Dublin

Slainte! It’s time to honour St Patrick, so tip back a black pint of heaven in honour of the holy man. You’re reading this at breakfast? Proceed – Guinness has so much goodness crammed into it, it’s the original smoothie.

There’s nowhere better to mark the day than Dublin. First though, it must be said that Dublin is one of Europe’s most over-rated cities, and if you come expecting Paris or Prague, you will be disappointed. Come instead with no expectations, and you may find yourself delighted by Ireland’s dirty old town.

There are some mandatory things to do in the Irish capital – the pubs, of course, the Guinness Brewery tour, and the interesting walk along O’Connell Street, which takes you from the Floozy in the Jacuzzi (a lovely lady bathing) to the Stiletto in the Ghetto (an enormous spike that defies explanation). Well, at least that’s what my Dubliner friend told me the two works of art are called.

They say the Irish are the race God made mad, because all their wars are merry and their songs are sad. If you want to learn about some of those wars (and songs), a walking history tour of the city is good value for money – a university student, probably called Seamus, will show you all the important sights, like the General Post Office where the doomed rebels of the 1916 Easter Uprising holed up in a final stand against those wretched British (you can still see the bullet marks on some of the outer pillars), and tell you all about them in a charming Dublin accent.

Next, visit St Michan’s, a church on the north side of the River Liffey built on the site of a 1095 Viking chapel. Upstairs, you can see the organ Handel wrote The Messiah on, but the real reason it’s worth a visit is downstairs, in the crypt.

Here, you can meet - and shake hands with - an 800-year-old Crusader. He’s quite dead, but the peculiar conditions in the crypt have preserved his leathery, six-foot-six corpse, along with the rest of the crypt’s inhabitants. My guide told me this situation was discovered when one too many caskets were stacked up, causing the others to splinter open. Oops. Most have since been safely re-interred, but not the Crusader. It is traditional to shake his highly polished hand for good luck.

Dublin prides itself as a city of writers. It is the home of Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett and, of course, James Joyce. The literarily inclined can walk the route Leopold Bloom follows in Ulysses, and the less literarily inclined can follow Bloom as far Davy Byrnes Pub, where he stops for a drink. Perhaps, after your third or fourth pint of Guinness, Ulysses will start making sense.

Wandering along the streets, you’re bound to encounter sweet Molly Malone - or at least the buxom statue commemorating the legendary seller of cockles and mussels (“alive alive-o!” – one of those sad songs; she dies of a fever). The Tart with the Cart, as she is inevitably called, is on groovy Grafton Street; Haligonians, take that picture.

There is a Writers’ Museum, but its unremarkable collection of artifacts, mostly associated with the holy trinity named above, isn’t worth going out of your way for. There is, however, a fine art gallery – the National Gallery of Ireland. This has a good selection of works by Jack B. Yeats – the poet W.B.’s brother - and Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ, as well as some Van Goghs, Rembrandts and Goyas. If it’s raining during your stay (note that optimistic “if”), this is a good place to hide away.   

And then there are the doors. Not the rock band, but Georgian doors. Dubliners are inexplicably pleased with their doors – you’ll see them everywhere, and not just on buildings. Posters, pictures, postcards, you name it: the Doors of Dublin. Don’t question it, just buy the postcard.

First published in the Halifax Daily News on March 17, 2007.