Returning to Dublin was a no brainer. First of all, it was incredibly cheap. Just £29.98 for the return ticket, on a Saturday too. Considering that it sometimes costs me £20 to travel the 2.8 miles from the airport to my home in a black cab, £14.99 for a flight abroad is unbelievable value.
Although, I do have a confession. Forgive me EDT gurus, for I have sinned. I always pay to pre-book a seat. I love to film the flights. I stick an action camera on the window with a suction cup, film take off and landing plus the rest of the flight in hyperlapse mode. I have so much footage from all my EDTs this year that I haven’t quite found the time to edit together yet, but one day I will catch up.
Not only do I always prebook, but I pretty much always book the same seat on Ryanair. Ryanair only fly Boeing 737 derivitives and the layout is the same on all their flights. I pick seat 10A, on the left hand side of the aircraft. It’s just in front of the number 1 engine and you can get good views looking back at the wings, so I can see what position the slats are in and watch the air breaks and reverse thruster doors on touchdown (yes, I do realise how sad that makes me sound).
Well, for the Dublin flights, 10A was already taken, and I forgot about row 11 and booked 11A instead. Unfortunately, 11A is the one windowless window seat on the 737 planes. It’s the “N” of Ryanair on the livery. My plan to film was ruined but hey ho. On the plus side, if you like to sleep on flights, not having the window there gives you somewhere to lean on other than the seat in front.
Flight itself is very short, less than an hour. The crew don’t even have time to do the duty free service.
When I landed, I got my prebooked Dublin Express coach to Dublin. It cost €6 each way and although you reserve a specific time, you can use your ticket on any coach that day. The coach was very modern, with USB plugs on each seat and decent air conditioning and padded seats. It took 25 minutes to get from Dublin Airport Terminal 1 to Eden Quay, the closest stop to O’Connell Street.
I had a little walk around, found a souvenir shop to pick up a fridge magnet, walked down O’Connell Street, took some photos and videos next to the river Liffey, crossed Ha’penny bridge and had a look around Temple bar then went back towards where I started as I had booked a 45 minute boat tour with Dublin Discovered Cruises.
As I was walking, I noticed a yellow amphibious vehicle going around full of tourists wearing viking helmets. It turned out to be the Viking Splash tour. It looked like great fun, if I return to Dublin, I’d definitely give it a go.
The tour I actually booked on was right next to a replica wooden clipper boat called the Jeanie Johnston. The original ship was used as a famine ship for Irish migrants moving to Canada to escape the great potato famine.
The tour guide on the Dublin Discovered trip had the stereotypical Irish charm and humour. We were not allowed to take video footage on the boat but photos were allowed. It was a barge type ship with very large windows. The tour itself was quite short and the river Liffey is tidal and the tide was out which meant the boat couldn’t go as far as usual. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t the most interesting boat trip I’ve been on, despite the best efforts of the crew. I think I would have enjoyed Viking Splash more. We did pick up a lot of history and information about the river and the history of Dublin though.
After the boat trip, I walked back towards temple bar to do a bit more exploring and headed to the Dublina Viking Museum. Back in May, I went to a similar Viking Museum in Stockholm so it was nice to see the Viking experience from another perspective too. I preferred the Stockholm museum but I enjoy people’s history so found the museum enjoyable. It cost €16 and kept me entertained for a couple of hours.
Next I visited St Stephens Green. It’s a beautiful park with lots of benches, flowers and lakes to enjoy and it was very busy in the warm August weather. I retook a photo. It wasn’t quite the same, a selfie stick is a poor substitute for having another person to take the photo for you.
You can’t go to Dublin without getting a photo of Sweet Molly Malone, so that’s where I headed next. I did notice that there were parts of the statue that seemed to have been polished slightly more than others, I can’t for the life of me imagine why!
I picked up some sour dough donuts from The Rolling Donut to take back with me after a recommendation from a friend, it was so hard to pick which ones as they all looked amazing.
Then it was time for the obligatory visit to a traditional Irish pub. I had a pint of shandy and a nice vegetable soup with soda bread then it was time to make my way back for the coach. The coach was half an hour late, which made me a little anxious. I wasn’t the only person there waiting. Traffic had been bad that day, but still, all’s well that ends well, eventually the coach turned up and I needn’t have worried. Through security within minutes. I indulged in the airport with a Baileys. I felt I’d earned it after 28,975 steps and 12.31 miles covered that day.
The flight back was 30 minutes late, having taken off late from Amsterdam in the previous sector. I got talking to another bunch of people who also did the same extreme day trip. It’s definitely a popular one to do.
I would recommend Dublin as perfect for an Extreme Day Trip for beginners. If I went again, I would book the Viking Splash tour and I would visit Kilmainham Gaol. You have to book that quite far in advanced but I think I would have enjoyed it. If you like Guinness and Whiskey, you will enjoy Dublin too.
I’m considering a trip to Belfast next year. A place I’d been many times as a child in the 1990s but it would be interesting to see how it has changed, plus it would be nice to visit the Titanic museum.