Publin

Thoughts on Dublin…..

Publin is about the people: Sweet, talkative, generous with their time, fast-walking, philosophical, multi-cultural, and seemingly happy. We asked for directions once and two people stopped. We met a lawyer in O’Donoghue’s Pub and he invited us to his home to stay overnight and have dinner. Of course, he was a besotten lawyer going thru a divorce. A man in Howth, his breath reeking with Guinness and cigarettes at noon, told us of the sights to see which, surprisingly, was a pub at the summit. Walking down Grafton Street is, as Ann said, like being on the streets of Disneyland. The pubs and music are fantastic. We enjoyed O’Donoghues, Doheny & Nesbitt, Brazen Head (est’d in 1198!), Foleys, et. al. The Guinness is great. It’s even aesthetic to look at. The food, let’s face it, is bad but irrelevant, for the most part. We weren’t that hungry ….is Guinness a food and is that why? As for Gerard, it could have been the Guinness. Ann had a great Guinness and beef pie on our first day and Gerard had the same at Gallagher’s after Mass on Sunday. It was a beautiful Mass, with a choir, at St. Theresa’s, right off Grafton. The tourist attractions were not, as a whole, memorable. The bad meals were more memorable. We didn’t go to the Guinness or Jameson attractions. What could they tell us? The National Art Gallery and St. Patrick’s Cathedral are places to see.

Ann loved the nutty brown bread, tea, scones, fluffy white duvets, not doing housework, walking, not driving and our self-motivated walking tours. She didn’t like the bacon, which is really a sort of ham, the sausages, white pepper and the lack of toilet seat covers. She was amazed by the amount of water used when flushing the toilet and how quickly the people of Dublin walk – all of them, housing development projects and the number of foreign speaking residents, all members of the European union who may move around and work freely in another EU country. Ireland is on its way to being another melting pot.

We enjoyed our walks along the River Liffey and the people in our hotel, The Georgian, who were so accommodating, even storing our excess luggage while we took off for Scotland. Where limits on luggage were 70 lbs coming from “America” to Europe, luggage limits are down to 30 lbs when traveling within Europe, or there is a 2 Euros charge for every pound over that.

One quick anecdote. On a Sunday night, we went to Doheny & Nesbitt and politely asked them to put on the Charger/Pats game on. This pub, which is normally crawling with people, was relatively quiet. It’s a haunt for rugby fans. The bartender obliged and turned on the game. A voice shattered the silence :“Turn that shit off.” We then went to another room in the pub and watched the first half. Disaster was looming when the pub closed.

It was all about the people.