Tuesday, 1 July 2003

You know, 32.5 hours travelling is really too much! Would have been less if I hadn’t taken public transport from the airport (ending at Pearse Street Station), and then not had to walk across Trinity College Campus three (3!) times. Naturally, the room I am staying in essentially backs onto the station building (more literally than I would prefer!) Still, I made it reasonably sane and in tact.

There’s not much to report about the trip. Plane flights are largely dull at the best of times and one 8-hour leg, and one 12-hour leg did not enhance the experience. Fortunately, the ‘upgrade’ to World Traveller proved worth it. I got a normal business class seat (i.e., a domestic standard business class set, not an international standard one) and, more importantly, got a perfectly positioned seat where I was adjacent a window, had one seat beside me, but because of the configuration of the row in front could walk straight out from my seat to the bulkhead aisle. Lots of leg-room and free movement in and out of the seat. I managed to get Spong’s book read from start to finish in aircraft and saw two movies I’d not seen before: Chicago—very enjoyable and a must-see video for home, and Phone Booth—clever thriller, well made.

Having organised some linen for my room with a passing house-keeping fellow, I showered and ventured out into Dublin to occupy my time before finally heading for bed. I took some advice from the house-keeping guy and headed up to Nassau Street looking for a cafe. I think the guy thought I was nuts not having asked for a pub, but there you go. I wandered around for a while and finally picked a small cafe on a side-street that claimed to have “probably the best coffee in Dublin”.

Well, the coffee was OK, as was the sandwich. At least it filled a hole. I went from there across Nassau Street and jumped on the City Tour bus. €14 got me a 24-hour ticket and a guided drive around Dublin. This proved to be very useful as it fixed some bearings for me and showed that the main elements of the city are not widely separated. One area that it took us was to Phoenix Park – a huge open grassland estate that houses the Dublin Zoo, playing fields, herds of wild deer, the American Ambassador’s residence and the President of Ireland’s residence.

If you look carefully at the top-left-hand window in the main portico you will see a light shining. Apparently, the previous President set the tradition that there would be a light burning there for the Irish returning home (noting the size of the Irish Diaspora). The current president ran with a campaign that the President’s house would be open to the public, and she has kept her word. There are, apparently, free tours of the house every day. A very accessible leadership in Ireland!

Eventually, the tour stopped and rather than change buses and continue, I decided to walk around for a while. First thing I came to was the world’s tallest scultpure, the name of which escapes me. [Actually called ‘Monument of Light’.] A very impressive stainless steel spire. You can just make out that the bottom half has some articistic rendition of something, after which it is just a huge spire. Apparently, there is some engineering trick involved that prevents it from swaying more than 1500mm at the top, which adds to the specialness of the piece. It really was VERY tall. At the moment, O’Connell Parade, where the sculpture is situated, is being renovated to become more of a pedestrian mall, so it goes by the nickname, “the pole in the hole” at present. Very simple folk, the Dubliners; not ones to pull punches when expressing their opinion of things.

More walking brought me to Temple Bar, across the River Liffey that runs through the centre of Dublin, and on the banks of which the vikings began the city in 900AD (or was it 900 years ago?). This is a famous/notorious tourist trap, night club strip, fashion joint, shopping district. But it is also a place which exemplifies the way Dublin has grown up as a city, it seems to me. Below are two pictures, essentially two opposite sides of Temple Bar Square. As you can see, there is real heritage in the city, juxtaposed with appalling modern and post-modern architecture, which gives the place a very odd feel, to me anyway.

Anyway, having made it this far, and it being after lunchtime (in Dublin), I decided it was time to get past the other main hurdle of the trip – a pint of Guiness. So, I bought one at the Quays Hotel, looking out over Temple Bar square. Very nice beer, very large glass (especially with the preceding 35+ hours I’d had), and another reminder not to convert Euros to Aussie Dollars when buying stuff. (The woman in the light coloured top sitting in the window is sitting where I did, only I faced the other way!)

Off I strolled after my Guiness through the rest of the Temple Bar district, sort of soaking up the atmosphere and on to Grafton Street, the other major shopping district that had been pointed out on the bus tour. On the way, I took a couple of photos to try to capture the feeling of some of the city. The first, a look along Dame Street shows the rows of Georgian terraces that were constructed in Dublin during the Georgian period. Apparently a lot of medieval buildings were lost to this construction phase, and there are a LOT of Georgian buildings. The second photo shows the Pen House. Nothing particularly special about this place that I know of, but it shows some of the older, more interesting architecture that still exists in Dublin, and the poor condition that so much of it is in form all the pollution over all the years.

Walking, walking, walking. I discovered (somewhat by accident) the Dublin Tourist Bureau and acquired a few things (importantly a really useful, small, map of Dublin) and walked on. Finally, Grafton Street. And what a crowd. Although Dublin feels like a small place (all the low-rise buildings) and some places are pretty quiet (Temple Bar was relatively deserted), there are times when it is just a madhouse.

Grafton Street was such a time. A huge crowd, all apparently going in the other direction. Very polite, not paying any attention to anything other than their own lives and largely on the phone, but a big crowd nonetheless. I had hoped that Grafton Street might have had some character or some other cachet. All it had were a lot of shoppers and a lot of (the usual) shops. At the top end of the street I took another photo looking back down, for completeness. Immediately across from that vantage point was the Fusilier’s Arch that leads into St Stephen’s Green. This is a future plan so more on that later.

I was starting to flag now and wanted to do some real shopping (birthdays, gifts, memorabilia, etc) so I wandered back down Dawson street, past the Lord Mayor’s house and St Anne’s (which I’d photographed as I went up Grafton Street because I liked the framing of the building in the street) and onto Nassau Street. I stopped here to photograph Mary Molloy, “the tart with the cart” made famous by the song “Cockles and Muscles, Alive, Alive-Oh!” Unfortunately, although I looked in several shops I couldn’t find anything I liked, or could afford. By this time, the sun had come out and the city actually started to look summery!

So, that was my first day, up to writing this entry. The plan from here is to find somewhere nice to have an early dinner, eat, and then retire in good order to overcome the tiredness of jet lag.

PS: Of course the dinner plans were not as simple as it says above. I decided to send a real postcard (that I had already bought and filled out) to Kate so I went looking for stamps. I ended up walking completely around Trinity College and back to the GPO on O’Connell Street (across the River Liffey) before finding somewhere to buy stamps, and I tried a few on the way too! Being inside the GPO was worth the walk though; a beautiful building with real character that has been re-built several times during its 300-year life.

Then I walked all the way back to Goldsmith Hall passing several restaurants that would have sufficed but always thinking “perhaps there’s something nicer just around here”. I ended up having a counter meal at a local pub – The Ginger Man – while reading my book and listening to the lilt of Irish voices in conversation.