The Dubliners
Sep. 18th, 2017 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiThrough a variety of logical twists centred on other events, we opted for a short break in Dublin last weekend. Leaving directly from work, the flight from London City Airport was much less hassle than Heathrow, and although we didn't depart at the advertised time, there seemed to be a fair bit of padding in the schedules. Transfer from the airport at Dublin was very straightforward with the regular bus service.
We arrived at the hotel to find we'd been "upgraded" to a "suite" in the "Georgian wing". The room looked lovely, but was in fact rather noisy (poorly fitting windows looking out onto a main road) and cold (with minimal bedding, which we addressed and resolved the following morning.) We quickly established that a global search-and-replace of "English" with "Irish" had taken place: for example, "Full Irish Breakfast" and "Irish Breakfast Tea". But fair enough, I suppose. We were, after all, in Ireland.
Fri 15th: Though cold, it's bright and sunny at first, and we take in our surroundings. The Custom House is close by.
We move on to Trinity College, Dublin. The Book of Kells exhibition is expensive and badly laid out, but really it's an excuse to justify the charge to see the books and the Old Library. The books themselves are interesting, although I'm disappointed I didn't see any comparison to The Lindisfarne Gospels, especially as there's a comment in the exhibition that one of the other books (The Book of Durrow) may have come from Northumbria.
Like the Bodleian, it appears that the books are filed according to their size.
Before lunch, we fit in a visit to the Natural History Museum. It's small and quiet, but well-stocked and, compared to its correspondent in London, unreconstructed and of more concentrated interest. In the afternoon, we move on to see Dublin Castle and the cathedrals.
Sat 16th: The forecast isn't good, particularly for later on. In the morning we visit the National Gallery, which turns out to be very interesting and well-stocked, though many of the names are unknown. Some of the Irish landscapes are particularly beautiful, though there are also some scenes in which nature has ceased to be beautiful and merely looks bleak. Later on we visit the National Museum of Archaeology. This is smaller than expected and balances the day, though it is quite packed with exhibits. The bog bodies are striking, if disturbing; the Bronze Age canoe is impressive. The Viking section is interesting; the museum finds a diplomatic solution to colonisation by describing the invasion of 1169 as "Norman".
Sun 17th: It's bright again, intermittently, and we go for another walk along the Liffey before heading up to the City Gallery. There are some interesting pieces, and a lot of modern rubbish, although among the contemporary collection, Close by Elizabeth Magill and Mist by Paul Seawright stand out. By lunch time, the city is heaving with crowds for the All-Ireland Gaelic Football Final, but we catch the bus back to the airport. The trains from Paddington are replaced with buses due to engineering work, so we depart from Waterloo instead; a slow train, but not a crowded one.
Food-wise Dublin was disappointing, because it seems you are expected to pre-book (no doubt by "app") everywhere. Even in a Japanese noodle bar the welcome was dampened by being told we'd have to be finished by 7:30. It was interesting that, like the UK, a significant portion of the hospitality sector is staffed by eastern Europeans.
Things conflate. The poor value of the accommodation and the impossibility of spontaneous discovery on the food front combined with the almost brainwashing-intensity signage of Irish (i.e. anti-British) history on every street corner to make me feel barely welcome. We left, taking the unused coffee sachets with us "in retaliation for the [lack of] blanket". As I observed, the lack of blanket was probably "in retaliation for the [lack of] potatoes [in the 1840s]". My overall impression was that (even allowing for the post-Brexit exchange rate) Dublin charges more-or-less London prices but doesn't deliver as much.
We arrived at the hotel to find we'd been "upgraded" to a "suite" in the "Georgian wing". The room looked lovely, but was in fact rather noisy (poorly fitting windows looking out onto a main road) and cold (with minimal bedding, which we addressed and resolved the following morning.) We quickly established that a global search-and-replace of "English" with "Irish" had taken place: for example, "Full Irish Breakfast" and "Irish Breakfast Tea". But fair enough, I suppose. We were, after all, in Ireland.
Fri 15th: Though cold, it's bright and sunny at first, and we take in our surroundings. The Custom House is close by.
We move on to Trinity College, Dublin. The Book of Kells exhibition is expensive and badly laid out, but really it's an excuse to justify the charge to see the books and the Old Library. The books themselves are interesting, although I'm disappointed I didn't see any comparison to The Lindisfarne Gospels, especially as there's a comment in the exhibition that one of the other books (The Book of Durrow) may have come from Northumbria.
Like the Bodleian, it appears that the books are filed according to their size.
Before lunch, we fit in a visit to the Natural History Museum. It's small and quiet, but well-stocked and, compared to its correspondent in London, unreconstructed and of more concentrated interest. In the afternoon, we move on to see Dublin Castle and the cathedrals.
Sat 16th: The forecast isn't good, particularly for later on. In the morning we visit the National Gallery, which turns out to be very interesting and well-stocked, though many of the names are unknown. Some of the Irish landscapes are particularly beautiful, though there are also some scenes in which nature has ceased to be beautiful and merely looks bleak. Later on we visit the National Museum of Archaeology. This is smaller than expected and balances the day, though it is quite packed with exhibits. The bog bodies are striking, if disturbing; the Bronze Age canoe is impressive. The Viking section is interesting; the museum finds a diplomatic solution to colonisation by describing the invasion of 1169 as "Norman".
Sun 17th: It's bright again, intermittently, and we go for another walk along the Liffey before heading up to the City Gallery. There are some interesting pieces, and a lot of modern rubbish, although among the contemporary collection, Close by Elizabeth Magill and Mist by Paul Seawright stand out. By lunch time, the city is heaving with crowds for the All-Ireland Gaelic Football Final, but we catch the bus back to the airport. The trains from Paddington are replaced with buses due to engineering work, so we depart from Waterloo instead; a slow train, but not a crowded one.
Food-wise Dublin was disappointing, because it seems you are expected to pre-book (no doubt by "app") everywhere. Even in a Japanese noodle bar the welcome was dampened by being told we'd have to be finished by 7:30. It was interesting that, like the UK, a significant portion of the hospitality sector is staffed by eastern Europeans.
Things conflate. The poor value of the accommodation and the impossibility of spontaneous discovery on the food front combined with the almost brainwashing-intensity signage of Irish (i.e. anti-British) history on every street corner to make me feel barely welcome. We left, taking the unused coffee sachets with us "in retaliation for the [lack of] blanket". As I observed, the lack of blanket was probably "in retaliation for the [lack of] potatoes [in the 1840s]". My overall impression was that (even allowing for the post-Brexit exchange rate) Dublin charges more-or-less London prices but doesn't deliver as much.