Dublin, Ireland

About 3 weeks ago I traveled to Dublin, Ireland, with Natalie, one of the interns at the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance. Her brother plays on a Canadian national rugby team who were playing a game there, so she extended an invitation to anyone interested. Ireland was definitely on my mental list of places to visit so I joined in.

We flew out of Geneva on Sunday morning the 12th and arrived at our hostel by noon. This was actually my first hostel experience and it wasn’t bad at all. After checking in, we decided to head downtown and look around.
I was immediately struck by how Western/commercial/capitalist Dublin is after being in Geneva. It was nice to be in a place where English is the main language again, but familiar stores and fast food chains abounded and I’m not sure if that’s such a good thing.
We ventured into the Temple Bar area which is basically the city’s arts district. There were a lot of nice shops and restaurants that we browsed there before heading back across the river to check out the main shopping district.
The weather was decent for the whole trip, though cloudy, which seemed pretty appropriate for Dublin.
Here’re some gray skys over the sort of central square at O’Connell Street:

After wandering around for the whole afternoon/early evening, we headed back to the hostel to get some rest (but not before I saw a few old Friends reruns in the TV room—gotta love American cultural imperialism).

We decided that we needed to see some of the countryside, so on Monday we took the “Wild Wicklow” Tour around some of the outlying areas. The busride started with a quick survey of downtown London including the studio where U2 recorded their first album (and the massive graffiti wall now adorning it) before heading out to DunLaoghaire Harbour.
Here are a couple pictures of the rocky coast and the sea:



There’s a tower at one end of the Harbour which James Joyce apparently stayed in for a couple days and then referenced in Ulysses. As you have certainly already ascertained, it is now known as the Joyce Tower and houses a small Joyce museum. Despite the tower’s unremarkable appearance, the gift shop had some nice postcards.

I also came across this roadsign which I’m surprised I had never encountered before:


From there the bus took us further out to a hillside that features the homes of pretty much every Irish celebrity in existance (Bono, the Edge, Van Morrison, Enya—she actually has a castle rather than just a house, and a few others; Daniel Day-Lewis lives elsewhere but we did pass his place too).
It was then time to stop for coffee and craftshopping at a little place called Avoca. The store was okay, but I found the grounds much more interesting. Apparently the land was owned by one of the Jameson Whiskey people who was something of a horticulturist. This variation of Cypress is thought to be the only one of its kind:

He also brought over Redwoods:

And I thought this tree (a birch, probably?) was pretty amazing:


We next headed up into the mountains where the boglands and wild heather run rampant. This area, the Sally Gap, is also home to the most filmed place in Ireland—this lake that was the backdrop to the wedding scene in Braveheart (which was shot in Ireland, not Scotland, because they offered Gibson full use of the Irish National Army) and the location of Excalibur’s emergence in the film of the same name:


It was quite windy up there and we all got blown around a bit, so our driver Bob gave us all shots of Jameson before we continued on to lunch.

We ate at a local pub where I had an amazing bowl of Guinness stew. The meal was huge and quite tasty. Behind the pub was a creek that proves that even the water in Dublin looks like Guinness:
(In actuality, the water is brown because of all the peat in the area)

Next, it was off to Glendalough, a 6th century monastic settlement featuring some beatiful scenery and interesting tombstones.
These arches are supported entirely on their own weight; no mortar or anything besides good engineering to keep them together:
The gate to the graveyard:

A traditional Celtic Cross:

Holly bushes growing in the yard:


Past the cemetary and monastery were footpaths leading past a couple lakes. We were allowed to go at our own pace here and take things in as we wanted. It reminded me a bit of being up in the hills in Assisi as I wandering amongst the trees, taking in the wonders of creation.
I passed one forested area that reminded me a lot of a Van Gough painting at the Cincinnati Art Museum I wrote a paper on for freshman Art History:
Here’s some of the scenery surrounding the lake (I took several pictures to get the correct exposures for the sky and the landscape but I’ve been too lasy to composite them):
I also wandered up another path and found this little waterfall:
And finally, I thought this creek looked like something out of Robin Hood or some similar type of film:

That area being the last feature of the tour, the bus dropped us back in Dublin where we grabbed dinner before meeting up later on to finally see Borat. (I thought the movie was hilarious, but as an American watching it in a foreign country I found myself praying that the rest of the moviegoers didn’t think all of us are like the idiots in the film.)

On Tuesday morning Natalie and I headed out to see some of the other Dublin attractions we hadn’t yet made it to. First off we went down to the Famine Memorial (which I had first come across during a morning run the previous day—pretty freaky in the breaking dawn when you’re not expecting it):
We also went by the Customs House which is fairly architecturally famous:

But that was all a precursor to the main event: a tour of the Guinness Storehouse.

Unlike the Anheuser-Busch tour in Colorado, the Guinness tour was entirely self-guided thanks to really innovative multimedia presentations and excellent environmental graphic design.


After the tour of the brewing process was a marketing display (complete with tv monitors that had every television commercial ever for the beer) and a special wing devoted to illustrator John Gilroy who created all the animal ads. They had a lot of the original concept art including vibrant gouache paintings:

And the best part? The seventh floor of the building houses a 360 degree bar where you are served a complementary pint of fresh brew and a breathtaking view of the city.

Here’s a look down at part of the brewery complex:

Following the tour, we headed out to see Natalie’s brother’s rugby match which was quite entertaining, though Canada ended up losing to Ireland by one point. We then finished off our Dublin experience by having dinner at the Porterhouse Brewing Co., an Irish chain comparable to Rock Bottom, which makes the best Hefeweisen I’ve ever had, before attending a play at a theater across the street. It was nice to get a glimpse into the city’s political and economic culture through this artform, though at some points the play tried a bit too hard. (Also interesting was the fact that half of the characters were ostensibly Americans living in Dublin.)

Before I knew it, it was time to head back to the hostel for a final night and then the airport the following morning. I made it back to Geneva by mid-afternoon on Wednesday with just enough time for a couple hours of work to finalize plans for my Southwestern USA trip the following day. But that’s a story for another night…

Cheers!