Ireland day 0055. Monday 22 November 2021- Riverbank
Today’s summary | We spent the morning in the flat doing our respective language homeworks. Took train to Dublin in afternoon and walked along Liffey riverbank to look at EPIC emigration museum briefly. | ||||
Today’s weather | Bright sun all day. No wind. Cool at about 6C | ||||
Today’s overview location (the red cross in a circle shows where Val and I are at the moment) |
Close-up location (Click the button below to download a GPX of our short walk): Liffey walk |
Commentary
I’ve noticed that my blogs lately have been getting longer and longer, so I’m going to make this one short. Partly to give everyone a break (including me!) and partly because the day was a bit less eventful than some in the recent past.
Anyway, we started with mixed news on the Yaris front. The car did, miraculously, pass its NCT test, but at the same time, the Vehicle Registration Document went missing. We need both before we can buy it: our friendly car dealer is confident the paperwork will be located, but for the time being we will just have to hold our breath.
Swiftly on the heels of the semi-progress with the car, the more mundane task of language homework urgently beckoned. Val, because she has a Gaelic lesson tonight, and me because I have to go shopping in Spanish tomorrow night. So the rest of the morning was spent ploughing our way through obscure verbs, and although I found Spanish quite hard, I do have to say Gaelic sounds even harder as it appears to have no regular structure to it and it isn’t anything like any other language you might have learned before.
Brain-cells suitably exercised, we walked down to the station to get the next train to Dublin. They go every 15 minutes or so, so we didn’t have long to wait. We got out at Connolly station and walked round the back to join the Royal Canal towpath. We followed it down to where it joins the Liffey a bit further south, so now I have walked the whole section from its terminus up as far as the Botanic Gardens and another bit beyond, near Castleknock.
By the time we reached the river, it seemed a long time since breakfast, so we stopped and had our packed lunches watching the world go from our perch on the embankment. There was time do a quick inspection of some of the river traffic, noting especially the mechanically impressive “Giano” tugboat and the historically impressive “Jeanie Johnstone” barque a little further upstream.
By that stage, it was getting dark and quite cold, so we headed across the road to the shelter of the EPIC Irish Emigration museum to find a welcome cup of tea in a café on the concourse. It’s a fascinating spot, with the main museum in a gallery below the concourse, and to which we will need to dedicate a full day’s visit in the near future. But the concourse itself was interesting enough – apart from the café – and in particular the Irish Family History Centre which helps you uncover the missing details if you have an Irish branch in your family tree. This was of particular interest to Val who has family originating from the Kilkenny area, so she’s going to make an appointment with a professional genealogist to see what she can unearth.
By then it was time to dash back to Malahide – fortunately the fast train only takes 20 minutes – and for Val to see if her revision met the exacting standards of her Gaelic tutor. So now I better get ready for my turn tomorrow, or risk humiliation if I don’t know how to buy a litre of leche or to tell the shopkeeper that his pantalóns are a size too big.
Today’s photos (click to enlarge)