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Ireland and England Trip - Day 6 of 11
Aug. 28th, 2025 11:59 pmTHURSDAY
We started the day filling out postcards: one to send home, one in lieu of a birthday card for Sheila, and one to Gary's brother Mike. Breakfast at the hotel was next, followed by a walk to the GPO (General Post Office) to mail the postcards. As it happened, the stamps cost the same to the US and Canada.
We returned to the room to load laundry. As we approached the lobby doors walking back from the GPO, a scruffy dude sitting on the sidewalk (I believe it was the same fellow from yesterday) recommended Fibber McGee's pub. It was a fairly easy walk to the laundry room which was tiny and located behind an Internet "cafe" (but with no coffee on offer). There were signs taped to the wall reminding people to be civilized, including "If you throw trash, we'll post you on TikTok." We were greeted by a young lady seated on the floor as there was no room for a chair. While Gary loaded the washer, I arranged to pay for the laundry at a small wall-mounted kiosk which communicated with the machines via Wi-Fi. Among options for a receipt were text (but only to Irish cell numbers) and email, so I sent the email while Gary started the wash load.
With that accomplished, we took the empty suitcase across the street to the ILAC shopping center across the street, which the lady on the floor assured us would be closer to an American mall than the one a few meters to the left which she considered sketchy. There weren't many places to sit in the mall proper, so I found a bench outside on the plaza (a convenient distance from a dude on the floor in a mummy style sleeping bag) and rested until it was time to return to use the dryer. I set up the cycle for 40 minutes, then we returned to the mall. I stopped by the restroom, then we had drinks and banana bread at Esquires Coffee. The chain began in Delta, BC and was acquired by international coffee purveyors Cooks Coffee. As the time approached to retrieve our laundry, several people with a stroller arrived, so we hurried to vacate our seats.
Almost none of the laundry was fully dry, but we loaded it into our bag anyway so we would have time for it to air dry in the room. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped for snacks and a drink at Lidl down the street by the "sketchy" mall. As we passed a couple yelling at each other, I got stopped in foot traffic, which frustrated Gary. Fortunately we managed to get back to the room without further incident, and Gary was able to safely vent his frustration.
We laid out the clean clothes to dry and relaxed in the room for an hour or so, then made our way to the Temple Bar neighborhood for an LGBTQ+ walking tour. After a few pictures of the Temple Bar itself (which, as we later learned, is perhaps the most-photographed building in Dublin), we located our tour guide, Helena, by the umbrella she carried in Crown Alley. We stopped by several venues critical to the various sexual liberation and marriage equality movements in Ireland over the years. At one point I suggested we have a seat on a bench on the Rosie Hackett Bridge by the Abbey Theater, and Helena talked us through a couple of stops on the tour there, which I think we all appreciated. While we were there, she mentioned the interaction between Frederick Douglass and Daniel O'Connell which I found very interesting. From there, we returned to Temple Bar and visited the site of the Hirschfeld Center (across the street from the late, lamented Luigi Malone's) before a stop at The George (the only gay bar in Dublin with a "late license" allowing them to remain open past 2330) and concluding the tour on the grounds of Dublin Castle which, having been rebuilt at least once, evidenced a mix of building styles: a Gothic church grafted onto a possibly medieval tower which itself was grafted onto a Victorian red-brick office block.
We parted with hugs all round, then navigated to Pantibar in Parliament Street a few blocks from the castle across the river. It was early and the bar was mostly unoccupied, and the atmosphere was set by a stream of low-volume dance remixes of popular tunes I was familiar with from The End radio. Gary let Tim know where we were staying in Manchester while I journaled, over pints of cider: we both had Bulmers, and I tried the Orchard Thieves Wild apple cider, which is drier than their regular variety (much like the difference between Yonder Dry vs. Yonder Vantage). We hung out for an hour or so, then headed back across the river to a New York pizzeria called DiFontaine's for a couple of slices and a soda each. The pizza reminded me of that place on Lyell Ave in Rochester we used to go to from work. From there we walked around the corner to catch a bus back to the hotel.
After returning to the room and rearranging the clean clothes to dry further, Gary fell asleep in front of the TV so I set an alarm for 22:00 (10 PM) to allow for packing up before falling asleep for the night. Gary was awake just long enough to suggest I reset the alarm for 4:00 instead. I prepared for bed and caught up with my journal until half past the hour, then went back to sleep. We slept only about an hour before Gary had to use the bathroom, so we reset our alarms for 4:30 and returned to bed about midnight.
We started the day filling out postcards: one to send home, one in lieu of a birthday card for Sheila, and one to Gary's brother Mike. Breakfast at the hotel was next, followed by a walk to the GPO (General Post Office) to mail the postcards. As it happened, the stamps cost the same to the US and Canada.
We returned to the room to load laundry. As we approached the lobby doors walking back from the GPO, a scruffy dude sitting on the sidewalk (I believe it was the same fellow from yesterday) recommended Fibber McGee's pub. It was a fairly easy walk to the laundry room which was tiny and located behind an Internet "cafe" (but with no coffee on offer). There were signs taped to the wall reminding people to be civilized, including "If you throw trash, we'll post you on TikTok." We were greeted by a young lady seated on the floor as there was no room for a chair. While Gary loaded the washer, I arranged to pay for the laundry at a small wall-mounted kiosk which communicated with the machines via Wi-Fi. Among options for a receipt were text (but only to Irish cell numbers) and email, so I sent the email while Gary started the wash load.
With that accomplished, we took the empty suitcase across the street to the ILAC shopping center across the street, which the lady on the floor assured us would be closer to an American mall than the one a few meters to the left which she considered sketchy. There weren't many places to sit in the mall proper, so I found a bench outside on the plaza (a convenient distance from a dude on the floor in a mummy style sleeping bag) and rested until it was time to return to use the dryer. I set up the cycle for 40 minutes, then we returned to the mall. I stopped by the restroom, then we had drinks and banana bread at Esquires Coffee. The chain began in Delta, BC and was acquired by international coffee purveyors Cooks Coffee. As the time approached to retrieve our laundry, several people with a stroller arrived, so we hurried to vacate our seats.
Almost none of the laundry was fully dry, but we loaded it into our bag anyway so we would have time for it to air dry in the room. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped for snacks and a drink at Lidl down the street by the "sketchy" mall. As we passed a couple yelling at each other, I got stopped in foot traffic, which frustrated Gary. Fortunately we managed to get back to the room without further incident, and Gary was able to safely vent his frustration.
We laid out the clean clothes to dry and relaxed in the room for an hour or so, then made our way to the Temple Bar neighborhood for an LGBTQ+ walking tour. After a few pictures of the Temple Bar itself (which, as we later learned, is perhaps the most-photographed building in Dublin), we located our tour guide, Helena, by the umbrella she carried in Crown Alley. We stopped by several venues critical to the various sexual liberation and marriage equality movements in Ireland over the years. At one point I suggested we have a seat on a bench on the Rosie Hackett Bridge by the Abbey Theater, and Helena talked us through a couple of stops on the tour there, which I think we all appreciated. While we were there, she mentioned the interaction between Frederick Douglass and Daniel O'Connell which I found very interesting. From there, we returned to Temple Bar and visited the site of the Hirschfeld Center (across the street from the late, lamented Luigi Malone's) before a stop at The George (the only gay bar in Dublin with a "late license" allowing them to remain open past 2330) and concluding the tour on the grounds of Dublin Castle which, having been rebuilt at least once, evidenced a mix of building styles: a Gothic church grafted onto a possibly medieval tower which itself was grafted onto a Victorian red-brick office block.
We parted with hugs all round, then navigated to Pantibar in Parliament Street a few blocks from the castle across the river. It was early and the bar was mostly unoccupied, and the atmosphere was set by a stream of low-volume dance remixes of popular tunes I was familiar with from The End radio. Gary let Tim know where we were staying in Manchester while I journaled, over pints of cider: we both had Bulmers, and I tried the Orchard Thieves Wild apple cider, which is drier than their regular variety (much like the difference between Yonder Dry vs. Yonder Vantage). We hung out for an hour or so, then headed back across the river to a New York pizzeria called DiFontaine's for a couple of slices and a soda each. The pizza reminded me of that place on Lyell Ave in Rochester we used to go to from work. From there we walked around the corner to catch a bus back to the hotel.
After returning to the room and rearranging the clean clothes to dry further, Gary fell asleep in front of the TV so I set an alarm for 22:00 (10 PM) to allow for packing up before falling asleep for the night. Gary was awake just long enough to suggest I reset the alarm for 4:00 instead. I prepared for bed and caught up with my journal until half past the hour, then went back to sleep. We slept only about an hour before Gary had to use the bathroom, so we reset our alarms for 4:30 and returned to bed about midnight.