Dublin

Between 12 and 14 percent of the American population considers themselves to have Irish decent. So it is not surprising that many people I talk to have been, plan to, or wish to visit Ireland. It was always high on my list and a few weeks ago I got a chance to at least get a taste of the green island. RG and I took a nice little weekend and spent it in Dublin. To describe Dublin I would say to picture a generic European city with stone and brink builds standing 3 to 5 stories tall. Replace every fifth building with an Irish pub, the ones found in every US city are actually very good representatives of the real thing. Now add statues, sculptures, and other public works of art to 3 out of 5 street corners. Finally imagine that most friendly people surrounding you have fair skin with light brown hair, accept for every fifth person who has red hair, also figure every seventh person is an American visiting the city and making a small ruckus. Add a couple dozen catholic churches, some medieval structures here and there, and a nice river through the center of town then you have Dublin.

The hotel we stayed at was fabulous. The Shelbourne Dublin is one of the oldest hotels in the city and is old world opulent. Woodworking, brass, fabric covered walls, great art work, a good steak restaurant, and a couple of trendy bars make up a wonderful hotel. I would say it was the best hotel I have stayed at to date, but my wife would remind me that I say this for every 3rd hotel we have stayed at. I guess I am just lucky to reap the benefits from constantly traveling for work via free stays at great hotels. This was certainly the most elegant hotel though in the traditional sense. It was also nice because we were upgraded to a suite, unfortunately the suite had two double beds rather than a king. The beds were also a little old and sagged in the middle. So it was a little hard for two people to sleep in one of them but we made due.

I won’t go into a lot of detail about Dublin. I would suggest that everyone go there. The pubs are great places to visit and what most Americans would expect but there are many other things to see as well. Dublin has theater, museums, historic landmarks, and of course the Guinness Storehouse tour. The store house tour is nice, though you don’t actually get to see the production line but you do get to sample some fresh Guinness, so that is nice. My personal favorite sit though was Kilmainham Gaol. A prison that was used to house some of the people that fought for Irish independence in the early part of last century. A large stone structure that at one time housed thousand of prisioners the Gaol has operated for more than a hundred years. It is a very interesting tour because it reflects a turbulent time through Irish history.

The strangest site we visited had to be the Bram Stoker Museum. This museum was out of the center of town across the street from where Stoker lived. It is funny because it is housed in the same building as a Health Club and a Bar/Night Club. In fact you have to walk through the bar night club, go up some back stairs, pay in a back room that houses the pool tables, continue toward the rear of this long building, and pass the bathrooms where you find yourself at the entrance of the self paced museum. The museum is actually part museum part haunted house. The first part of it is exhibits of photos, writings, and artifacts from Stoker’s life along with some movie posters from various Dracula related movies. After that you walk through a cheese special effects hallway that transports you through space and time to the scenes from the Dracula story. These are fun and for the most part relatively accurate to the book. They are animatronics displays that move when triggered by sensors. Only a couple things jump out at you so it isn’t too scary, but it is still fun.

So basically we had a great time in Dublin. We had our share of Guinness, had some traditional Irish stew, saw some great sites, and saw some strange sites. It is certainly worth a weekend, if I had more time we certainly would have traveled more of the country and seen more. I still have on my list to someday visit the Blarney stone and find a leprechaun or two.