I had the chance to attend a medical conference in Dublin on Tuesday/Wednesday, October 21/22, and I flew in on early Saturday morning after giving a talk in Boston at Harvard that Friday. Here are some scattered notes and photos on a weekend in Dublin. Some notes on logistics at bottom.
Plan of the City
Like Paris and London, Dublin is split by an east-west river, the Liffey. The city center and main entertainment areas are south of the river. But there’s important stuff on the north side too.
Hotel
I stayed at the Hilton Dublin Charlemont, which is about a mile south of city center on a canal. To one side, the Luas tram line runs to city center, St Stephens Green (two stops, six minutes). To the other side, the 44 and 61 buses run past Stephens Green and to city center (61) and the north bank (44).
Canal view from my room - glimpse of train upper left.
Saturday
Saturday morning I walked south to a village area beyond the canal called Ranelagh. It was a bit like the Notting Hill area of London.
Later I walked north to Stephens Green park in City Center. Saturday was sunny, 70's in mid afternoon, not a cloud, but windy. Park:
From the park, I rode the double decker tour bus on a 3 or 4 mile route for a couple hours with commentary.
At 2 pm, apparently seeking a major nerd award, I took a city walking tour in German with a group of 12. I usually get 80% of German language museum tours but here, 100 percent, because the guide (in black, below) was a Trinity College student whose German was very good but not too fast and with an English accent. (Advertisement for this tour, here.)
City Center areas. There is a long busy pedestrian promenade called Grafton Street. Another restaurant and bar district, like Greenwich Village, is called Temple Bar.
In the evening I went back to the St Stephens/Grafton area.
I went to a play called BORSTAL BOY, based on Brendan Behan’s autobiography about his teen years. As a 16 year old in 1939, he had been convinced to run arms to Liverpool, and as a result spent 3 years in an English jail.
After the play, at 1030 pm on a Saturday night, the Grafton area was alive and active:
A street performer was playing Hotel California on electric guitar:
The original Parliament building - the Parliament the English disbanded in 1801:
Sunday
Sunday morning I set my alarm for 9 am (1 am California time) and took a taxi to Killmainhal Jail, a prison from the 1780s to 1920s. I had really enjoyed earlier prison tours at Eastern Penitentiary in Philadelphia and in East Berlin at Hohenschönhausen, used by the East German secret police. (Nerd award for obscure prison tours.)
Killmainham:
I got to Killmainham early because capacity is limited and lines get very long later in the day.
Part of the prison history is a very worth-while three-story museum of Irish political history. Rebellions against the English date back to the 1700s (e.g. the period of the American and French revolutions.) Ireland had a Dublin parliament the English dissolved in 1801. The rebellion of 1916 was short lived and not even widely popular - imagine if the Michigan Militia started throwing bombs for Michigan to secede - but the rapid English execution of 12 political leaders in Dublin at Killmainham only a few days after the 1916 event made the English leadership seem especially brutal. In the ensuring years violence escalated, including warfare and fires badly damaging the city Cork. With additional battles, this led to the Treaty of 1921 providing a British Northern Ireland of 5 counties and a relatively independent South. However, some in the south viewed the Treaty of 1921 as an intolerable half-way measure, and this led to the Irish Civil War in the 1920s. As in the play Borstal Boy, ongoing bombings in England and imprisonments of the I.R.A. were well established by the 1930s and escalated with new vigor into the 1980s. There was a major settlement between the U.K. and Northern Ireland in 1998 and continued political changes up to the last several years.
After the museum I walk to Heuston Station, Dublin’s westside station, and took the red line train along the north bank, crossing to see the Dublinia exhibit in a museum by Trinity Cathedral, covering Viking and medieval Ireland. After fish and chips (see Logistics, below) which I ate in the park by St Patrick’s Cathedral, I head back to a hotel pit stop by mid afternoon.
St Patrick’s and a dog that looks like an Irish cousin of our dog Trixie at home:
I noticed two interesting markers in the Cathedral. One is to Mrs Susanna Handcock, died 1815, by her son Rev. Handcock. Members of Parliament generally became very wealthy, according to my Saturday tour guide (see, I did understand it in German); the wealth explains why her son the minister could afford the large cathedral marker. Second, the plaque in 1815 refers to the “late Parliament” because the English crown had dissolved the Dublin parliament in 1801. At first glance I thought Susanna had been an M.P. (very surprising) but on second reading it just refers to her husband William.
Another plaque describes a military death in Afghanstan in 1842. In the first Sherlock Holmes story in 1887, Dr. Watson had recently been injured in another English war in Afghanistan. And of course we are in Afghanistan today, approaching 200 years later.
Sunday Night
…I treked south a half mile from the Hilton into Ranelagh Village, which is a hopping upscale restaurant district at night. A foodie could explore each night for two weeks - I ate at an Italian bistro called Milano and the thin-crust pizza was incredible. Some photos of Ranelagh Villlage below.
And Monday…back to work.
A footnote tying things together.
When I was a sophomore at Stanford, 1978-79, I took a German class with an adjunct professor, Sigrid Schacter, from Berkeley. I had a big crush on her revealed mostly as staying after class to ask verb and grammar questions longer than anyone else. We kept in touch a little, and sometime in the next year, we had dinner at a small Russian restaurant in Berkeley and went to a one man play by Shay Duffin where he portrayed Brendan Behan on stage. (Duffin died in 2010 at age 79). So it was a link between my German afternoon tour and the play in the evening. Sadly, I still remember the moment later in my college years when a woman on the Stanford German faculty, Katherina Mommsen, saw me in the Quad and asked, hadn’t I been in one of Schacter’s classes? I said yes, and was informed she’d died the month before of colon cancer in her 30s.
Logistics:
* At the airport you can get an €30 Freedom Pass for 3 days. This includes two round trip tickets on a public express bus (#747, value €10) to City Center, one day travel on a double-decker tour bus with commentary (value €19), and 3 days of free transit on city buses.
* The double deck tour buses with commentary have a 90 minute route and this was totally worthwhile for orientation.
* You’ll need separate tickets to use the LUAS light rail, which runs east and west on the north bank (red line) and south from St Stephens Green (green line). The light rail is €1.70 one way, €3.40 roundtrip, and €6.40 day pass. (E.g.: Get a day pass if you make more than 1 round trip.)
* You’ll want two apps. (1) Dublin by foot is very confusing. To get around with GPS, use the free app CITYMAPS2GO and download Dublin. (2) To use the buses get the free city bus i-app DUBLIN BUS.
* [There is also a workaround called Save Maps in the Google Apps map. Google it to find out how.]
* Dublin Bus App: The blue bullseye circle near the bottom is the Dublin Bus app finding my hotel on GPS, and the blue pins are where the #44 bus will take you. We can do this stuff because we live in 2014, not in ancient times like 1650, 1850, or 2010.
* If you are in a place with a bathroom, go to the bathroom. You will never know when it is 6 hours to the next sighting of a bathroom for a tourist in Dublin.
* Fish and chips. They measure the fish and fries in a metal bucket, and pour onto a large wax paper, which is folded into a packet and stuffed inside a brown paper envelope. Ask for napkins and if possible a plastic fork, because a big soft flaky hot-from-the-oil slab of crumbling moist cod is not exactly finger food.
* Pictures. Some pictures in this blog taken with the iPhone 5 iOS camera app, some with a simple iOS app called FEW (focus, exposure, white-balance). Most touched up with InstaFlash Pro editor.
