Drinking in Dublin: Part 2

This post is part of a series called A Whale of a Time in Ireland

Wandering around when we arrive in a new place is one of our favorite things to do. I’m always surprised at what we stumble upon and Dublin did not disappoint. We started with the Temple Bar area, which is known as the cultural center of the city and also hosts The Temple Bar, probably the most famous pub in Dublin. No doubt, the pub’s walls prove its reputation, littered with stickers and patches that chronicle visits from its many global guests. I even found a patch from the Elmira Police Department in Smallville, New York near where I grew up.

THE Temple Bar

Elmira, New York!

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Temple Bar & The Quays

Temple Bar also reminded me a tiny bit of my current hometown. Both are full of pubs with music spilling from them, but Temple Bar has decidedly more cobblestone, flowers, and people who talk funny. The musicians played authentic Irish tunes and popular cover songs as well. Much like the east side of my city, the buildings are colorful, expressive, and engaging. The entire area (including the Quays, photos of which I’m going to lump into this section) screamed, “I am young and interesting! Pay attention to me!” We loved it.

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The Icon Walk

Continuing our stroll, we came across a super cool public art project called The Icon Walk. It’s a compilation of panels affixed to buildings along a grouping of alleyways in Temple Bar. The project illustrates Ireland’s rich cultural heritage with sections on everything from writers and fashion to athletes and music. The starting panel caught my attention right away with this darling opening, “Irish identity, that charming something that is largely regarded with a smile around the planet, draws millions to visit this island nation.” Indeed it does.

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Stained glass exhibit honoring the work of Harry Clarke.

Summation panel in full

The Icon Walk is lively, educational, and beautifully written. Diego and I gawked for a couple of hours taking it all in. Did you know that Bram Stoker was Irish? Yep, me neither. I learned a lot of fun facts, but what most inspired me was the message of hope that I found in the project’s depiction of the nation’s growth over the last 100 or so years since their independence from Britain in 1919. It also provided some context for current events around why Northern Ireland is adamantly opposed to a border wall with the Brexited United Kingdom; the lessons of division are fresh. Diego took a short video to give you a better feel for the project, and I want to share a brief excerpt of the summary panel (pictured in its entirety below).

The point here is to use this exercise as a starting point to begin to accept differences between peoples and cultures; to see where peoples can lose their way or where they can locate greatness. We begin to understand, that little is constant in a changing world but there is virtue in being able to grasp at and polish the elements within a culture which have delivered integrity or genius to its people.

To respect, to value, to identify these elements and to hold them as national treasure is all our jobs. It is useful for us to ask if we are doing this task or more specifically are each one of us doing this task? Before we are anything, we are human and culture just lets us know, how good we are being, as a nation, at being good humans… There is a quote from Henry Thoreau that best describes the experience of being Irish for me, “I am defeated all the time, yet to victory I am born.”

Being Irish has a lot to do with having the courage and determination to know this and to drive toward excellence. Being human is to know that greed is not a virtue, that we are all part of a greater design…

Mind your head; Read,Grow in mind,Grow in spirit.Become worthwhile.

History by Firehose…er, Walking Tour

We also took a walking tour of the city and tried to absorb some of Dublin’s history — firehose style. We covered a lot of ground and more than 1,000 years of history in just a few hours so the details are a little fuzzy, but I included what I could remember about Diego’s photos in the captions. What stood out for me:

A treasure trove of Viking history lurks beneath Dublin’s streets, but it’s too expensive and time consuming to excavate so the Irish government mostly decided to build stuff on top of it instead. There are some pretty cool inlaid bronze casts of Viking artifacts in sidewalk pavers around the city so that’s something, I suppose.
Parts of the medieval city wall still stands.
The Irish constitution specifically states that artifacts belonging to the State are the property of the people and must be freely accessible to them. In other words, all of Ireland’s museums are free, which is completely awesome.

The Spire on famed O’Connell Street

Cool details abound in the city…this is the base of a street light. St. Patrick’s cathedral is peeking out in the background.

John’s Lane Cathedral

The Ha’penny Bridge over the Liffey River

Christ Church Cathedral

A bird with tude and a rainbow

Another view of the Ha’penny Bridge

Love locks on the Ha’penny Bridge. Fun fact, the city has to remove these from time to time due to the maintenance issues the little rust producers cause. The last removal weighed in at 300KG/661LBS!

Dublin Castle, once the seat of government in Ireland and still important to government types for reasons I cannot recall.

Another view of the Ha’penny Bridge

Cool bronze casts of Viking artifacts set into sidewalk pavers throughout the city give a nod to the city’s Nordic roots.

A chill afternoon in the courtyard of Trinity College

Courtyard of Trinity College

National Museum of Ireland

After the tour we decided to test our guide’s highly suspicious theory that the museums were free. The closest test subject was the National Museum of Ireland. We went to the Archeology branch of the museum and it was, in fact, free! The museum focused on prehistoric Ireland with creepy preserved bog bodies (spared you the photos – you’re welcome) and artifacts from the Viking and medieval periods. There was a special exhibition from Egypt as well. Here are a few snaps…

I felt all cultured reading about the church relics and whatnot, but to be honest, I was most impressed by the super cool building that houses the museum. Diego was disinclined to freak out about the architecture so I have little proof of how beautiful the building was. That ceiling though...here’s a link to a photo of it if you’re interested.