Travel Reports
Dublin
It’s boom time in Ireland’s bookish capital, home too to Guinness. But not everything is black and white.
There’s something incongruous about St Patrick’s Cathedral in the heart of Dublin. At least when you walk past on a Sunday morning, listening to the chastening peel of bells calling you to prayer, and all the while you’re on your way to the Guinness® Storehouse, a temple to the gods of booze and mud skippers.
The Irish Temperance League would have had a field day with that one! And yet, after a visit to the birthplace of the black stuff, you’ll learn there is a connection. Both Arthur Guinness, who started brewing the world-famous tipple in 1759, and a descendent, Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, put money towards the upkeep of the cathedral. The Guinness® Storehouse is worth a visit. You can walk through the brewing process - from basic ingredients to the full-bodied tasting experience - taking in the product’s history along the way, courtesy of interactive gadgets, while on the top floor, the Gravity Bar will serve you a complimentary pint.
The Bar’s panoramic picture windows offer reminders of the city’s other prolific export – its writers. Quotes from the writings of literary luminaries such as James Joyce and Oscar Wilde are etched on the glass, adding visual lyricism to your liquid lyricism. In fact, dotted around the city are many remnants of its literary past. The Dublin Writers’ Museum in Parnell Square, offers a low-key history of the city’s literary celebs from the past three hundred years through their books, letters and personal items. It’s a little tatty around the edges, but the restored Georgian house adds atmosphere.
There’s also an excellent Dublin Literary Pub Crawl on which costumed guides entertain with extracts from the writers’ works while you sample the inspiration that lubricated their collective geniuses. In the main Georgian area of Dublin, on the north side of Merrion Square, is the old trolling ground of one of Ireland’s most famous sons, Oscar Wilde, commemorated by a colourful, lounging statue.
Indeed, statues of the great and good adorn the city. Sweet Molly Malone graces the corner of O’Connell and Suffolk Street, complete with bronze wheelbarrow and cockles and mussels and a costumed bodhran player, giving it the “awld diddly-da.” However, if Molly’s ghost does walk the streets “broad and narrow” around Temple Bar, it would struggle to make itself heard above the boisterous sounds of revellers out for the craic on a weekend night.
The area is heaving, “alive, alive-o” with hen night lovelies, clubbers, street performers and general onlookers. It’s a lot more fun than it sounds, and the area offers some excellent dining opportunities.
At the upper end of the bracket is The Odessa Lounge and Grill, a sleek, stylish eatery that gets very busy on a Saturday night, so booking is recommended. The charming staff helped me select from an excellent menu a piquant sweet potato soup served with nutty walnut bread, a succulent roast pork and crackling roulade on a bed of crushed potato and spinach with baby steamed carrots and red wine jus, and a tangy mango sorbet. Add a superb glass of Domaine Ficher Chardonnay 2003 and good coffee and you have an affordable feast at just €36,50. Mid-pocket diners - and those into a more boho setting - will enjoy The Shack Restaurant in Temple Lane South where an Irish Stew and soft drink comes in at €14,95.
Just down the road in Great George Street are The George and The Dragon, two very different, gay hotspots. The George is a traditional pub, but one of the only specifically gay venues in the city, and an ideal meeting place for older punters. Be warned though, shorts and mixers come in at an expensive €6, so sip slowly. The Dragon, by contrast, is plushly decorated in faux Chinoisery, with arabesque fittings and the most camp statue of Hercules and Python I’ve ever seen. Up Pompeii meets China White! Shorts are a little longer here, but cost a steep €6,20. Still, they have to pay for all that velour somehow!
What strikes you most about Dublin are its contradictions. While a favourite saying used to be “A rolling stone gathers no moss” – meaning, “Here’s good; why move?” – it’s the Euro subsidies the country has accepted with unaccustomed alacrity that mean its economy has burgeoned. And with it have come new shopping opportunities. There are malls for every taste and pocket, from the generic shopping precincts on Henry Street, bargain basement boutiques on O’Connell Street, and High Street brands in and around busy Grafton Street. The Edwardian greenhouse grandeur of St Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre shelters more market-style shops, cafes and an art gallery, while the select chi-chi style, designer and upmarket products of the Powerscourt Townhouse on Clarendon Street, off Grafton, is a balm to the soul.
Hardier shoppers should make a pilgrimage to the shopping village complex out at Dundrum. The LUAS (Gaelic for ‘speed’) tram that starts from St Stephen’s Green West costs only €3,80 return, and takes 15-–20 minutes from central Dublin. Retail outlets in Dundrum include the compact Harvey Nichols, complete with bright and cheerful Espresso Bar on the ground floor and stylish restaurant on the top floor. On Friday and Saturday nights, this is a magnet for party people, and one of the area’s bespoke out-of-town dining experiences.
But like its greatest export Guinness, Dublin seems to have two apposite halves which, though lying together, are incongruent; the stylish, modern temples of shopping have nothing to do with the old boys propping up the bars, but if you’re lucky, you will catch the banjo players and singers in the pub on the corner of Dame Lane, though you’re just as likely to find an embryonic Boomtown Rats, penning the equivalent of Rat Trap in Bewley’s in Grafton Street. But the strong, black tiger economy is tempered and mellowed by the smooth reminder of the city’s traditional past, Dublin’s own Irish Cream. Once blended together in the mouth, you realise the one couldn’t exist without the other. Not everything here is black and white.
Travel Details
Flights:
bmi flies direct from Heathrow, Leeds, Inverness, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Durham. Fares cost from £25.99 one way, (including taxes and charges). Call 0870 6070 555 or log on to www.flybmi.com for further information.
Accommodation:
Gay Times Travel stayed at the Merrion Hotel, Upper Merrion Street. Superior double rooms cost from €390 (double occupancy). Call +353 1 603 0600 or log on to www.merrionhotel.com for details and special offers. For a much cheaper option GTT also stayed at the two-star Jackson’s Court, 29–30 Harcourt Street. For further details, visit www.octopustravel-gay.com
Must See:
No 1 Merrion Square North was the house of Oscar Wilde from 1855 to 1878. You can’t look around as it’s been annexed by the American College. But in Merrion Square Park, lounging on a rock, with one eyebrow cocked tauntingly at the house, is the statue of the genius himself, complete with smoking jacket and green carnation.
