Dublin. September 6, 2016

Greetings from Dublin –

Thanks for all the notes about our food poisoning… on the mend; eating normally now and looking forward to dinner. 

Following breakfast (actually was able to eat it), we headed for a walk through town – but naturally made the opposite turn on the quay from where we were headed…. And decided rather than turning around to just head in that direction, stopping often for Mike and Richard to “test out various benches” along the way. The tree-lined quays are also lined with benches, making walking very easy and pleasant. Eventually, Elizabeth and I left Mike and Richard in the lovely Merrion Square near the lake. It’s the Georgian section of town, surrounded by stately Georgian homes (once residential, now many used as offices.

Then we headed through the town – through the walking streets, stopping at several shops (Elizabeth bought a really beautiful woolen blanket throw), through Trinity College campus (quite lovely – and clearly the start of school, with students touring the campus and settling in), meandering through the Temple Bar neighborhood on the other side of the Liffy, over pedestrian bridges that literally line the canals, and stopping briefly at the Liebeskind-designed theater (overdone and very self-conscious). Elizabeth’s comment:” I’d much rather be looking at the canal with my back to the building.” After that we strolled past the famine statues, and over the Calatrava bridge heading full circle back to the hotel – a 7.5 mile walk in all… and met up with the guys who were having Irish whiskeys in the outdoor bar area of the hotel.

Tonight we went for dinner to the Temple Bar neighborhood – clearly a hangout for college students with Trinity College close by… But there’s a full range of restaurants in the area. We had reservations at Boxty.. good thing because the wait for a table was more than an hour. We were joined by a friend from Tacoma and her son who is starting graduate school at University College Dublin next week. The Temple Bar neighborhood was the location of the first performance of Handel’s Messiah in 1742 and apparently an annual performance is held on the street.  

In the 18th century this area was the major prostitution center. Later, the area declined in popularity and then suffered from urban decay with many buildings falling into disrepair. About 40 years ago there was a proposal to construct a bus terminal, but while that project was in the planning stages, many buildings were leased out at low rents and then small shops, artists, and galleries popped up. The protests led to the cancelation of the bus terminal project and an NGO was set up to oversee renovation of the area as a cultural quarter. 

According to Richard and Elizabeth, who visited Dublin in the 1980s, Dublin is a totally changed place – in the 80s there were virtually no restaurants, very few ways to cross the canals, and poverty evident everywhere. Indeed. it’s a very different city today.

More tomorrow-

Fern