A Weekend in Dublin
“A little piece of trivia for you, folks,” begins the Santa Claus-looking tour bus driver as we pull away from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. “This cemetery just on the left is where the inventor of the crossword puzzle is buried. You can take a walk through and find his grave. He’s buried at 4-down…and 3 across.” On and on the jokes went as we crisscrossed the River Liffey in the double-decker bus, the old-timer setting them up and knocking them down with the comedic timing of Rodney Dangerfield and the oratory aplomb of Winston Churchill.
“This is the The Anna Livia fountain and statue, though some call her the Skank in the Tank or the Floozie in the Jacuzzi.” Boom!
“What do you call a North Dubliner in a suit outside the courthouse?” said the man from South Dublin. “The defendant!” Badda-ba-chiing!
Of all the things to love about Ireland—and Dublin in particular—the simple feeling that its inhabitants WANT you to have a good time when you visit is at the top of the list. Bartenders will advise you to leave their bar—even when you are quite comfortable on one of their barstools—and go to another one with great live music. (Or maybe they just wanted us to leave.) A taxi driver will tell you where to go, what to avoid and how he once took middle-aged American U2 fans to find Bono’s house and secondary school. Policemen will even tell your brother where to find a bar that’s still open.
I didn’t go to see U2 or even the local playground where they played as kids. Anyway, they were probably on their yachts in the south of France. I went to rendezvous with my brother, the guy who asked the cops where to find an open bar, and two other American friends for a weekend of, well, laughs. And you seem to laugh a lot when you’re in Dublin. The trip also included a few tourist activities and a fantastic Jason Isbell concert at the138-year-old Olympia Theater, which might just have the best acoustics of any venue I’ve ever been to.
Inevitably, each activity meandered toward something that involved Guinness because, well, when in Ireland… And yes, Guinness should be enjoyed cold and it tastes much better in the homeland. I know because we tried all of it. (Don’t worry; they’re making more.)
We spent three hours on Friday afternoon at the Guinness Brewery at St. James’ Gate, where you can meet people from around the world at the seventh floor Gravity Bar, where the tour concludes …and seems to continue on for some time. The bar was bathed in “brilliant” sunshine the day we visited and it offers panoramic views of the city and even out to the Irish Sea and the Wicklow Mountains in the distance. Because we were on a roll, the next day we hopped back on the tour bus and dismounted at the tasting room of Jamison’s Irish Whiskey, an experience that was educational, entertaining and a little warm and fuzzy by the end. If you’re sensing a theme here, you’re sensing correctly.
The highlight of the trip was the show by Isbell. If you don’t know him and you like great lyrics and guitar, do yourself (and him) a favor and start listening. He and his band the 400 Unit were even better live than I hoped, and my expectations were high.
Besides the hospitality, the next best thing about Ireland is that they serve potatoes with everything. Even the personable 30-something clerk at St. Patrick’s Cathedral gift shop, where I bought a book called “Irish Potato Recipes” (because that’s where you buy a potato cookbook), blamed his mother’s spud-based dishes for the growth of his waistline upon returning from a stint living overseas. What was less surprising than the fact that he was 35 years old and living at home was that he also dropped F-bombs into the conversation with surprisingly regularity for a guy who was, you know, WORKING INSIDE A GIANT CHURCH!
On our final full day in Dublin, we escaped the city for a two-hour hike along the coastal trails of Howth, a small town a few miles north of the city where last night’s Guinness and Jamison seem to flow freely from your pores on the up-hills. The sun was shining, the views were spectacular and guess what goes well with the end of a hike? Mmmm Guinness.
