DAY ONE
SATURDAY, MAY 18, 2019
a full day exploring ireland’s capital city, from rock & roll icons to the irish diaspora
After arriving in Dublin at 8:30am after an overnight flight from NYC, I took an AirCoach bus into the city, dropped my bag and pre-checked in at the Brooks Hotel, and hit the ground running. My first stop was to grab something to eat, so I walked over to the Powerscourt Centre, a small shopping center near my hotel, and headed to The Pepper Pot, a tiny sliver of a cafe with great reviews. I got the roast pear, bacon, and cheddar sandwich that is clearly their best seller, and an iced coffee, which I would soon come to learn is hard to find in Ireland!
That sandwich pic is from the Pepper Pot Instagram. My picture didn’t really come out and it was a good sandwich worth sharing!
After eating, the first thing I did was stop by a local music store to pick out a Celtic harp.
I have a thing for world instruments, and as a string-player myself had started this tradition in Peru by buying a charango, with the goal of starting a collection of indigenous instruments that remind me of my travels. It’s more for art’s sake than playing’s sake – inspired by the fabulous, and newly-renovated, world instrument gallery at the Met. I found a cute (relatively) little 21” harp with 12 strings, and thankfully was able to ship it home right from the store.
Check and check!
After feeling satisfied with my instrument selection, I walked over to the Temple Bar area. This is a neighborhood of shops and bars that notoriously gets really loud and crowded with tourists and bachelorette parties at night, so I did a quick walkthrough during the day to try to sidestep the crazy and keep my vacation a vacation. There are some great little shops, and I made a planned stop into JAM Art Factory, a local gallery & art store that showcases the work of Irish artists.
Doing my American tourist duty with the obligatory photo of the historic Temple Bar.
After walking around a little bit, I made my way to my destination: the Irish Rock & Roll Museum Experience, a tour through some Irish rock memorabilia (with a lot of space dedicated to U2 and Thin Lizzy) in a venue that is still a working recording studio and performance space. Our tour guide Adam had a great time sharing his clear love of Irish rock history with us, and it was a fun way to kick off my music-themed tour of Ireland.
There was one room that had a wall full of riders… some of which were pretty funny. (Good luck with that, Slayer!)
After the Rock & Roll Museum, I made a quick photo stop in the hidden “Love Lane,” a charming little alleyway and courtyard that are regularly painted with different art.
Leaving Temple Bar, I walked over to historic Dublin Castle and its Chester Beatty Library, a private collection of rare books, religious texts, and other artifacts from around the world. On my way, I passed a ceremony in front of Dublin Castle that was honoring the local police force and stopped to watch for a minute.
The Chester Beatty is a true hidden gem of Dublin - I thought I had read every tourist guide ad nauseam when I was planing an itinerary, and only came across this at the last minute. But it is absolutely worth a stop, as they have some really unique pieces on display. And it’s free!
After leaving this excellent library/museum, I found myself in front of the beautiful Christ Church Cathedral, so took a few photos before walking across the Liffey River to find a LUAS (Dublin’s public tram system) stop.
I headed east on the LUAS to the tech-boom Docklands neighborhood and the Samuel Beckett Bridge. The Liffey River runs through Dublin and has 24 bridges at various intervals, and the Samuel Beckett Bridge is one of the newest and most picturesque. It was designed by architect Santiago Calatrava to look like a Celtic harp lying on its side, and opened to the public in 2009.
The Samuel Beckett Bridge from the south side of the Liffey, with the unique Dublin Convention Centre in the background.
After I got my fill of bridge pictures, I walked to the Custom House Quay on the north side of the river and to the EPIC Irish Emigration Museum, a state-of-the-art digital and interactive experience that was just voted Europe’s Leading Tourist Attraction at the 2019 World Travel Awards. I totally get why it’s so praised, as they took what on paper sounds like a not-very-exciting subject (let’s be real, I would never have gone to a museum about emigration without context) and made it really fascinating. The museum consists of twenty different rooms, covering the Irish Diaspora from famine and religion to music and literature and beyond.
There are some videos mixed in with photos here, because this place is really worth seeing in action… but I will also take this opportunity to roll my eyes at myself and apologize that 95% of the video I took on this trip was vertical because I must have had Instagram on the mind. Mental note to turn the phone next time.
One cute activity they have is a cardstock passport you carry with you from room to room, stamping it in each gallery at a little machine, each designed to line up the ink with the appropriate place on the passport. (The marketer in me was pretty into this, haha. It was so well done.)
As a whole, this museum really exceeded my expectations. I wasn’t sure I had any interest in emigration, but I’m glad I trusted the reviews because the way they presented the info was just so innovative and fun to play with… I found myself getting involved with the A/V, and managed to learn a lot about the Irish diaspora in the process. Good job, EPIC Museum!
After leaving the museum, I made a stop just outside at the haunting Famine Memorial Sculpture, depicting the tragic experience of the million and a half Irish people who were forced to emigrate due to famine. The art depicts their experience in such a raw way – it was hard to stand there and not get emotional thinking about what they went through.
Staying north of the Liffey, I walked along the water until I got to O’Connell Street, one of the main avenues in Dublin.
Behind Jim is the 398’ high metal sculpture The Spire, aka the Monument of Light, aka countless creative local nicknames
OG Dubliner James Joyce
The destination at the end of the road was Chapter One, an unpretentious Michelin star restaurant in the basement of the Dublin Writers Museum. The meal was fantastic, and the service even moreso. Lovely people, and a really lovely atmosphere for a pretty remarkable prix fixe value. You have to make a reservation way in advance, but it’s totally worth it.
I took photos of the whole meal for my foodie friends, but the pictures didn’t come out great… so above that’s a complimentary goat cheese & spinach puree on spelt cracker they served as a starter, and a Paris-brest with almond cream, sunflower seed praline and candied almonds for dessert. But in between I had an excellent chicken & spring vegetable soup (incidentally the only soup I had in Ireland that wasn’t a puree), and an entree of braised short rib with a mushroom tart that had the most delicate paper-thin slices of mushroom.
So I am about to write about the next 14 wonderful days in Ireland, but this first night in Dublin ended with the one thing I wouldn’t do again, which is the Leprechaun Museum. I did their Dark Land tour based on schedule (more “adult” stories than their daytime tour, though it was still pretty tame), and it was an okay night at the time… museum isn’t really the right word since it’s more of a storytelling experience, and our guide Andy was enthusiastic about his job and was engaging.
But after ultimately spending the bulk of my Ireland trip with an actual folklore scholar, in hindsight this was pretty ridiculous and a waste of time. Coupled with the rainbow of bruises I got when I fell pretty hard off of a giant chair photo op (as seen in the second photo - there’s no ladder), and the fact that each room is darker than the next and I was running on no sleep and couldn’t keep my eyes open…. let’s just move on to Day 2.
I didn’t want to post pictures of this at all, but I’m holding myself accountable for my choices! 😄
I walked back to the Brooks Hotel (almost 9:00 pm and still light out, so weird), formally checked in, and I’m pretty sure I fell asleep before my head hit the pillow.
Successful first day!
