Ireland

The penultimate post- concluding thoughts and observations to follow.

I went to Ireland for a week, and since I was with my brother James we stayed in nice places and ate (and drank) very well. The first stop was Belfast, the Northern Irish city whose 20^th-century struggles with violent sectarianism are known to many. The city has made a huge effort to clean up its image and market itself to visitors, and I must admit it was nothing like what I expected. The nightlife was definitely visible and the CBD seemed dense, but an almost small-town charm could also be felt in Belfast. One evening we went to a great Indian place claiming to be “Ireland’s first curry house”, and the next night we found a cozy pub with live traditional music. One day was almost entirely spent on a day-trip to the Giants Causeway, which also had stops at the Bushmills Distillery for lunch and the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. The Causeway was definitely worth seeing, and the Antrim Coast Road was beautiful in its own right, but I do wish I had spent another day in Belfast itself, before catching the train down to Dublin. James said he actually preferred Belfast to its larger Southern counterpart, although I’m not quite sure. 

In Dublin we visited the Guinness distillery, which is a seven-story building shaped like a pint glass. Entry is something like €12 ($15), but that gets you a free pint at the bar on the top floor, which has great views of the city. Another day was spent in the seaside village of Howth, north of the city, which has a great hiking trail along the cliffs which border the Irish Sea. Since I needed to mail some things, we had an excuse to visit the Dublin General Post Office, an important site in the Easter Rising of 1916 (the exterior columns famously still have visible bullet-marks on them) which now also houses a small museum. A literary pub crawl on the last evening left me incredibly tired and hung-over for my 6:30am flight back to Edinburgh, but was definitely worth it. I don’t know many other people who have downed pints in Davy Byrnes’ Pub, a favorite of James Joyce. Overall, to my American eyes and ears, Dublin seemed a lot like a UK city, with a number of distinctively (maybe deliberately) Irish symbols. The use of Irish Gaelic alongside English on most public signs, for example, was very interesting but seemed more like a conscious effort to show nationalistic pride than a convenience to Irish Gaelic monoglots (which I’m reasonably certain don’t exist).  But to conclude, I hugely enjoyed the trip, and I’d like to see more of Ireland one day. Nothing beats sitting in a Dublin pub and hearing a local band play “Galway Girl” while you reflect on the history of this island, and its influence on Britain, America and elsewhere. 

Giants Causeway (photo credit: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/369) 

                                                     

Belfast from the hills to the west (photo credit: www.odysseycoachtours.co.uk)                      

The top of the pint glass at the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, where you get a free pint and great views (photo credit: http://www.free-city-guides.com/dublin/guinness-storehouse/)               

 

 Davy Byrnes' pub, probably on Bloomsday (photo credit: http://www.stay.com/dublin/bar-pub/11873/davy-byrne-s/)