Dun Leary Pier and City Center with Mylee

TLDR- Luas to the Bus, Bus to the Peoples Park. Walk to Teddys for 99er’s, walk to Dun Laoghaire pier. Followed by Dart into Dublin city center to show Mylee some of the sights in a crazy packed Dublin city.

Dun Leary

We’re headed to Dun Laoghaire for the City center for the day, and I’ve given up spelling it correctly, I’m going with the phonetical spelling of Dun Leary. Waiting for the LUAS we decided it was cold and windy out enough we might need lite jackets. We had about 10 minutes of extra time to make the Bus, and 9 minutes for the next train. Michelle figured she could make it work. She ran back to the house and picked up all of our jackets while the kids and I rode the train to the end. Michelle picked up everything and made it to the bus with about 40 seconds to spare.

We caught the 1000 number 7 bus from Brides Glenn to Dun Leary. The kids sat up front on the top floor of the Bus and all enjoyed the view; No vomit!. First stop, we used the bathrooms are the people’s park then played at the playground for a bit. Being Saturday there is no Sunday farmers market in the park and it’s mostly empty. It’s a completely different park empty. Maddex is sad we don’t get to eat any pork dumplings; playing in the nearly empty play park made up for it to him. Mylee is always excited for a swing. Most of the parks don’t have swings. The Peoples park was good to Mylee they have three swings.

Across the street from the Peoples park on the walk towards the peir is a Teddys ice cream shop. Mylee has never had a 99er and she has to try one while she is here in Ireland. We stopped at Teddys and bought 5 x 99ers. The kids have had so much ice cream while Mylee is visting; figure we might as well keep it up.

On the walk out the east pier, we did some parkour on the waterside of the pier and ran on the rocks for a bit. The little kids tried but some of the jumps were a bit too much. Roxi, Mile, and Khaleesi went with mom and the stroller on the flat ground while Maddex, Mylee, and I ran on the rocks yelling “Parkour” jumping from rock to rock. Mylee found the tallest rock and stood there waiting for me to take a picture of her. Maddex went as fast as he could and hardly looked back unless I threw something at him. I stayed in the middle snaping pictures. Eventually, Mila poped out of a hole in the wall and said ” Guys we miss you come back here” – we poped back onto the flat area and walked for a bit.

Further down the outside of the wall is more uniformly flat sloped into the water space to run on. We took all of the kids out there for some walking. Roxi was yelling parkour every time she had to jump. Around a corner, we found a few people fishing. They were cooking some their fresh-caught fish over coals in a tin tray right there on the rock wall. Now thats some fresh fish for lunch. Caught, gutted then fried up while they were fishing for more. The end of the pier was open this walk allowing us to show Mylee the view and the gun bases; Plus free toilets. Last time we walked to the end of the pier the the whole light house area was closed for some reason.

Headed into the City

From the pier, we played in the pirate park for a bit before we walked to the Dun Loaghaire Dart station and caught the dart into the City. Normally we’d get off at Tara station. Today we mixed it up and started the tour north of the river and detrained at Connely station. WOW, the station was packed. the packed station turned out to be an accurate representation of the rest of the city. Sunny, Saturday, guess we should  have expected a sea of people covering the streets of Dublin.

Navagating the city streets with a stroller, and keeping track of 5 kids in a sea of people – I didn’t take any pictures of the city. Mylee snaped a few shots on the Hey penny bridge, and a few other places. Should have done a better job capturing the city for her. We might have to go back on a week day and explore when the kids have more energy and the city is not as packed to provide a proper tour. We were going to stop at Mcdonalds for lunch, but the four we passed had lines out the door; nope.

Walking around the city we stoped at Nesbits where I bought some new kitchen pans. O M G !  brand new nonstick is so much better then the pans we have now. Throwing the old ones out they are crap. We also stopped by our favorite family stop in the city, Chapters used book store. 30 euros later we left the book store with a good 15 – 20 new books. As long as the book is under 3 euro we don’t say no the kids. They kept tossing more and more books into the stroller until we cut them off. After book shopping we stopped into a casino/arcade near the spire and played Coin Dozer for a bit – did not win anything but we did drop a few coins to extend our playtime.

We crossed the river over the Hey Penny bridge then took Dame lane towards the Dublin castle. Stroller with a sleeping Roxi up and down the stairs was a challenge, but we managed. On Dame lane, asking Mylee if she wanted to see the Dublin castle, she kind Meh shruged her shoulders. The kids all mimicked her answer. It’s late in the day, no full lunch for anyone, and the crowd, I guess everyone is burnt out and we’ll call it. We turned around and took Dame lane the other direction to the end. Where we turned right, then left, checked out Molly Malone’s shiny bronze boobs before making it to Grafton street. We made a quick stop on Grafton at Bewley’s for face croissant followed by the LUAS home. Back at home Mylee and Mila scootered to the chipper for some Chips while I grilled up some Burgers in the new none stick pan.

Now everyone is resting/napping and Michelle and I are writting. Me this, and Paris, and Michelle some story idea she came up with on the walk.