06-02-2023, 02:09 PM
May 3 Dublin - The Morning
May 3 was going to be The Queen and I’s first full day in Dublin. Part of that day would be devoted to heading back to Dublin Airport to pick up The Queen Mum but that wasn’t going to take too long. After that, I had full range of activities for all involved.
For whatever reason, Dublin is never one of my prime spots when I think about touring Ireland. The usual plan is spend a day there, see some plays, maybe catch some sights, and then move on. It could be holdover from when I lived in Ireland and the only thing I wanted in Dublin was to go to McDonald’s. Now when I don’t really like McDonald’s, I don’t see the point of being in Dublin too long.
That changed for this trip. Once again, I resolved to learn more about Irish history. I’ve tried this many times in the past but it has never really stuck. But this time I came across two podcasts that were a big help. One is The Revolutionary Ireland Podcast. I found this podcast because the podcast maker also does a walking tour of the all the key sights of the 1916 Easter rebellion. The podcaster is Lorcan Collins and I started listening to him on my daily dog walks. Lorcan doesn’t just cover the 1916 period, he covers lots of events from Irish history. I would listen to the podcast and then Google all the sights mentioned in the podcast in order to be able to find them when I arrived.
The problem is he’s not very prolific. Before too long, I was done with his series and I still didn’t feel I knew enough. But during Lorcan’s podcast, he kept mentioning another podcast called Three Castles Burning by Donal Fallon. If you have ever seen the seal of the city for Dublin, you can see the Three Castles burning on it. Lorcan’s podcast is the social history of Dublin covering everything from the Diving Bell used to build the walls along the River Liffey to the Clash playing in the examination hall in Trinity College. The amount of spots I needed to see rose exponentially after listening to his podcast. And Lorcan had made hundreds of podcast. I wasn’t going to finish them all before the trip took off. I made the Queen hear a few of them by the clever subterfuge of listening to them in the car on our way to Saturday shopping. She eventually started listening to them on her own.
I read a few books as well, but they didn’t help as much as I would have liked. I read a biography of Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, that taught me I don’t really like Jonathan Swift. But I started reading about him after one of the podcasts. The podcast showed him in a much better light. I also read Star of the Sea which was about the great Irish famine. It was also another failure. Finally there was the biography of Lord Edward who was one of the leaders of United Irishman uprising in 1798. The authorities decided it would be better if he died of his wounds rather than treat those wounds so he could stand trial.
I also used many websites for my research into how to enjoy myself. The two big ones were The Irish Road Trip and Things to Do in Ireland Before you Die. They had lots of top ten lists of restaurants and things to see that pointed me in the right direction on many occasions. For a concentrated look at Dublin, I used Lovin’ Dublin. The websites gave me plenty of great ideas.
From these books, podcasts, and websites, I did get a deeper understanding of Ireland in general and Dublin in particular. In regards to Dublin for instance, you have to look at Dublin as two distinct entities, the Northside and the Southside with the river Liffey dividing the two. From there, you can break down the city into different neighborhoods like the Liberties, Inchicore, Kimmage, Stoneybatter and Smithfield. where our hotel was located. My favorite new find was an area called the Monto.
The Monto was Dublin’s Red light district from the late 18th century into the early 19th century. It was called the Monto in reference to Montgomery Street, a name which no longer exists in the area. When the Legion of Mary went on their crusade to wipe out the Monto, one of the things they did was change the names of many of the offending streets. Montgomery Street is now Talbot Street. But who knew, besides everyone, that Dublin had a thriving Red Light District.
Yes, this amount of study to prepare to go on a trip is insane. No one does this. Well, one person. By adding up the time it takes to visit all the places on my list, I figured I would need about 36 hours in the day to accomplish my tasks. There it is again. Tasks. Who does tasks on vacation?
There were going to be three levels of touring pace on this trip. There was the slow paced sightseeing when we had The Queen, The Queen Mum, and myself. The Queen Mum is 84 after-all and has a bit of a breathing problem. It takes her some time to get from point A to point B with breaks along the way. The second level would be a bit faster with just The Queen and myself. Although, the Queen has cried Uncle on many occasions when she has had enough of my pace and needs a break. Yes, vacation timeouts have been planned into the itinerary. Finally, there would be just Greg unleashed racing around town with camera in hand, photographing like a mad man but probably getting no real appreciation of the sights he saw.
With a head full of places to see, I set my alarm for 5am. I’m sure every vacationeer sets their alarm to get up super early. But in my case, 5am is an hour later than I usually arise. In my defense, for the last several months I had been exercising more in effort to lose weight. I didn’t want that effort all to go to waste while on vacation. I figured there was an hour before everyone else was up to get in some exercise. I still feel you judging me.
I headed up to Mary’s Lane, passing by a car that had been clamped. Mary’s Lane becomes Mary’s street and gave me a straight shot across the North Side. I walked by the old Fruit Market which I had heard about on the podcasts. The Fruit market takes up a whole city block and used to be where wholesalers would sell and buy fruit. I dodged several forklifts still busily loading fruit from nearby much smaller facilities. The area I passed through was dodgy at best but as I neared O’Connell Street, one of the main thoroughfares of Dublin, Mary’s Lane became Mary’s Street, a pedestrian walkway with fancy shops on either side of the street.
Although why stay on these nice, well lit streets when I can dodge down a back alley to get a look at some 1916 Uprising history? When the General Post Office, or GPO, was about to fall during the Uprising, the defenders decided to make an escape through the side door down Henry St to Moore St. The charge out was led by a man called Michael O’Rahilly, known better as The O’Rahilly. He raced out sort of as a diversion so the wounded could be brought through behind him. The O’Rahilly was shot and managed to drag himself to an alley now named in his honor. When I found our that Mary’s Street had become Henry Street, I knew that I wasn’t far from Moore St. And Moore Street would lead me to the O’Rahilly Parade. Of course I had to go find it. Maybe there is no ‘of course’ about it.
O’Rahilly Parade turned out to be just a street. No plaques. This led me to Moore Lane which was pretty unsafe. The alley was lined with the back entrances to all the stores who had their front entrances on much more well lit streets. I wasn’t afeared at all.
I took pictures of the GPO because it is the GPO. Saw my old friend Jim Larkin up on his perch with his arms stretched to the heavens. The one book I didn’t read was Strumpett City which is about Jim Larkin and the 1913 Lockout. The statue of Larkin is in the approximate spot where the Royal Irish Constabulary waded into a crowd of people listening to a Larkin speech. The RIC injured between 400 and 600 people with their batons.
Behind Larkin, if you face him, is the Millennium Spire derided throughout Dublin as the Skewer in the Sewer and other colorful names. People thought it odd that during an epidemic of drug use in the city, Dublin Corporation would celebrate by putting a giant needle on their main thoroughfare. The Spire stands in the spot of another famous Dublin landmark that I had never heard of until this year: Nelson’s Pillar. Nelson’s Pillar was erected to celebrate Admiral Horatio Nelson’s victories and was built long before Nelson’s column in Trafalgar square. The pillar stood on O’Connell street from 1809 until 1966 when an enterprising IRA man blew the granite column up on the Fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 uprising. Songs laud the event as Ireland’s entry into the space program. Supposedly, when the army came in to take the rest of the column down, they hired the IRA man as a consultant for the job.
I ventured from the GPO up Earl St to Talbot Street, passed the statue of James Joyce, finally into the Monto proper. How could I tell? Well there is a giant mural there of the Monto complete with the lyrics of the song made famous by the Dubliners about the Monto. There isn’t much to say that this is the Monto besides the mural. It is just a warren of streets like any other in Dublin. I hoped to find the plaque commemorating Phil Shanahan’s pub, but failed to do so. Another coup missed. Phil Shanahan’s pub is where the British soldiers would drop off their guns in exchange for a fiver during the Irish War for Independence. Prostitutes would do the same with guns they had stolen from the military men. The spot where Phil Shanahan’s pub stood is now the Dublin City Arts Office.
All was not forsaken in my hunt for historic locations, I did make my way to one of Bram Stoker’s residences in Dublin. He lived on Buckingham Street Lower for several years. There is a plaque and a mural on the wall of his former residence.
After Stoker’s place, it was time to return to the hotel. I needed to back in order to have breakfast and then head to the airport to pick up the Queen Mum. My schedule was like a finely tuned watched, all the gears working in harmony to bring about a predictable outcome.
From Buckingham Street, I walked passed Connelly Train Station on my way to the Liffey. Fun Fact: The Fifteen Main train stations in Ireland are named after the sixteen men executed after the 1916 Uprising. The Pearse brothers, Willy and Patrick, only get the one station. Connolly Station is named for James Connolly. Connolly badly wounded during the uprising and given only days to live was still taken to Kilmainham Gaol and shot on May 12. He was too injured to stand for the firing squad, so they tied him to a chair.
I wended my way along the brand new EPIC museum which is all about the Irish Diaspora to the famine memorial on the Liffey Bank. The memorial comprises seven starving peasants and a dog struggling to move forward. I had some filming ideas I wanted to try out among the statues so I stopped their for a few minutes. It’s a good place for the memorial because right next to it is also one of the coffin ships that brought people from Ireland to other countries.
Next stop was the Custom House, set on fire during the Irish War of Independence. I wanted to see a memorial they had on the grounds dedicated to the people that burned the building to the ground. The Dublin Fire Brigade were the prime instigators in making sure the fire in the building was not extinguished until everything had burned. Unfortunately, the gates to the grounds were locked and I settled for photographs through the fence.
Not all my quests were for historical places, most were, but as soon as I heard about the Father Pat Noise memorial on the O’Connell Bridge, I knew I had to see it if I saw nothing else in Dublin. The plaque is inset into the balustrade on the east edge of the bridge in a depression left behind by the installation of the Millenium Countdown Clock. The plaque reads “Advisor to Peadar Clancy. He died under suspicious circumstances when his carriage plunged into the Liffey on August 10th, 1919” The only problem, there was no Father Noise. There was no tragic accident. Two men decided to put it on the bridge as a joke. The plaque was there for years before a reporter pointed out the hoax to Dublin officials. The officials were about to remove it but the outcry was such that they had to leave it. And there it stays in all it’s glory.
This trip coincides with my father and I’s trip to Ireland. Thirty years to the day, my father and I returned to Ireland. 1993 was my first trip back to Ireland since I left school in 1981. In an other strange coincidence, during the 2023 trip, I’m the same age my father was during the 1993 trip, 59 years of age. To honor this time comparison, I went through my photos of that trip and I’m trying to take photos in the same or similar locations this trip. They aren’t all from 1993, but most are. I don’t know why it gives me such pleasure to compare the photos separated in time, but it does.
The first photo I shot as part of this expose was the Heineken Building located on the south side of the river at the O’Connell Bridge. According to my friends at Google Maps, the building houses the Residential Tenancies Board, but I’ve always known it as the Heineken Building due to the large Heineken advertisement running down the side of it. The advertisement is still on the building same as it was in 1993. I took a picture of the building because when my father first came to Ireland to start up Verbatim in 1977, he had his first office in that building.
I headed up Westmoreland St passed the National Wax Muxeum which amuses me with it’s life size figures of Batman, Superman and others on the first floor balcony. The figures seem completely out of place and, yet, there they are.
My destination was an old Bewley’s store in the middle of the block. Bewley’s is Ireland’s largest tea and coffee company and this used to be their flagship cafe, I thought. Bewley’s was my go to spot when I first stumbled on them on Cruise’s Street in Limerick in 1993. I could sit (if i ever actually sit on vacation) in a Bewley’s with a pot of tea and a couple of scones and consider it the highlight of the day. Turns out the most famous Bewley’s is further up the block on Grafton Street. This cafe was part of their expansion plans that failed. I knew this cafe from when The Queen and I stayed at the Bewley’s hotel around the corner on Fleet Street. The beauty of the Bewley’s hotel was the hotel opened up into this Bewley Cafe and Bakery for our breakfast. Sadly, this cafe has changed into a TGIFridays but you can still see the Bewley’s floor mosaic in the entrance to the restaurant.
Like I mentioned, the former Bewley’s hotel was just around the corner and I went there to snap a picture of the building. Most of my photos from the 2001 trip were ruined by a rogue x-ray machine that scanned our bags at the airport and all the film in those bags. As a completist, I wanted a picture of the now Fleet Street hotel to remind me of where The Queen and I stayed for our trip to Ireland.
The hotel also marked the starting point for the Icon Walk. The Icon factory, an artists collective, decided to revitalize the lanes around their building. They cleaned up the narrow streets and painted historical murals on the walls. Since I was rushing through, I took the detour down the lanes.
My mistake. The people who frequent these areas at night didn’t get the memo this was now a tourist thoroughfare. As I turned the corned onto Bedford Lane from Prince’s Lane, I immediately saw four people sitting crouched in the street, huddled around what looked like a crack pipe. There were others milling about, but that set piece of four people around the pipe caught my eye. I knew instantly I was in the wrong alley at the wrong time. They saw me as well. The one skinny girl on the end started to rise and implored me to give her some money for breakfast. I picked up the pace and moved further up the lane away from them.
At this point, I’m in Temple Bar proper. At night the streets are packed with tourist navigating the many pubs in the area. The whole area was supposed to be torn down in the 1970s and turned into a bus station but public outcry said no. My father and I stayed in this area in 1993 in the Bloom’s hotel. The Queen and I repeated the Bloom’s Hotel tradition on the 2001 trip as we were leaving Ireland. Both times, I had no idea what the Bloom name referenced.
I only had one more interaction as I moved through Temple Bar going up and down the streets, some man started yelling after me to stop. I did not. He yelled a lot. I took photographs of the Friends Meeting House on Eustace street which occupies the site where the Eagle Tavern used to stand. The Eagle Tavern is where the United Irishman of 1798 rebellion fame met for the first time. The Meeting house is also where Frederick Douglass spoke in 1845. He was on the run from the United States for being an escaped slave. He was only supposed to visit Ireland for a short time and ended up staying four months. I keep thinking someone needs to make the Frederick Douglas in Ireland movie.
I went back by the Ha’penny Bridge for some photographs in the daylight. I scooted by the Irish Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. One street still had a Merry Christmas banner draped across the alley. My main destination was Fishambles Street where the first performance of Handel’s Messiah was performed. When I think Dublin, I don’t think Handel’s Messiah. But Handel’s Messiah was first performed here at The Great Music Hall on April 13, 1742. From reading Swift’s biography, I know Swift was initially against using the St. Patrick’s Cathedral’s choir for the performance but was eventually convinced to do so. Supposedly if you are in Dublin on April 13 and are on Fishamble Street, a group gathers to play the Messiah every year. There is nothing left of the original concert hall. All that is there now is a modern hotel, Handel’s Hotel, and a plaque on the front of the building with the information about the performance.
From there it was back to the Hampton by Hilton for my first Irish breakfast in their breakfast room. I could tell it was a Hampton because they had those stupid waffle making machines. I could tell I was in Ireland by the large tureen of pork sausages available for my consumption. It wasn’t the worst Irish breakfast I have ever had, but I’m hoping for better out of this trip.
My elapsed time for my Dublin walkabout was about ninety minutes. I could easily have doubled that and still not seen everything I wanted to see. But I was up against a deadline. The Queen Mum’s plane would land at 7:30. The Queen and I needed to be at Dublin Airport to pick her up.
May 3 was going to be The Queen and I’s first full day in Dublin. Part of that day would be devoted to heading back to Dublin Airport to pick up The Queen Mum but that wasn’t going to take too long. After that, I had full range of activities for all involved.
For whatever reason, Dublin is never one of my prime spots when I think about touring Ireland. The usual plan is spend a day there, see some plays, maybe catch some sights, and then move on. It could be holdover from when I lived in Ireland and the only thing I wanted in Dublin was to go to McDonald’s. Now when I don’t really like McDonald’s, I don’t see the point of being in Dublin too long.
That changed for this trip. Once again, I resolved to learn more about Irish history. I’ve tried this many times in the past but it has never really stuck. But this time I came across two podcasts that were a big help. One is The Revolutionary Ireland Podcast. I found this podcast because the podcast maker also does a walking tour of the all the key sights of the 1916 Easter rebellion. The podcaster is Lorcan Collins and I started listening to him on my daily dog walks. Lorcan doesn’t just cover the 1916 period, he covers lots of events from Irish history. I would listen to the podcast and then Google all the sights mentioned in the podcast in order to be able to find them when I arrived.
The problem is he’s not very prolific. Before too long, I was done with his series and I still didn’t feel I knew enough. But during Lorcan’s podcast, he kept mentioning another podcast called Three Castles Burning by Donal Fallon. If you have ever seen the seal of the city for Dublin, you can see the Three Castles burning on it. Lorcan’s podcast is the social history of Dublin covering everything from the Diving Bell used to build the walls along the River Liffey to the Clash playing in the examination hall in Trinity College. The amount of spots I needed to see rose exponentially after listening to his podcast. And Lorcan had made hundreds of podcast. I wasn’t going to finish them all before the trip took off. I made the Queen hear a few of them by the clever subterfuge of listening to them in the car on our way to Saturday shopping. She eventually started listening to them on her own.
I read a few books as well, but they didn’t help as much as I would have liked. I read a biography of Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, that taught me I don’t really like Jonathan Swift. But I started reading about him after one of the podcasts. The podcast showed him in a much better light. I also read Star of the Sea which was about the great Irish famine. It was also another failure. Finally there was the biography of Lord Edward who was one of the leaders of United Irishman uprising in 1798. The authorities decided it would be better if he died of his wounds rather than treat those wounds so he could stand trial.
I also used many websites for my research into how to enjoy myself. The two big ones were The Irish Road Trip and Things to Do in Ireland Before you Die. They had lots of top ten lists of restaurants and things to see that pointed me in the right direction on many occasions. For a concentrated look at Dublin, I used Lovin’ Dublin. The websites gave me plenty of great ideas.
From these books, podcasts, and websites, I did get a deeper understanding of Ireland in general and Dublin in particular. In regards to Dublin for instance, you have to look at Dublin as two distinct entities, the Northside and the Southside with the river Liffey dividing the two. From there, you can break down the city into different neighborhoods like the Liberties, Inchicore, Kimmage, Stoneybatter and Smithfield. where our hotel was located. My favorite new find was an area called the Monto.
The Monto was Dublin’s Red light district from the late 18th century into the early 19th century. It was called the Monto in reference to Montgomery Street, a name which no longer exists in the area. When the Legion of Mary went on their crusade to wipe out the Monto, one of the things they did was change the names of many of the offending streets. Montgomery Street is now Talbot Street. But who knew, besides everyone, that Dublin had a thriving Red Light District.
Yes, this amount of study to prepare to go on a trip is insane. No one does this. Well, one person. By adding up the time it takes to visit all the places on my list, I figured I would need about 36 hours in the day to accomplish my tasks. There it is again. Tasks. Who does tasks on vacation?
There were going to be three levels of touring pace on this trip. There was the slow paced sightseeing when we had The Queen, The Queen Mum, and myself. The Queen Mum is 84 after-all and has a bit of a breathing problem. It takes her some time to get from point A to point B with breaks along the way. The second level would be a bit faster with just The Queen and myself. Although, the Queen has cried Uncle on many occasions when she has had enough of my pace and needs a break. Yes, vacation timeouts have been planned into the itinerary. Finally, there would be just Greg unleashed racing around town with camera in hand, photographing like a mad man but probably getting no real appreciation of the sights he saw.
With a head full of places to see, I set my alarm for 5am. I’m sure every vacationeer sets their alarm to get up super early. But in my case, 5am is an hour later than I usually arise. In my defense, for the last several months I had been exercising more in effort to lose weight. I didn’t want that effort all to go to waste while on vacation. I figured there was an hour before everyone else was up to get in some exercise. I still feel you judging me.
I headed up to Mary’s Lane, passing by a car that had been clamped. Mary’s Lane becomes Mary’s street and gave me a straight shot across the North Side. I walked by the old Fruit Market which I had heard about on the podcasts. The Fruit market takes up a whole city block and used to be where wholesalers would sell and buy fruit. I dodged several forklifts still busily loading fruit from nearby much smaller facilities. The area I passed through was dodgy at best but as I neared O’Connell Street, one of the main thoroughfares of Dublin, Mary’s Lane became Mary’s Street, a pedestrian walkway with fancy shops on either side of the street.
Although why stay on these nice, well lit streets when I can dodge down a back alley to get a look at some 1916 Uprising history? When the General Post Office, or GPO, was about to fall during the Uprising, the defenders decided to make an escape through the side door down Henry St to Moore St. The charge out was led by a man called Michael O’Rahilly, known better as The O’Rahilly. He raced out sort of as a diversion so the wounded could be brought through behind him. The O’Rahilly was shot and managed to drag himself to an alley now named in his honor. When I found our that Mary’s Street had become Henry Street, I knew that I wasn’t far from Moore St. And Moore Street would lead me to the O’Rahilly Parade. Of course I had to go find it. Maybe there is no ‘of course’ about it.
O’Rahilly Parade turned out to be just a street. No plaques. This led me to Moore Lane which was pretty unsafe. The alley was lined with the back entrances to all the stores who had their front entrances on much more well lit streets. I wasn’t afeared at all.
I took pictures of the GPO because it is the GPO. Saw my old friend Jim Larkin up on his perch with his arms stretched to the heavens. The one book I didn’t read was Strumpett City which is about Jim Larkin and the 1913 Lockout. The statue of Larkin is in the approximate spot where the Royal Irish Constabulary waded into a crowd of people listening to a Larkin speech. The RIC injured between 400 and 600 people with their batons.
Behind Larkin, if you face him, is the Millennium Spire derided throughout Dublin as the Skewer in the Sewer and other colorful names. People thought it odd that during an epidemic of drug use in the city, Dublin Corporation would celebrate by putting a giant needle on their main thoroughfare. The Spire stands in the spot of another famous Dublin landmark that I had never heard of until this year: Nelson’s Pillar. Nelson’s Pillar was erected to celebrate Admiral Horatio Nelson’s victories and was built long before Nelson’s column in Trafalgar square. The pillar stood on O’Connell street from 1809 until 1966 when an enterprising IRA man blew the granite column up on the Fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 uprising. Songs laud the event as Ireland’s entry into the space program. Supposedly, when the army came in to take the rest of the column down, they hired the IRA man as a consultant for the job.
I ventured from the GPO up Earl St to Talbot Street, passed the statue of James Joyce, finally into the Monto proper. How could I tell? Well there is a giant mural there of the Monto complete with the lyrics of the song made famous by the Dubliners about the Monto. There isn’t much to say that this is the Monto besides the mural. It is just a warren of streets like any other in Dublin. I hoped to find the plaque commemorating Phil Shanahan’s pub, but failed to do so. Another coup missed. Phil Shanahan’s pub is where the British soldiers would drop off their guns in exchange for a fiver during the Irish War for Independence. Prostitutes would do the same with guns they had stolen from the military men. The spot where Phil Shanahan’s pub stood is now the Dublin City Arts Office.
All was not forsaken in my hunt for historic locations, I did make my way to one of Bram Stoker’s residences in Dublin. He lived on Buckingham Street Lower for several years. There is a plaque and a mural on the wall of his former residence.
After Stoker’s place, it was time to return to the hotel. I needed to back in order to have breakfast and then head to the airport to pick up the Queen Mum. My schedule was like a finely tuned watched, all the gears working in harmony to bring about a predictable outcome.
From Buckingham Street, I walked passed Connelly Train Station on my way to the Liffey. Fun Fact: The Fifteen Main train stations in Ireland are named after the sixteen men executed after the 1916 Uprising. The Pearse brothers, Willy and Patrick, only get the one station. Connolly Station is named for James Connolly. Connolly badly wounded during the uprising and given only days to live was still taken to Kilmainham Gaol and shot on May 12. He was too injured to stand for the firing squad, so they tied him to a chair.
I wended my way along the brand new EPIC museum which is all about the Irish Diaspora to the famine memorial on the Liffey Bank. The memorial comprises seven starving peasants and a dog struggling to move forward. I had some filming ideas I wanted to try out among the statues so I stopped their for a few minutes. It’s a good place for the memorial because right next to it is also one of the coffin ships that brought people from Ireland to other countries.
Next stop was the Custom House, set on fire during the Irish War of Independence. I wanted to see a memorial they had on the grounds dedicated to the people that burned the building to the ground. The Dublin Fire Brigade were the prime instigators in making sure the fire in the building was not extinguished until everything had burned. Unfortunately, the gates to the grounds were locked and I settled for photographs through the fence.
Not all my quests were for historical places, most were, but as soon as I heard about the Father Pat Noise memorial on the O’Connell Bridge, I knew I had to see it if I saw nothing else in Dublin. The plaque is inset into the balustrade on the east edge of the bridge in a depression left behind by the installation of the Millenium Countdown Clock. The plaque reads “Advisor to Peadar Clancy. He died under suspicious circumstances when his carriage plunged into the Liffey on August 10th, 1919” The only problem, there was no Father Noise. There was no tragic accident. Two men decided to put it on the bridge as a joke. The plaque was there for years before a reporter pointed out the hoax to Dublin officials. The officials were about to remove it but the outcry was such that they had to leave it. And there it stays in all it’s glory.
This trip coincides with my father and I’s trip to Ireland. Thirty years to the day, my father and I returned to Ireland. 1993 was my first trip back to Ireland since I left school in 1981. In an other strange coincidence, during the 2023 trip, I’m the same age my father was during the 1993 trip, 59 years of age. To honor this time comparison, I went through my photos of that trip and I’m trying to take photos in the same or similar locations this trip. They aren’t all from 1993, but most are. I don’t know why it gives me such pleasure to compare the photos separated in time, but it does.
The first photo I shot as part of this expose was the Heineken Building located on the south side of the river at the O’Connell Bridge. According to my friends at Google Maps, the building houses the Residential Tenancies Board, but I’ve always known it as the Heineken Building due to the large Heineken advertisement running down the side of it. The advertisement is still on the building same as it was in 1993. I took a picture of the building because when my father first came to Ireland to start up Verbatim in 1977, he had his first office in that building.
I headed up Westmoreland St passed the National Wax Muxeum which amuses me with it’s life size figures of Batman, Superman and others on the first floor balcony. The figures seem completely out of place and, yet, there they are.
My destination was an old Bewley’s store in the middle of the block. Bewley’s is Ireland’s largest tea and coffee company and this used to be their flagship cafe, I thought. Bewley’s was my go to spot when I first stumbled on them on Cruise’s Street in Limerick in 1993. I could sit (if i ever actually sit on vacation) in a Bewley’s with a pot of tea and a couple of scones and consider it the highlight of the day. Turns out the most famous Bewley’s is further up the block on Grafton Street. This cafe was part of their expansion plans that failed. I knew this cafe from when The Queen and I stayed at the Bewley’s hotel around the corner on Fleet Street. The beauty of the Bewley’s hotel was the hotel opened up into this Bewley Cafe and Bakery for our breakfast. Sadly, this cafe has changed into a TGIFridays but you can still see the Bewley’s floor mosaic in the entrance to the restaurant.
Like I mentioned, the former Bewley’s hotel was just around the corner and I went there to snap a picture of the building. Most of my photos from the 2001 trip were ruined by a rogue x-ray machine that scanned our bags at the airport and all the film in those bags. As a completist, I wanted a picture of the now Fleet Street hotel to remind me of where The Queen and I stayed for our trip to Ireland.
The hotel also marked the starting point for the Icon Walk. The Icon factory, an artists collective, decided to revitalize the lanes around their building. They cleaned up the narrow streets and painted historical murals on the walls. Since I was rushing through, I took the detour down the lanes.
My mistake. The people who frequent these areas at night didn’t get the memo this was now a tourist thoroughfare. As I turned the corned onto Bedford Lane from Prince’s Lane, I immediately saw four people sitting crouched in the street, huddled around what looked like a crack pipe. There were others milling about, but that set piece of four people around the pipe caught my eye. I knew instantly I was in the wrong alley at the wrong time. They saw me as well. The one skinny girl on the end started to rise and implored me to give her some money for breakfast. I picked up the pace and moved further up the lane away from them.
At this point, I’m in Temple Bar proper. At night the streets are packed with tourist navigating the many pubs in the area. The whole area was supposed to be torn down in the 1970s and turned into a bus station but public outcry said no. My father and I stayed in this area in 1993 in the Bloom’s hotel. The Queen and I repeated the Bloom’s Hotel tradition on the 2001 trip as we were leaving Ireland. Both times, I had no idea what the Bloom name referenced.
I only had one more interaction as I moved through Temple Bar going up and down the streets, some man started yelling after me to stop. I did not. He yelled a lot. I took photographs of the Friends Meeting House on Eustace street which occupies the site where the Eagle Tavern used to stand. The Eagle Tavern is where the United Irishman of 1798 rebellion fame met for the first time. The Meeting house is also where Frederick Douglass spoke in 1845. He was on the run from the United States for being an escaped slave. He was only supposed to visit Ireland for a short time and ended up staying four months. I keep thinking someone needs to make the Frederick Douglas in Ireland movie.
I went back by the Ha’penny Bridge for some photographs in the daylight. I scooted by the Irish Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. One street still had a Merry Christmas banner draped across the alley. My main destination was Fishambles Street where the first performance of Handel’s Messiah was performed. When I think Dublin, I don’t think Handel’s Messiah. But Handel’s Messiah was first performed here at The Great Music Hall on April 13, 1742. From reading Swift’s biography, I know Swift was initially against using the St. Patrick’s Cathedral’s choir for the performance but was eventually convinced to do so. Supposedly if you are in Dublin on April 13 and are on Fishamble Street, a group gathers to play the Messiah every year. There is nothing left of the original concert hall. All that is there now is a modern hotel, Handel’s Hotel, and a plaque on the front of the building with the information about the performance.
From there it was back to the Hampton by Hilton for my first Irish breakfast in their breakfast room. I could tell it was a Hampton because they had those stupid waffle making machines. I could tell I was in Ireland by the large tureen of pork sausages available for my consumption. It wasn’t the worst Irish breakfast I have ever had, but I’m hoping for better out of this trip.
My elapsed time for my Dublin walkabout was about ninety minutes. I could easily have doubled that and still not seen everything I wanted to see. But I was up against a deadline. The Queen Mum’s plane would land at 7:30. The Queen and I needed to be at Dublin Airport to pick her up.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm