PAUL

Our second day in Dublin was full of walking. Being on a strict backpacker's budget, we found some free mp3 audio guides of Dublin to download before we left for Ireland. The best way to describe these walks is with the photos we took, but I'll try to give a summary of the highlights. After starting out on the south side of the River Lify at the tourist information centre we made our way to the "historic" north side and saw the many bridges, the customs house, the 'famine figures' and unexpectedly, a temporary sand sculpture depicting a scene from Gulliver's Travels. The detail was absolutely amazing, have a look at the photos. In O'Connell Street, the main shopping street on the north side, we saw the O'Connell Monument with bullet holes from the Rising in 1916 and the Millennium Spike, a large knitting needle-like structure raised in 2003 to celebrate the new millennium (is that the one just gone or the one coming up? Ah the Irish).

With two tours down on the north side, we headed back to the south side to embark on the tour entitled Viking and Medieval Dublin. The highlight of this tour was definitely the Christ Church Cathedral with its magnificent architecture. We didn't go inside but the outside was impressive enough. A point of interest for Dad (Graham), we also passed an 18th century music hall where Handel's 'Messiah' was first performed. Having seen it yourself once before, I'm sure you'll appreciate my disappointment at finding we were too early in the season to see it again.

Castles and Cathedrals was the next tour and again, we weren't disappointed with where our Irish guide (Paddy) took us. We walked through the upper and lower yards of Dublin Castle, the official residence of the British monarch in Dublin (and hence a site of great controversy over the years). We then finished up at St Patrick's Cathedral and, as you would expect being the patron saint of Ireland, the Cathedral was again very impressive.

Our final tour was through the Georgian region of the city. We began with a quick look around the grounds of Trinity College. The library here (which we unfortunately didn't go in because of the ridiculous entrance fee) was used as the set for the filming of the Jedi Archives in Star Wars and houses the Irish treasures The Book of Kells and the harp of Brian Boru, which has become the symbol of Ireland (and Guinness - they had it first). Finally, we walked passed the Georgian town houses and went for a stroll through Merrion Square Park just as the members of Georgian high society would have done.

All in all it was a really good day, and having covered around 12km of the city on foot we felt we'd certainly given seeing the city a good go. Needless to say, we slept well that night.