St. Patrick's Day

No St. Patrick's Day celebration is complete without first having a few pints in the pubs while listening to Irish music. Here's the best & the worst of night.

Best Scene: Temple Bar (in the street)

The street running down Temple Bar was packed with people playing music, dancing, and dressing up in drag. (No, we aren't sure what that was about, either.)



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Best Music Scene: Oliver St. John Gogarty

The Trad music session was loud and lively with patrons singing and dancing along. One guy even tried to get Matt to do a little jig, but he wasn't having any of it.

Best Brews: Porterhouse Brewing Co

Porterhouse and its nine house brews made a great place to hang out and enjoy the craic on St. Patty's Day. Okay, it would be fun on any day, as they have live music 7 days a week and an awesome stage that is visible from every floor. We might have even visited the place three times during our stay in Dublin - we had to try all nine microbrews! My favorite was the Oyster Stout - it was just about perfect - strong but not bitter. I also discovered my new favorite beer here - Fruli - a Belgian white fruit beer. Delish! I hope Stubbie's in Gainesville stocks it for when I get home.

If the music and the beer weren't enough to give this pub its atmosphere and craic, the band (Sliotar) was relieved during a break with the world premier of "The Simpsons go to Ireland".








Best View: A Pint from the Grocer and seat on the River Liffey Pier

Needing to take a break from the crowds and grab a bite to eat, we picked up a sandwich and pint from the grocery store and headed across the river. We enjoyed our dinner (complete with Cadbury candy bars) and pints with a lovely lit-up view of the Temple Bar area from across the River Liffey.

Worst Line (and Crowd): Temple Bar

We had to have at least a pint in the flagship bar of Temple Bar. And just a pint we had... After waiting in line for a bit - yes, we should have known - the crowd inside was just too packed to stay any longer.

Worst Floor: Fitzsimons

Market Street and Tiger Town Tavern's floors have nothing on this place. My shoes were still sticking to the floor the next morning as I walked through the Old Library at Trinity College. The roof top terrace bar and its cool air almost made up for it, but then we would shuffle our feet and be reminded of the filth we were standing in. (I've never been in a more disgusting place.)

We had a blast spending St. Patrick's Day in Dublin!

St. Patty's Day Parade

We all know how Matt feels about parades and he wasn't thrilled to go to another one after the New Year's Day Parade in London (justifiably so). He wasn't quite kicking and screaming, but I did have to bribe him with Irish coffee to get him near the parade route.

This parade did not disappoint.

The characters from The Simpsons entertained us pre-parade to promote their upcoming episode "The Simpsons go to Ireland" (more about that later).

The theme for the parade was "The Sky's the Limit" (even with the woes of 2009) - no kidding, the parade brochure actually said that! So the parade was filled with fanciful characters with wings and feather and crazy flying machines. Here is a sample of our favorite attractions (you can find the rest of the photos here).

The parade moved fast and was the perfect length - a little over an hour. After the parade, we headed over to St. Stephen's Green for a picnic in the beautiful sunshine. Apparently, so did everyone else in Dublin. It was a lovely afternoon and every Dubliner seemed to be enjoying the sunshine before hitting the pubs.

Dublin

We started our visit to Dublin with a trip to Kilmainham Goal (or jail). It was opened in 1796 and was often used by the British to hold political prisoners from the numerous Irish rebellions and uprisings. It was here that the leaders of the Easter Rising of 1916 were shot and made martyrs for the Irish independence movement. In addition, the jail was a model for its time, implementing the latest research in both its construction and treatment of prisoners. The east wing was remodeled in the Victorian style with single occupancy cells (a new idea in those days) and lots of windows (to remind the prisoners of their lost freedom).You might recognize the prison, as it has been used as the set for many TV shows, movies and even a U2 music video. During the hour long tour we learned the story of the fight for Irish independence and about daily life in the prison.The next stop in the tour of Dublin was the Guinness Storehouse - a beer Disneyland for adults. While no actual beer is brewed in the Storehouse, it is 7 levels of everything Guinness. (The rumor is they don't let you into the actual brewery because you would see the Budweiser trucks leaving :). The first level tells about the four ingredients found in every pint: barley, hops, yeast, and water. Did you know every batch of Guinness is brewed with the same strain of yeast? A batch of the yeast is kept in a vault in the director's office for emergencies.
I enjoyed the floor that displayed the various advertising campaigns from over the years. Here is my favorite:The Gravity Bar is located on the top floor of the Storehouse and provides you with a pint and a 360° view of Dublin. You can take your own tour of the Storehouse here.
We finished off the day with a trip to Brazen Head Inn, the oldest pub in Dublin (c. 1198). We were treated to a Trad session with Rafferty. I really enjoyed watching the woman play the electric violin.
More photos here

Driving on the Wrong Side of the Road

With public transit not an efficient option outside the major cities in Ireland, Laura and I were forced to do our countryside sightseeing by rental car. Unfortunately, the Irish - like most people previously subjugated by the British - drive on the wrong (by "wrong" I mean "left") side of the road. As the driver on this trip, piloting an automobile in Ireland was a part of our plans that had long worried me, and as if driving on the left were not nerve racking enough on its own, also consider:

1. I hadn't driven a car in more than six months.
2. I hadn't regularly driven a stick shift (the standard in Europe) since trading up from my first car, a 1982 Ford F-100 Pickup, more than a decade ago.
3. As a right-handed person, my left hand is almost completely devoid of coordination, which is needed to operate a stick shift on the left-hand side.
   
4. Our trip started at night, in the dark.
   
5. It was also drizzling.
6. According to Rick Steves, Ireland and Portugal have the most traffic accidents in Western Europe.
   

If the pedals had also not been in the usual configuration, I think I might have opted to walk.

Despite all these reservations, we set off from the Dublin airport to Athlone last Friday night in part one of a two installment drive across the island to Doolin. The trek required a monumental level of focus and teamwork between driver and navigator. We prepped ourselves before every turn ("Remember, right is the big turn!"), roundabout entry ("Clockwise 270 degrees!"), or exit ("That was our exit..."). I'm happy to report there were no accidents and only a few angry honks, the first of which was a reminder to us that 80 kph is a lot slower than 80 mph.


Here's a general look at our trek in Ireland; we took a more scenic route than this, but you get the general idea. (View Larger Map)

Our biggest difficulty that first night, though, was in the few instances when we needed to turn around. At one point, we found ourselves at a dead end in a neighborhood on an unfavorable slope with no idea how to get the car into reverse. I am familiar with subtle methods of reverse lockout, like pushing down while shifting, but nothing I tried worked. Instead, we opted for neutral and just pushed the car in reverse; this works well enough but isn't something you want to do in front of a crowd, especially a crowd of foreigners. We found out later that all these little manual cars in Europe have a ring on the shifter that has to be pulled up while shifting into reverse. It was so simple, and yet completely unobvious at the time...

In the end, braving the roads of Ireland, and more specifically the Irish countryside (at one point we actually encountered someone herding their livestock down the road using their car) was well worth it. More on what we saw to come...
This straggler couldn't keep up with the rest of the herd rumbling down the road.

The Authentic Shakespeare

I had written back in December about our visit to the British Library and the interesting bit of trivia that only two depictions of Shakespeare - a print on the title page of the First Folio and a bust - are widely regarded as authentic. ("Authentic" here generally means either created during a sitting of Shakespeare himself or at least approved by those who knew him when he was living.) According to an article posted today at TIME Magazine, it turns out that what may be an authentic painting of the Bard has long been at the home of a family that lives outside Dublin. The current owner just happened to notice one day that his painting looked an awful lot like another painting of William Shakespeare! It turns out his painting was probably the original from which the one he saw was copied.

I have often thought about how much cooler "junk" must be in Europe than in the United States. Surely throughout Europe there are many people with timeless treasures in their attic, a priceless antique at their store, or some historically significant document in their drawers that is quietly awaiting the right set of eyes to discover it. Such possibilities must make European markets, estate sales, etc. very exciting for true treasure hunters. To discover a soon-to-be priceless painting of Shakespeare in one's own collection? That must be...well, priceless.