Dublin Ireland

Oscar Wilde at EPIC

May 23-26, 2020

See also a photo album of our adventures in Ireland.

Kate's annual KBS conference was in Utrecht, Holland this year. We decided to make a little side trip on our way there to explore a bit of Ireland -- we've never been and both of us have Irish roots. Long ago roots, but roots none the less. It's a beautiful country and well worth exploring. We found that a week in the south wasn't enough for us even though we had scaled back our plans from "let's see it all". You would have to live there for a life time and even then you won't see it all.


Dublin Arrival (May 23):
We flew in and out of Dublin arriving from Heathrow (we had made a day trip whilst there to visit our second Mom in Woking) and leaving for Amsterdam.

In Dublin we humped our luggage from the airport north of the city by bus to the Connolly Train Station and then city Metro/DART to the Sandymount Hotel. Others have good luck staying at AirBnB sites, probably a better idea if you're there for a long stay. We were just in town for a couple of days.

The Sandymount is an older Georgian hotel (or pasting of some old Georgian homes) with reasonable conveniences a little south of the city center. Anne, our chum from Glasgow, had recommended it as there is a car park (we didn't rent a car until Cork) and it is convenient to the city DART system. We road the DART from Connolly Station just north of the Liffey River to Landsdown Rd. some 4 stops south. Connolly Station is the busiest in the city with rail routes from the north and the DART on multiple platforms. It's named, since 1966, for James Connolly of the 1916 Easter Rebellion who was a martyr for Irish independence. There's lots of subtle Irish history you become aware of as you visit Dublin. I came out of it knowing that the English have a lot to answer for -- sorry, Mom.

Dublin May 24:
We had a DART pass and a Dubliner hop-on/hop-off pass that we picked up at the airport. That made it convenient for us to explore the city. Our first day we took the DART to the Tara Street station on the south bank of the Liffey and walked the short distance to Trinity College for a tour recommended by our friends Kath and Scosh.

At the college we went with a tour group shepherded by a graduate student in a faded college gown. You can tour the campus alone, it's not that big, but she helped to explain a lot: the founding in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth II in an attempt to secure a Protestant bulwark in a conquered Catholic country; the history of Protestant vs Catholic admissions (Catholics are only lately allowed by the college and by the church); the history of women's admission; and lots of trivia around traditions. The other part of the admission to the tour was access to the Book of Kells and to the Long Room of the Old Library. Our chums Kath and Scotia had recommended we take the tour and see these.

The Book of Kells is a very old, highly decorated, manuscript in Latin from the early Christian church containing four gospels. There's quite a good exhibit with lots of panels showing what pages from the book look like and the checkered history of Viking raids, thievery and worse. There's a glass case with the book itself opened to a page but it's very hard to get near to and not that clear anyways once you get close.

The Long Room of the Old Library (the Book of Kells exhibit is in the ground floor) comes after the exhibit. This is jam packed with rare and ratty old books on two levels. At each level the books are organized in stacks with the bigger heavier books on the lower levels and the smaller ones at the top. How do you find anything? You don't! There's a master index to locate the row and shelf number. It's an interesting place and well worth a visit.

After the tour of Trinity College we walked through the Temple Bar (it's an area of town, not a single "bar") and crossed the Ha'penny Bridge over the Liffey for a late light lunch at The Woolen Mills (recommended by our nephew Darren). I was a little surprised by the day time drunks in the Temple Bar area and glad that we had not stayed in that part of town -- you wouldn't get much sleep.

The Ha'penny Bridge and the River Liffey had separated the traditonally very poor Northside Dublin from the more wealthy Southside Dublin. The poor could be very poor...

"According to The National Archives of Ireland, by 1911, Dublin had some of the worst housing conditions for the urban poor of any city in the United Kingdom, with some 835 people living in just 15 houses."

We hopped onto the hop-on/hop-off tour bus and did a bit of the city including a quick peek into the old City Hall. Some of the drivers were hilarious telling outrageous stories. The Irish do have a "gift of the gab". We jumped off at Hueston Station with the intention of catching a street car over to the Connolly Station and then the DART back to our hotel to freshen up.

That day the Spice Girls were having their kickoff concert at Croke Park for their reunion tour (minus Posh Spice). The stadium seats some 80,000 devoted Spice Girls Fans -- moms of about 40 or so with their young daughters (nary a dad or Old Spice Guy anywhere in sight). This really mucked up our transit plans as Hueston station is the main station for people arriving from the South and West while Connolly was the nearest station to Croke Park and also the main train station for people arriving from the north. It took forever to get a tram over to Connolly Station and when we finally did we were squeezed in like sardines in a can. At Connolly it was very busy with fans arriving and we gave up on ever getting back to our hotel.

Instead we found a nearby pub, the Celt, that a friend had recommended. We had dinner there and enjoyed a singer who played guitar and sang Irish classics. Kate met some younger women (too young to be Spice Girls fans, too old to be daughters of Spice Girl fans) one who had a "F*ck Off Kate" T-shirt -- she was a Kate.

At the end of the day we walked back to Connolly Station just as the Spice Girls concert was clearing out. We talked with a few of the fans on their way home.

Dublin May 25:
We took the DART from Sandymount to the Tara Station on the South Bank of the Liffey. From there we walked along the north bank to the EPIC museum. Along the way we passed the Customs House (a grand bit of Victoriana) and stopped for a while at the Poverty Memorial and the Famine Statues.

The potato famine of 1845-1849 was a desperate time in Ireland. The Famine Statues are a frightfully moving reminder of how bad it was. I'm reminded of "Thousands are Sailing" by the Pogues:

"The island it is silent now, But the ghosts still haunt the waves. And the torch lights up a famished man, Who fortune could not save"

Just a bit further down the river there's a "coffin" ship (replica) you can tour. Of those poor souls who set sail for the better places many did not get so far "that they could change my name".

The EPIC museum is set underground in an old warehouse along the Liffey shore. It's a modern, recently opened, museum dedicated to Irish Emigration. Because of times like the Irish Potato famine the Irish have emigrated all over the world. Both Kate and I (and probably everyone else as well) have a connection to Ireland. Sometime that connection is because of immigration -- Kate's Graham connection got to Ireland from Scotland and of course there's all the British who came to Ireland. It's a very interesting museum that we recommend. There's lots of displays to engage the visitor and there's many rooms to navigate through. It takes quite a while to see it all -- so much so that we took a mid way break and had lunch on the ground floor level at a very nice restaurant, the "Ely Bar & Grill".

At the end of our visit we discover meaning of "EPIC": Every Person Is Connected. And indeed we all are.

From the EPIC Museum we caught the hop on/off shuttle to see more of the city with a view to visiting the "Little Museum of Dublin" near St Stephen's Green which was recommended by our nephew Darren. We crossed the Samuel Beckett Bridge -- it's shaped like an Irish Harp -- into the Docklands and Grand Canal area. The Docklands are no longer slums and warehouses (cf. the EPIC Museum and the Convention Center renewal along the river), instead it's all modern brutalism -- office towers of concrete and glass.

The Little Museum of Dublin really is a little museum. It's a narrow Georgian rowhouse with exhibits on three floors. The first had an exhibit of etchings by James Malton (a Brit) from the Georgian era with biting commentary. The top floor had a U2 exhibit (one of Dublin's more famous exports), a press room and a bit on a famous mayor "Alfie". None of those took much time at all. The best part was a conducted tour of a couple of rooms on the second floor. If you, and we recommend you do, do not skip the conducted tour!

The tour guide was quite entertaining. He came in dressed as an scruffy academic in a jacket with elbow patches, bow tie and glasses. He proceded to welcome us to a 3 hr tour which would start with an hour of his poetry readings -- the first of many jokes. The two rooms we toured are chock a block full of interesting artificats and models. There was a model of the Nelson monument from near the GPO on O'Connel St -- it had been blown up several times by the Republicans and has since replaced by the Millenium Neddle/Spire. Which didn't go up on the Millenium and people wonder "What's the point?". He also engaged the visitors: Who has read Ulysses? Only one had. Do you remember what it was about? No, just that it was long and boring. Then he gave us a 28 word precise of the book and pointed to a copy of the book left open to the last page -- many give up after reading only a few pages. You can say you've read the last page.

Another couple of stories. Does anyone recognize this fellow? Yes, it's Brendan Behan. He's a famous Irish drinker with a writing problem. He was going to Canada because he'd seen an advertisement to "Drink Canada Dry" and thought he'd like to give it a go. He was commissioned by Guinness to write a snappy slogan (no he didn't write "Guinness is good for you") and did so for a case of Guinness a day. Which he proceded to drink through every day for several months. After a while the Guinness folk asked if he had come up with a slogan. Well sure, "Guinness gets you drunk". They didn't use it.

Anyways, the tour guide at the Little Museum was very funny. He had us in stitches (they've bought the building next door to expand, so I guess we'll be the Not So Little Museum of Dublin).

We had a short list of restaurants we were thinking of for dinner in the area and asked his for advice, he confirmed our suggestions and sent us to Fallon & Bryne a short walk away. We had a nice dinner there. If you go, the restaurant is on the second floor -- the ground floor is a gourmet market.

That evening we wandered over to O'Donoghues Bar for some live music. It's just down the road a bit from the Little Museum (on the same street that's the north side of St Stephen's Green). Just inside the door there's a little snug where musicians played Irish music for tips from the audience. We squeezed in with them, and as the evening progressed and more musicians arrived, we were slowly squeezed out. It was one of the better nights of music on our trip to Ireland.

Dublin May 26:
The next day we took a taxi to the Hueston train station where we took a train to Cork. There was no way we were going to hump our luggage around given our arrival experience!