The Poolbeg power-station as seen from the Sean O’Casey pedestrian bridge. A new bridge is being built  this bridge and the East Link bridge in the distance and Poolbeg power-station is being decommissioned in 2010 so I don’t know for how long more we will have a view like this. Many people may welcome a change to the skyline and the removal of the chimneys but I think it will be a shame to loose them and to loose clouds of white smoke that rose from them from time to time.

The Dublin Docklands are the center of new development around Dublin city center. The IFSC, the O2 Arena, the National Conference Center, many hotels offices and apartments. An area of Dublin that was run down for years and has been undergoing development during the Celtic Tiger era. I like this side of Dublin and think it has great potential though it does not attract as many people at weekends and evenings as the city center. Parts of the city center are getting very run down and need redevelopment, old is nice but derelict is a bit of an eye sore.

Not Newfoundland this time but our own Trinity in Dublin. Trinity college is much older than Trinity town. The college was established in 1592 the  town was built around 1720.  In fact the college is almost as old as colonial Newfoundland itself. St Johns was established by royal charter from Queen Elizabeth I in 1583. Trinity College was established 1592, again by Queen Elizabeth I.

At the far side Trinity East road changes from a sealed tarmac road to a dirt stone road. Many roads off the main highway on the Bonavista Pinensula seemed to be the same, but they still have little communities and towns down those roads. We usually turned back when we came to roads like that since we didnt want to destroy the rental car. It seems from this picture that other people werent as lucky. Cars seem to have a shorter lifespan in Newfoundland than in Ireland, even pickup trucks seem to weather quickly. Here at the end of the road we have an abandoned house and two abandoned cars. I’ve no idea if anyone owns them or even cares that they are there.

The strange thing about Trinity is that despite being a small little community it seems to have at least three churches, two of the smaller ones are shown here. It wouldn’t surprise me if a at least one of the churches has a congregation numbered in the handfulls. Apart from churches there are picket fences everywhere, part of Trinitys tourist image I expect. The churches like the houses are build from wood, strange to me since in Ireland no matter what else was going on in the community we always seemed to build stone churches that last for centuries. Perhaps it’s nicer in a way to have a wooden church. It’s not the church building material that matters but instead it’s the community and what happens within the church that makes it a house of God.

Unlike Ireland most of the houses in Newfoundland are wooden. That is despite having a similar summer to Ireland and a severe winter with more snow than almost anywhere else in Canada. The houses seem to last as well as any house here, so long as someone maintains them. Every few years they change the cladding on the outside of the houses. In some cases such as downtown St Johns people paint new cladding in bright colours, while old cladding takes on a lovely weathered textured look.