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If you have walked through the urban confusion of the northside, the open spaces of Phoenix Park , Dublin's playground - which begins a few-minutes walk west of Collins Barracks - will come as a welcome relief. The name is a corruption of the Irish fionn uisce (or "clear water") as a fresh water stream flows through its grounds. A series of pillars stand across the road and suddenly you're surrounded by grand, clipped hedges and tended flowerbeds in what is one of the largest city parks in the world - it's more than twice the size of London's Hampstead Heath or New York's Central Park. The park originated as priory lands, which were seized after the Reformation in the seventeenth century and made into a royal deer park. The Viceroy's Lodge - now Aras an Uachtarain , the president's residence - is here, as well as a 205-foot obelisk erected in 1817 in tribute to the Duke of Wellington . Wellington was born in Dublin, but was less than proud of his roots - when reminded that he was Irish by birth, the Duke replied tersely "being born in a stable doesn't make one a horse." In the northwest corner of the park, near the Ashtown Gate exit, is the Phoenix Park Visitor Centre , which incorporates the recently restored Ashtown Castle (daily: April-May 9.30am-5.30pm; June-Sept 9.30am-5pm; GBP2/?2.54). Set in the stables of what was the home of the Papal Nuncio, this is an interesting, if uninspiring diversion. While the exhibits in the centre are a little dull, there is a good video on the history of the park and an interesting tour of the castle (a seventeenth-century tower house), which had been concealed in Papal Nuncio's residence, the top floor acting as a private chapel. It is from here that free tours of Aras an Uachtarain (President's Residence) leave on Saturdays every hour between 10.30am and 4.30pm (come early in summer as there are a limited number of places). The old duelling grounds, or Fifteen Acres , are also to be found in the park - now the venue for gaelic football, cricket, soccer and, occasionally, polo - as well as a race course where a flea market is held every Sunday from noon onwards. The quality of what's available can vary tremendously, and there seems no way of knowing what it will be like until the day. The park was also the scene of two politically significant murders in the late spring of 1882, when two officials of the British parliament, Lord Frederick Cavendish, the chief secretary, and T.H. Burke, the undersecretary, were killed by an obscure organization known as "The Invincibles". At first it seemed that the motivation for the crime - long-standing bitterness over the landlord-and-tenant relationship in post-Famine Ireland - was directly connected with the Anglo-Irish politician Charles Stewart Parnell's ongoing agitation for reform on behalf of the Irish tenancy . It seemed to Parnell that he would have to withdraw from public life due to the implication - however ill-founded - that he was connected with these murders, but his obvious sincerity in denouncing them, and the effect that the event had on British policy regarding the tenancy issue, was in fact to make his position in Ireland stronger than ever. Phoenix Park also contains Dublin's zoo at the southeast corner of the park (Mon-Sat 9.30am-6pm, Sun 11am-6pm; adults GBP5.50/?6.98; buses #10, #25, #26), the second oldest in Europe - it was opened in 1830. Its claim to fame used to be that this is where the MGM lion was bred; the zoo now has a programme for breeding endangered species for subsequent release into the wild.
campingbobby says "wear in town can i campout..
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