We spent 1.5 days in Dublin, split up at the beginning and the end of our trip to Croatia. I think Dublin is exactly what I had hoped Edinburgh would be like - vibrant, green, with funky little restaurants and cafes and patisseries, a little yuppie, but with lots of history.
In our whirlwind visits, we managed to walk around most of the central sights - the River Liffey and its many bridges, St. Stephen’s Green, O’Connell Street, Trinity College, the Parnell monument, the big Dublin Spire, Dublin Castle, the courthouse, the National Museum, Grafton Street, Customs House, Christ Church Cathedral and of course Temple Bar. We even encountered a horse pulling a cart loaded with fruits + veggies!
We didn’t find the famine memorial (we had been to the one in New York last summer and found it quite interesting) but we did find this cool public sculpture by Amnesty International.
We made it to both the Jameson distillery (they were very generous with their free samples - even mixed Ian’s shot of whiskey with some ginger ale and lime, delicious) and to the Guiness Brewery.
Ian had been to Guiness before, on his European tour de force in 2000, but he said the tour was completely different this time. We went up to the Gravity Bar, the top floor of a 7 storey tower with great 360 degree views of Dublin. The admission ticket entitles you to a free pint of Guiness up there, and mine had a perfect shamrock poured into the head. We went just before 5 pm on a Friday in February, and it was packed! I can’t imagine how that place operates in summer.
The rest of the building has a self-guided museum where you can learn about how Guiness is made, what coopers make and how they do it, what hops look like, why the yeast is kept in a giant safe, how often Guinness quality control people taste the stuff, all the Dublin landmarks built with Guinness money over the years, what types of Guinness is available in bottles or cans in different countries, and more about the history of the brewery … and you can even play around in a giant pile of barley!
The other Dublin highlight was culinary: we had some great Japanese food at Aya sushi, a conveyor belt type place, and at Wagamama, a noodle bar. Both places were pretty darn expensive, but so good! Wagamama is a chain of restaurants all over the UK but unfortunately they have no Edinburgh branch. The closest Wagamama to us is in Glasgow, so if my Japanese food cravings get bad enough, perhaps the price of a train or bus ticket to Glasgow will be worth it.
So to summarize … I loved Dublin!
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