While I'm waiting for my 10MB-a-piece pictures to upload, I figured I'd do some blogging before I forget the details. It's amazing to think I left Delaware barely more than 2-weeks ago, it feels like it's been months. I tried to think about some sort of format for these posts on a city, and I'm going to try out a good/bad/ugly/random + places, but I may shorten it if that takes too long

Good

Dublin was a genuinely enjoyable city. As I said in my previous post, it's very small and sort of rectangular, with most of the worthwhile sights being arranged around the Liffey River. It was my first introduction to the word "quay", a term also used in France ("quai") to approximately mean a 1-2 block area running parallel to the river, one on each side. So Dublin is around 8-10 quays on either side of the river, and then more city/pedestrian areas expanding out around the central quays

Almost all the people I encountered in Dublin were very friendly and helpful, and though I struggled at times with the thick Irish accents, especially among older residents, once I came to France I found a new appreciation for the lack of any serious language barrier or tourist resentment

Although it was a bustling and lively town, it seldom felt crowded or overly touristic

Bad

Dublin was very expensive, but I think that's standard fare for many of the large cities in Western Europe, and certainly in part due to the horrendous USD->EUR exchange rate. None of the food looked all that appealing, but that made it easier to live off some oatmeal and snacks that I packed

Ugly

There were a handful of drunk or mentally ill people walking around the city acting out, and some clearly drug-addicted homeless, but for the most part Dublin seemed very safe

Random

The Dublin equivelant of the US "dollar store" was the "2 euro store" - i.e. 3x as much. Guinness ran a similar premium, which was especially bizarre when considering it's so cheap in the US after being shipped 6000 miles away

Places

General Walkabout

I really enjoyed just walking around Dublin at all hours of the day and night. I never felt very unsafe, even carrying my camera late into the night, and there were always at least a handful of kebab shops and fast food places open. The Temple Bar area and the streets around the Millenium Spire were especially good at night

Dublin Castle

The castle tour was fairly interesting, if a bit long. Like elsewhere in Europe I've been surprised how they've continued to use ancient historical sites for contemporary purposes, in this case as an active government building

National Gallery

I'm not much of a an art enthusiast, but the Gallery had free admission and was a welcome break from the cold weather. The pieces weren't overly impressive compared to others I've seen so far, but was still worth a visit

Trinity College

I ran into Trinity college while still walking around trying to find my first hostel. I believe there's a famous library you can visit, but I was still carrying 40lbs of crap on my back so I passed, instead just opting to take some pictures of the small but impressive campus

National Museum

Again, it's not really fair to compare a Dublin Museum to something like the Louvre. Taken on its own the museum was interesting for the Irish history and their contemporary perspectives on controversial events of the past. They were a bit heavy-handed about preventing even non-flash photography, which I didn't understand

Saint Patrick's Cathedral

I'm not sure there's that many worthwhile things to say about a cathedral, but St Patrick's was certainly impressive both inside and out. It amuses me how like Notre Dame in Paris the cathedral is used both as a tourist spot, complete with gift shop, and an active site of worship

Jameson Tour

Although not originally on my agenda, I ran into the old Jameson Whiskey distillery during on of my long walks. The tour began with a campy, hagiographic film about the company's founder, but after that consisted of an unimpressive but quite enjoyable walk through real and recreated portions of the distillery, led by a very friendly Irish tour guide. At the end I was lucky to be part of a whiskey tasting between 6 whiskeys from Ireland, Scotland and America, and can now actually say something intelligent about a whiskey's taste. Aside from the tasting, the highlight was the story of the pet cat Jameson used to keep mice away from the grains, complete with the old cat itself, which they'd had stuffed

Guinness Brewery

Although a more commercial and touristy feel than the Jameson tour, it was also much more elaborate and impressive. The "Gravity Bar" at the end of the tour was excellent, offering a perfectly poured Guinness and terrific view of the city

War Memorial

There's a nice park and war memorial on the western side of Dublin, near the Museum. It's a very pleasant place to walk, and you can climb fairly high up on the memorial for a nice place to relax and take in the view

I also walked through a couple other small parks in Dublinm the names of which I can't recall, but generally you can just get a map and walk around to any points of interest on it. The city's small enough and most sights cheap enough that you seldom will feel disappointed for giving something a shot

Chester Beatty Library

This hadn't been on my itinerary, but I ran into it by chance while walking around near Dublin Castle. It turned out to be a nice quick museum-like experience, and free to boot. Basically it's a small collection primarily consisting of religious manuscripts, although with informative and objective descriptions of the pieces and their importance to the religious faith, as well as some general information on the various faiths and sects and their evolution over time

Accomodations

I stayed in two hostels in Dublin, the first was the Four Corners, in Merchant's Quay. The staff were generally friendly and bathroom in the room was acceptable. Most of the crowd seemed to be long-term travellers who were working and staying in Dublin was an extended time, so it felt a little tough to join in. Still, they had an excellent kitchen and all the areas were open 24-hours, which was a great jet-lag remedy. There was no wifi and you had to pay to use the lobby computers, which were locked down for web-only (i.e. no photo uploading)

The second hostel was Isacc's, right next-door to the bus station. The crowd was quite different, a mix of "traditional" backpackers, some younger tour groups and older solo/couple travellers, and very oddly even some business people who I guess just wanted the cheap room. The breakfast was minimal but decent, the staff was friendly, and the lobby wifi was weak and slow(but better than nothing). They closed off the lobby area after 11PM, which made wifi impossible except from the stairwell, but I had a better time meeting some other travellers