A Day in Dublin's Fair City

My girlfriend describes the sleepy sickness as debilitating in the utmost. Waking up on Saturday morning in Dublin, I felt something of the pestilence, a complete inability to haul myself out of bed, even knowing a hot breakfast was waiting in the dining room at the end of the corridor. I had the epiphany that the couple of hours of sleep I managed to get on the trans-Atlantic flight might have been inadequate a bit too late, so two cups of coffee accompanied my bacon, sausage, and puddings.

With that bout of sickness sufficiently shaken off, it was time to see about the next bus into the Dublin city centre. Mom and Dad opted for the Dublin Free Walking Tour of the city, an extensive exploration of the major attractions in the downtown core that, rather than charge a base fee, is totally funded by tips at the end of the tour. Robbie, the booming voice who guided these twenty plus tourists, must have kept to a steady diet of honey to keep his vocal cords smooth, since it took just over three hours, minus a brief coffee break at Temple Bar.

But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. I left them at the Spire and struck out on my own for a while, doing some aimless wandering in a foreign city when I chanced to literally run into them outside of Trinity College with my nose in a tourist map. I decided to join along after all, at least to try it.

“The Titanic was fine when it left here,” he held up his hands and proclaimed at the Ha'Penny Bridge, a pedestrian bridge across the Liffey (that once cost a half penny or ha'penny to cross) that was renovated in 2001 by the same Irish contractors responsible for building the Titanic a hundred years ago. “The problem was the captain was English,” he said pointedly to a couple from England, “and the iceberg was Canadian,” he added for us.

Fair enough. I stayed, and realized that he not only had to speak for three hours, but he had to be on for those three hours. I didn't count the wad of bills he made in tips at the end, but can say that he definitely earned it. Along the south side of the Liffey we continued, along the winding alleyways of Temple Bar, recounting the influence the place, its history, and real-life people had on James Joyce when he was writing Ulysses (the so-called “most unread book in the world,” that every Irish family has on their bookshelf and none have read it), past the narrowest building in Dublin, and the grand facade of the Bank of Ireland (sans windows, due to the fact that there was a window tax back in the day), formerly the site of the Irish Parliament until they were persuaded, by way of bribery, to relocate the centre of political power to London in 1800.

The afternoon stroll really was a narrative of politics and a tumultuous history with the city streets as a backdrop. Remember, the relationship between Ireland and Britain has always been a bit, erm, complicated, to say the least, ever since a dude named Strongbow came over and led a Norman invasion in 1169. Kind of like Ross and Rachel, if the rest of the cast of Friends and all the extras died violent and horrible deaths and you could never watch a rerun without pissing someone off.

Dublin Castle doesn't look like what you think of when you think of a castle, a large open courtyard between rectangular buildings with just a peek of a turret in one corner, but it was the site of the English Crown in Ireland for some 700 years, until 1922. Lady Justice looks out over the courtyard, with her back turned to the city of Dublin, and her scales (up until relatively recently) askew every time it rained and one filled up—the statue is one little sliver of symbolism for the discontent that was constantly bubbling in Dublin throughout its history.

Apparently the Irish people had rebellions every 30 or 40 years. They liked them, Robbie said—they just weren't very good at them. On the doorstep to the castle he took us back to 1916, when Irish rebels were fed up with the English in their country and decided to do something about it. Unfortunately, like he said, they just weren't very good at it, and so when it came time to meet up with Germans militia to get weapons (in the midst of World War One, all they had to ask themselves was “who else hates the English?”), the rebels were late and missed the boat, literally. The Easter Sunday rebellion ended up getting cancelled, although some just took that to mean postponed, and on Easter Monday nineteen rebels went in to take the castle, and actually ended up claiming the City Hall for a few days. It ended with the rebels being handcuffed and locked up, looked upon as traitors and scum by the majority of Dubliners (that opinion would change in a few years, mind you, after a bunch of these rebels were unceremoniously shot in prison).

Like I said, the castle doesn't look like a typical castle, owing to the fact that the medieval structure was reconstructed in the Georgian style in 1684 due to extensive fire damage—however, the Record Tower in the utmost corner still maintains the old appearance, standing at it did since somewhere around the early 1200s. In the late 1500s, 15 year old Red Hugh O'Donnell, the son of a prominent clan leader, was lured into captivity (Dublin was in a state of prohibition at the time, so it only took wine to nab him) and taken as a prisoner in the Record Tower for five years, until he pulled a Shawshank Redemption and escaped via the sewage pipes, out into the blistery cold where he ended up losing some toes to frostbite (better than his companion though, who died from exposure).

Watch out for those dodgy English folks, offering a free drink. A couple years later, Red Hugh accepted another free drink—this one was poisoned, and that's the end of that story. The Record Tower is right alongside the Chapel Royal on one side, and the State Apartments on the other.

On the backside of Dublin Castle is a circular grassy field, with snake-like courses of stone path traced within. This is the site of what, back in the time of Vikings (the original founders of the city), would have been a small lake for mooring ships—what was described as a black pool. In the old Irish language, “dubh” means “black,” “linn” means “pool,” and you just learned something.

A wall stands on one end of the grassy pool, a bandaid solution to the incredible poverty that once existed just outside of Dublin Castle (the Liberties, so called because they were outside the old city limits and thus maintained their own jurisdiction, were the worst slums in Europe at the time). By which I mean, you could either try to do something about the poverty, or hide it behind a wall so that you can't see it from the castle windows (to their credit, they supposedly built the wall as a stable, even though Robbie pointed out there wasn't even enough room for a horse to turn around in there).

Or I guess there was a third option, if you asked Jonathan Swift: eat the babies of the poor, à la A Modest Proposal. We passed the street where he spent the majority of his life, along the way to Saint Patrick's Cathedral where he was the Dean for the 30 years leading up to his death in 1745.

Oh, just so we're clear, Swift was totally a satirist. “They never ate babies in Dublin. I repeat: they never ate babies in Dublin! Galway, maybe. Belfast, definitely.”

Saint Patrick's is where our tour ended—at a very natural conclusion, the story of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and Irish independence, where revolutionary leader Michael Collins, having been imprisoned during the Easter Risings and now regarded as a hero, received the handover of English rule on January 16, 1922, seven minutes late because he was busy shaking hands with grateful Irish nationalists. Allegedly, a British officer told him, “You are seven minutes late Mr. Collins,” and he came back with, “We've been waiting over seven hundred years, you can have the extra seven minutes.”

A cinematic ending that elicited applause, nevermind the Irish codger who walked by and cursed the IRA or the English or something or other, and nevermind the fact that Michael Collins was assassinated in August of that year and that there was an Irish Civil War and general unrest almost immediately afterwards, some of which still lingers. As someone from Dublin mentioned to me later, Dublin is a great place to visit, but living here you develop a cynicism, a general delight in being miserable—I don't know if that's true, but this glimpse of Dublin's unsettling history doesn't make it hard to believe that living here would endow you with a chip on your shoulder.

Anyway, that's a bunch of history. Pint? By now it was mid-afternoon, and I was just where I wanted to be—it was only a short walk to the high-walled and winding pathway via St. James Gate.

The Guinness Storehouse. You start your seven storey ascent of a giant pint glass (big enough to hold 14.3 million pints, if you got it in your mind to do it) in a massive Guinness store, which is frankly no surprise—the whole thing is a giant commercial. That doesn't mean I didn't like it—I actually loved it and call it a Dublin highlight. The whole decor is like a flashy nightclub: spacious, illuminated, pulsing music. The lease for the property, signed by Arthur Guinness (a famous signature if you've ever had a can of Guinness) sits beneath a circular glass floor—a lease that was for no less than 9,000 years. Clearly he figured the beer would do alright, and 250 years in it's making out alright.

Did they need an entire floor devoted to the four ingredients of beer (barley, hops, yeast, and water, which includes a waterfall in the middle)? Or an extensive display documenting the history of Guinness advertisements, or videos from actors playing bartenders describing what a great guy Arthur Guinness was? Probably not, but it's such an iconic brand, and the glossy finish to the whole self-guided experience was a cool touch.

Plus, where else are you going to see a carved pint of Guinness as cool as this?

Incidentally, there was a good explanation of the process of brewing Guinness: mill the barley to create grist, mash it with hot water from the nearby Wicklow Mountains to create sugary wort, boil it with hops and roasted barley, allow fermentation with yeast, and then give it a chance to mature. The yeast that's used in the Guinness process comes directly from Arthur Guinness's original supply—a small amount is carried over from each batch to ensure consistency, and should anything happen, there's some of Arthur's yeast literally locked away in a safe.

At level 2 there was the Guinness taste experience, where you're given a small glass of the thick black drink and guided into a brilliant white room pumping various beer smells into the room (the purpose being to shock the senses).

You're then led into another room where a Guinness taster (an actual job, since the ingredients are natural ones and therefore subject to some flux, although our guide pointed out that he doesn't get as many hours as he'd like) taught us how to properly taste Guinness (or any beer, for that matter). Hold your breath, fill your mouth and flush it around, swallow, and then release your breath to absorb the flavours. Mmm.

Related to the taste of Guinness, you're supposed to drink it at between 5-7 degrees Celsius. If you got even two degrees in either direction outside of that range, you might lose up to 50% of the taste.

Level 4 had an area called the Guinness Academy, where after a fifteen minute queue you're led into a room with a group of about 10 others in a semi circular around bar taps. There, you're taught the correct procedure for pouring the perfect pint of Guinness: check the glass, tip it 45 degrees, pour it until it reaches the bottom of the golden harp on the glass and slowly rise it, allow the surge of brown, almost muddy liquid, to settle, and then top it up so that there's a little bulb of frothy cream rising up over the top, almost like a cappuccino.

All told, when reduced to a science, it takes 119.5 seconds to pour a perfect pint (I guess if you're being crude, you could say two minutes). I'm not going to brag, but I've got a certificate saying I poured the perfect pint, signed by the Guinness Masterbrewer. It's not like they give away literally hundreds of them every day, either.

Finally, perfect pint in hand, I climbed the final few sets of stairs to the Gravity Bar, right on top of the giant pint glass and affording a 360 degree view of the rooftops of Dublin. This beer is popular in Ireland, but this was the first time I saw an entire bar of people exclusively drinking draught Guinness. Especially with a view like this.

On the recommendation of our Free Dublin Tour guide Robbie, I went back to Leo Burdock's (reputedly the best in Dublin) along Temple Bar, where I not only got a deal on fish and chips (for being part of the tour—10 Euros for a decent sized piece of fish, chips, and a Coke), but joined the ranks of the celebrities who have indulged there in the past (U2, Russell Crowe, and B.B. King are some highlights).

The worst part was that some of the grease from the beer battered fish is forever enshrined on my shirt. Small price to pay, I figure.

With just a short amount of time left to spend dawdling, I went back along the north side of the Liffey, passing the grim statues of the Famine Memorial en route.

From there, it was straight to the national theatre, the Abbey Theatre, for a performance of George Bernard Shaw's Heartbreak House. I expected the period piece of a house party right on the cusp of the First World War to play out something like an episode of Downton Abbey. It didn't, and was much zanier and funnier than I expected. What's more, when the bombs fell at the end and the characters wished it would happen again, just to add some excitement to their lives, it was more poignant that I thought as well.

A short bus ride later, I was back at Bellgrove, where my bed was a welcome sight from the cobbled streets of Dublin. Even now that seems like a while ago—we rented a car on Sunday and quickly discovered that Irish roads are different than Canadian roads. In particular, they're a whole lot narrower, and I leave you with this reflection:

“Well Ryan, driving in Quidi Vidi won't be any problem now. Jeez, sure we can go on two wheels down by Mallard Cottage.”

That about sums it up. I intended to keep this narrative going, but I've probably rambled far too long as it is, not to mention the fact that any longer and I'm liable to get hit by the sleepy sickness again. The rest is coming soon, after my rest.

Cheers,

rb