The first thing we noticed as the taxi took us to our lodgings in Iona Place was how much tidier Dublin was compared to English towns. Practically all handkerchief-sized front gardens were as neat as pins and while small, each one was enclosed in a smart, shiny black wrought iron fence. The streets were virtually rubbish free and there seemed to exude more of a sense of pride in the city. We later learned that Dublin is famous for it’s front doors, covering all the colours of the rainbow. Each householder vies with the whole street to have the brightest painted door and indeed, the doors looked as though they get a fresh coat of paint every year.
After settling into our hotel room, we headed into town but I can’t remember if we took the bus on this first occasion or if we walked. I think we did take the bus, which dropped us near McConnell Street, the main artery of Dublin city. I do remember that we walked to The Old Jameson Distillery thinking it wasn’t too far away but by the time we found Arran Quay, the distance was quite adequate. The only way to see through the old distillery is to pay £3.95 (Irish) each for the guided tour.
The tour was very interesting – Pete and I didn’t know a great deal about Irish Single Malts, our speciality being Scottish Single Malts. The Irish distil their whiskey 3 times, the Scots twice and the Americans once. Naturally, the Irish consider their whiskey to be the most superior and Pete and I have to admit that by comparison, it is smoother than the Scottish whiskey. However, it is a matter of taste, as was proved at the end of the tour when 4 people from the tour were asked to be tasters. They had to blind taste 3 glasses of liquid and choose the one they liked best. Then, they had to taste a 4th glass, which turned out to be American bourbon, and although one taster quite liked it, they had to concede it was very rough compared to the more civilized twice and thrice distilled malts of Scotland and Ireland. Lastly, the tasters were asked to pick their overall favourite ‘drop’ and 2 chose the Bushmills (an Irish whiskey now owned by Jameson), 1 chose the Jameson and the 4th couldn’t make up her mind between the Jameson or the Scots single malt. She had to have further tastes and despite good-natured reminders that she was in Ireland and in the Jameson Distillery, she finally chose the Scots. We were all given a small glass of Jameson to sip while the taste test was going on.
By this time, it was approaching tea-time – or, at least, time to start searching for a nice restaurant. Pete had heard about Temple Bar, an area of narrow cobble-stoned streets that is famous not only for its European restaurants to traditional Irish pubs but also for its art galleries, recording studios, second-hand clothes shops and craft shops. I think we picked up a brochure in one of the souvenir shops with a map marking the tourist spots. The Temple Bar was on the other side of the River Liffey, the famous river that cuts the city in two and over which numerous renowned bridges span. One such bridge is The Ha’penny Bridge, which got it’s name by merit of the fact that for a number of years, people were charged half a penny to cross it to pay for the cost of building it and although the bridge was named the Wellington Bridge, the Ha’penny Bridge stuck. A cast iron footbridge only, it arches gracefully from one side of the Liffey to the other, the preserved Victorian lamps spaced at intervals evocative of the Olde Worlde era.
After wandering around the Temple Bar area checking out the many restaurants, we decided on a Sicilian establishment. It was small, looked new and was on the outskirts of the area but the waiters were tripping over themselves to serve us, with the utmost politeness. Best of all, it was a non-smoking restaurant and for us, it was such a pleasure to eat our first meal in a public place without the stench of cigarette smoke. All over England, everybody smokes and the pong of stale smoke is ingrained into the wood, the carpet, the curtains…
The night was still young after our lovely meal and we went looking for night-time entertainment amongst the pubs and clubs.
Next morning, we went back to O’Connell Street, a 50 metre wide boulevard, the centre of which is lined with bicycle stands, trees and monuments. The most impressive monument is the O’Connell statue, in honour of the man who was responsible for campaigning for a Catholic voice in parliament at Westminster. Before Irish Catholic’s gained the right to stand for election as member’s of parliament though, they first had to fight for the right to vote and O’Connell spent his life doing this by passive means. The rabble, of course, wanted to take up arms (pitch-forks etc in their case) so he had a two—fold job in convincing them violence wasn’t the way to winning their cause, while showing the English and Protestant land owners the Catholics were human beings with the right to respect and equal opportunity. I’ve read an historical account of the potato famine and have discovered how politics and bigotry contributed to the suffering of millions and death to hundreds of thousands, whereas before, I just thought it was an agricultural disaster. Not so. I have a photo of Pete wearing his £99 (NZ$300) leather jacket, standing in the foreground of the statue, honouring this eminent man of Irish history.
As you were – we had walked to O’Connell Street to find breakfast for, although we could have had it back at the guest-house (not included in our tariff), we had seen some promising restaurants advertising all day breakfasts. The one we chose was almost as good as the Casino in Chc. I had traditional Black Pudding with mine, which was very tasty. Now why can’t England provide a good place to eat breakfast?
The day before, we had booked a coach tour on the Wild Powerscourt Tour. We had to report to the Gresham Hotel near the Information Centre at “One t’irrty” for our pick-up. In the meantime, after breakfast, we visited Christ Church Cathedral dating from 1230 and lavishly restored in 1875 at the expense of a wealthy Dublin whiskey distiller, St Patrick’s Cathedral standing on the site of a Celtic Church of Saint Patrick probably founded by that saint, where we met 2 French girls on holiday, and we found more parts to the Temple Bar in the daylight, including some wonderful souvenir shops.
At one t’irrty, we reported to our pick up spot and a Mercedes bus duly pulled up to collect the small group that had joined us. We got a short tour of the city as we called at another couple of hotels to pick up more sight-seers and as we drove down one particular street in the rich part of town where many of the diplomatic residences are, our driver told us how they dug up 600 Viking soldier’s bodies during construction of the road. They gathered them all up and buried them elsewhere. It leaves us to ponder why so many Viking bodies were buried in one place because our image of them is one of plunder, ravage, burn and kill; the idea of 600 big, strong, barbaric conquerors being slain on the spot doesn’t fit somehow.
After the city tour, picking up strays along the way, we headed south along the coastal route with our driver pointing out sights and places of local and historical interest. At Sandy Beach, the only bit of sandy beach near Dublin, he told us how it was once reserved for gentlemen only to bathe in the nude. Chauvinists!
We stopped overlooking Killiney Bay, said to be Dublin’s ‘Bay of Naples’ for it’s beautiful outlook towards the Irish Channel and home to the rich and famous. The average Joe Bloggs couldn’t afford to buy the garden shed in even the smallest of properties and we were suitably horrified when the driver pointed out houses of varying sizes, telling us how many million punts (Irish currency) each was sold for within recent months or the last two years.
We had a choice of driving past Bono’s mansion or Enya’s castle and the loudest chorus was for Enya, much to the driver’s (pretended) relief because he reckoned he got the bus stuck in the narrow and hilly road down to Bono’s house the week before. The roads were terribly narrow and he drove with less caution than we would have, taking into account the long drop down to the sea on the left side. I dare say our gasps of terror relieved his boredom from doing the same run, saying the same things, 3-4 times a week.
We arrived at Powerscourt House where we could get off the bus for an hour and learn about its history and admire the beautiful gardens. It has been a fortress since Viking times but like most castles that managed to escape destruction in the early centuries, it eventually became a residence from 1300 to whoever last invaded it or was awarded it by the king. I don’t have any literature on Powerscourt and can only give you the basic facts as recalled by Pete and I. By the 1900’s, the house was in danger of being sold due to successive heirs gambling and wasting their inheritances but the last heir married into the Slazanger family. The house was rebuilt and restored to it’s former glory through the investment of millions and millions of the Slazanger’s money and on completion in 1974, they threw a party.
During the evening a chimney caught on fire but the servants managed to put it out without disrupting the party too much. The guests who weren’t staying overnight left around 1 a.m. and the rest retired to their rooms. Mrs Slazanger was an insomniac and stayed up late reading. About 3 o’clock in the wee small hours the lights went out for a moment but she didn’t worry too much when they came back on, assuming the servants, who were still cleaning up, had seen to it. But later on when the whole household was asleep, she heard a crackling noise and thinking there was definitely something wrong with the electrics, she went to investigate. What she found however, was a fire. The earlier chimney fire had been extinguished but some sparks had got in between the walls and smouldered away until the heat had been sufficient to burst into flames. She raised the alarm and evacuated the entire household – no one was hurt but the house burned to the ground.
The Slazanger’s still own the house (Pete reckons they bought it but I seem to remember reading or hearing in the video that they married into the place so don’t quote me {but I’m sure I’m right!}), which they are slowly rebuilding yet again. The fabulous ball room has been restored and can be hired for weddings or other occasions requiring to make an impression, the gardens are cared for to within an inch of their life in exact layout to their design by a garden-mad heir from 100 or more years ago, and framed on the horizon overlooking the park-like garden and lake is The Great Sugarloaf, highest peak in the Wicklow Mountains. (Mentioned because of Sugar Loaf Hill in Christchurch, NZ and not dissimilar in shape.)
When we arrived, we all had to dunk our feet in a trough of disinfectant because this was still around the time of the foot and mouth epidemic. A portly American woman lined up like the rest of us but she declined to dunk her feet when it got to her turn - because she didn’t want to ruin her fancy shoes. Too bad if several thousand head of stock had to be slaughtered because of her fancy shoes.
Further south from where our tour took us is a little village called Avoca in a valley of the Wicklow Mountains. It was famous for centuries as a centre for handweaving but is now more famous as TV’s Ballykissangel, complete with Fountain Bar or otherwise known as ‘Fitzgerald’s’. We will see it another time.
Back in Dublin, we left our bus and went back to Temple Bar for dinner. We have learnt to eat early over this side of the world because most restaurants start closing from 9 p.m. Pete was tickled pink with a place called Luigi Malones – an Italian Irish restaurant. So we ate there. We took a table in the underground section and one of the features at Luigi Malones is an almost complete tile dating back to the original wall built around Dublin in the days when invaders came from all points of the compass. The red tile is called The Devil’s Tile and, reputed to be the oldest relic of the wall, is in situ where it was found during excavations for the present day building.
The name Malone is synonymous with Molly Malone, the infamous street trader of the 18th century. We saw her descendants in Moore Street market with their prams and battered baby carriages filled with fruit and flowers or toys and bric-a-brac. The street traders of today are as renowned for their good humour, loud voices and sharp witted banter as in the days of Molly Malone, all of which we saw and heard for ourselves with much amazement and amusement.
The bus driver had told us where to find “Diddilly-Doo” music if we were looking for authentic Irish singing and dancing. The entrance to the Arlington Hotel facing the River Liffey looked very ordinary from the outside and we had by-passed it the previous evening giving it the thumbs down. Inside, the cavern-like pub was lit with hundreds of candles and muted red glowing lamps; it was huge and crowded and very warm. We asked a couple of similar age to us if we could share their table, to which they happily agreed, then Pete fought his way to the bar to get drinks. I ordered a pint of Guinness, brewed using the crystal waters of the River Shannon – when in Ireland, do as the Irish do.
Presently, the band arrived and took half an hour or more to set themselves up, all the while, the already crowded bar filling up more and more as people squeezed into every available space. Once the band got going w e thought they were quite good but our new friends told us they were not. However, with the place filling up to around 400 people according to Pete’s estimation, and the Guinness going down very nicely by me, 2 girls and a bloke took the stage for some Irish jigging – or Riverdancing as we now know it. The crowd were thoroughly enjoying themselves and after the dancing finished, the stage was dismantled in a smoothly practised operation, the music kept going and everybody was either singing or dancing or both. The whole atmosphere was fully charged with liveliness and friendliness; half the patrons seemed to be Irish and the other half tourists like us.
Again, we walked back to our guesthouse late at night, seeing no sign of trouble and feeling no threat to our person, as on the previous evening. Dublin leaves an impression of easy going people who enjoy life, love their country, remember the suffering and hardship of their past history and perhaps as a result of that, are open and hospitable to visitors. The tourists are pouring into Dublin apparently and so they will, for the shops are open every day, you can get a cup of tea whenever you want without having to walk the whole town finding a place that’s open and they have plenty of good restaurants and pubs.
It is a city of great historical and cultural interest. As the birthplace of renowned writers such as Jonathan Swift (Dean of St Patrick’s from 1713 to 1745 who led an ‘interesting’ domestic life), Oscar Wilde, W B Yeats, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw and Samuel Beckett, Dublin often featured in their books. However, Jonathan Swift felt himself, “dropped in wretched Dublin” and George Bernard Shaw complained of “a certain flippant, futile derision and belittlement peculiar to Dublin”. W B Yeats called it “the blind and ignorant town” and James Joyce seemed to agree yet despite all the abuse, a number of truly great writers became part of Dublin’s heritage.
Our ferry back to UK mainland was a mid-morning departure on our last day. We got back to Holyhead, sailing on the James Joyce ‘slow’ ferry, to a brilliantly sunny day on the Angelsey coast. We took the A5 home, whose route takes us through the heart of the Snowdonia National Park. This route first of all takes you through the town with the longest name in the world – Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch! Translated, it means; Church mary a hollow white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool church saint’s name cave red. I asked the lady in the gift shop to say it for me and although she wasn’t born in Wales, she could say it but has to kind of sing it to get the rhythm.
The road through the Snowdon mountain pass was very picturesque with many little quaint villages nestling in valleys, tumbling rivers splashing harmoniously down rocky riverbeds and scraggy pine-like trees foresting the steep hillsides. Nothing could have been in greater contrast to the gently rolling green fields, sluggish widely expansive muddy bottomed rivers and clusters of terracotta tiled roofs over earthy red bricked houses packed closely together in hollows of Mother England, and this must be how the British Isles came to be made up of separate countries. Parts of Wales reminded me of the barren side (Canterbury side) of Arthur’s Pass and Lindus Pass, other parts had the look of the Otago side of Haast Pass just beyond Lake Hawea and still others resembled Lewis Pass.
The A5 is the old London road to Holyhead that has seen a constant flow of traffic over the centuries between Ireland and England. Politicians, noblemen and royalty have rattled over the same ground backwards and forwards on matters of state, observing the same scenes, without the modern highways, as we were on our way home to Milton Keynes, passing almost right outside our front door.
