I think I first wanted to visit Ireland back in the mid-nineties while drinking Guinness with Brian Haven in Murphy’s pub back in Sonoma. Two of the servers were Irish and had great accents, and we used to throw darts and drink round after round of Guinness, and I thought that someday I’d like to see where this kind of pub culture came from. It took a while, but here I was in Dublin 25 years later.
Kuniko and I finally got out of bed and started our first full day in Dublin by venturing out in search of coffee. A couple of blocks away from our hotel we found a place that was open, so we walked inside to find a chaotic scene. Apparently there was a big rush on coffee, and one of the two baristas working was in training, and so there was a lot of stress in the café. We waited quite a while, and we finally ended up with one latte instead of two, and a pastrami cheese roll that was pretty good. The trainer barista acknowledged the mistake and gave us another cup of java, and we finished up as the line for service grew longer and longer. Kuniko cleaned up our table after we bused the dishes back to the counter – apparently that isn’t a thing in Ireland because some people gave us a funny look as we left.
One thing we learned quickly in Dublin is that pedestrians cross the street when they think they have a chance. There are crossing signals for pedestrians but they are hopelessly long and so everyone just runs across when they see an opening. It was a little startling at first but soon we got used to it. The city has thoughtfully provided writing on the street for the pedestrians that says “Look left” or “Look right” depending on the traffic flow. I do think that some people distracted by the phones probably get hit more often than in other cities – it looks dangerous. In the end we got used to things and started dashing out into the streets along with the locals.
Our first appointment of the day was a tour of the Guinness Storehouse. I had made some reservations in advance, and so we walked across town to go check out the tour. On the way we stopped in at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The cathedral was as beautiful inside as it was outside, and they had made the interior tourist friendly with plenty of educational materials to explain exactly why each religious icon or design was special. It is one thing to see a stained glass window, but they had explanations to the side that clearly showed the significance of some of the details, and it helped to appreciate things more. The gift shop was really big – bigger than most I’ve seen in churches in Europe. They had some extremely cheesy goods, and I thought at the time that it was an oddly blatant crossing between consumerism and religion.
The Guinness Storehouse is not the brewery (which is at a separate facility down the street) but instead a huge complex built to showcase the beer, educate the visitors, and sell lots of Guinness goods. The design of the facility and the quality of the tour is top-notch. The way it is designed is that you start on the ground floor, and slowly work your way up via a series of escalators, learning more and more as you go. There are several tastings along the way that we enjoyed, with some good-natured fun poked at Americans by the staff. The final stage is a pint of fresh Guinness at the top floor which is a circular bar room enclosed in glass offering a dramatic view of the skyline of Dublin. The place was busy but not packed when we reached it, and it nice to have a beer and enjoy the view. There was a big group of Chinese tourists visiting at that time, and they moved as a pack and were making friends with some of the white (European?) tourists. Many pictures were taken all around, and when we left the place was just starting to fill up. On the way out we stopped in the gift shop for a couple of souvenirs – we were good customers.
From the Storehouse we headed east back toward the center of town. On the way I had hoped to stop at a highly recommended fish and chips place, but it was closed for the summer holidays. We instead stopped at another pub, the Boar’s Head Inn. If you want traditional food, pubs are the way to go in Ireland, and there’s one on almost every corner – open all day long. We had a some good fish and chips there, and also a bowl of Irish stew that hit the spot. Everything was heavy – much heavier food than we usually eat, and this was only the beginning of a long trip. While we were out we went to check out Dublin Castle, but what remained of the building wasn’t too exciting, so it was a short visit. When we returned to our hotel our room wasn’t cleaned yet, so we visited the hotel bar which was surprisingly nice, and sat at one of the back tables to drink, write in this journal, and relax. I had a Rockshore Lager that was simple but delicious, and Kuniko had a cocktail called Roe & Red. It was based on Irish whiskey and it was tasty, even with a big cinnamon stick stuck in the glass.
Eventually we went back out on the town, first to check out a cheese shop (closed because it was a “bank holiday”), and then we found our way to Klaw, our choice of restaurant for the evening. Klaw is a seafood place, and I had heard that they had plenty of lobster on the menu. We arrived a bit early for dinner, and they were only serving drinks and oysters. We ordered some prosecco and reviewed the menu, but the service was quite slow. One of the things about visiting Europe is that it takes a little time to shift our expectations on service speed – things are much more prompt in Japan. I don’t mind the slower service, but it does take a little getting used to.
We ordered up some food, starting with some oysters. Due to a miscommunication during the ordering process we received a couple raw oysters and a couple that were “blowtorched” at our table. The torched oysters had some spinach, cheese, butter, and garlic melted together over them, and then we ate them cooked. The raw ones were also good – from the Galway coast. We also had an order of crab on toast that was great. Unfortunately the lobster roll was mainly roll, and not much lobster. That was the only culinary disappointment of the day. After dinner we walked through the Temple Bar area, kind of a historic pub/tourist area, passed a strange building on the backstreets with a sign saying, “Turkish Social Club”, and then eventually wandered back to our hotel to head to bed. We finished the day with about 27,000 steps!
