Dublin

We took a ferry across the choppy Irish sea from Wales to Dublin on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, joining the late summer crowds of tourists that come here for the pubs, the dance, the history and the Guinness.

The best of our three days in Dublin was actually spent outside of the city. We were invited by our roommates, New Zealand mother and daughter team Marion and Charis, to join them for a drive with an Irishman they'd met - Shane - who, in a show of that famous Irish hospitality, had offered to show them the sights.

The five of us spent the day roaming the countryside. We saw two castles: first Malahide Castle, discretely hidden in a woodland, with spacious grounds that now holds concerts (Prince played there the weekend before).

And after lunch was Trim Castle, where the movie Braveheart was filmed. The walls are in tatters, but the keep at the centre stands tall and the ruins make clear the former grandeur of this place.

We went to to the reconstructed passage tomb of Newgrange, Brú na Boinné in Gaelic, a massive earth mound where the light of day only creeps down the nineteen metre passage to the inner chamber on the morning of the winter solstice, and stays there for less than twenty minutes.


Although they were not, at five thousand years of age, the oldest tombs we'd see in Ireland, it's humbling to know that the curious, swirling artwork was already ancient when the great rocks of Stonehenge were dragged into place.

Carved art at Newgrange

South of Dublin, we drove through the Wicklow Mountains to beautiful Glendalough, where we joined a horde of tourists to snap pictures of the ruined monastery amid the picturesque green mountains. Then we drove by the Powerscourt Gardens and then admired the view of Dublin from a vantage point just south: gorgeous. The day was rounded off with pints at the hostel. Shane made our Irish experience richer with his knowledge and hospitality: thank you, and we'd love to return the generosity in Ottawa!

For our two days in Dublin itself, we did lots of wandering around, and the occasional touristy venture. We visited the Guinness brewery at St. James Gate, the highlights of which were (for me) a display of the company's famous advertising campaigns - Guinness For Strength, Guinness is Good for You and of course, My Goodness, My Guinness! - and a beer in the seventh-story Gravity Bar, boasting a 360 degree view of Dublin.

We got our learn on at the Museum of Archeology, where I learned that the spread of red hair through Europe was the fault of Viking marauders (gotta get me a longboat...).

We relaxed in the lush greenery of St. Stephan's Green, then payed homage to the Dublin literary tradition by finding the statue of expat writer Oscar Wilde in a nearby park, and wandering by St. Patrick's cathedral to see Jonathan Swift's grave (sadly inhibited by high entrance fees). At the time I was reading (grappling with? suffering through?) James Joyce's Ulysses... a third of the way through I took a 'break' and have yet to reopen the dense beast.

We pubcrawled our way around the area south of Temple Bar, but didn't actually eat much pub food - eating out in Dublin is wildly expensive. Instead, we found fantastic kebab and falafel (wrapped in naan bread! Genius!) at Sultan Kebab, and then went back no less than four times. You just can't argue with good kebab.

S.