Dublin - A city of pubs and music.

The street is full of lively pubs including the famous Temple Bar

The Visas and low cost airlines

James Joyce had made Ireland popular with his writings about the country and much of tourism for several years to Dublin and elsewhere in Ireland was attributed to him. To go to Ireland (southern Ireland) we Indians require some planning and the UK Visa automatically doesn't give us the privilege of just hopping across the border. But we don't really need a separate visa as there is a category called BIVS (British Ireland Visa Scheme) which allows you to take Visa of either one country and visit the other as well if it is stamped BIVS. This was started for Indian and Chinese visitors in 2014 and is subject to condition that the country from which you have taken visa would have to be visited first before going across to the other country. Northern Ireland is of course part of UK so no problem there. Important thing is that if you do wish to visit both countries with one visa then you have to make a request at the time of application.

We left for Dublin the day after India played Australia at the Oval at the World Cup Cricket match. We had a few days before the next match at Manchester - and that was the big match of India vs Pakistan. We had planned to spend 5 days in Ireland before flying out to Manchester and this turned out to be a reat decision. We had no issues with our BA flight to Dublin but my cousin Amit and his wife Shikha had a tough time as they were flying Ryan Air and as they had not checked in online - they were imposed a heavy penalty ! The authorities wanted a printed boarding pass for stamping. Even boarding pass on mobile was not good enough. So, paying more than 100 Pounds to print 2 boarding passes did hurt a lot. This is how these low cost airlines work. 

O'Connel Bridge

Several Bridges across river Liffey makes it easy to walk around the town

As we landed in Dublin, realisation hit that GBP were no longer accepted in this part of the world which we relate so closely with Britain. Euro was to be the currency for the next few days as South Ireland was an independent country and was part of EU. We were booked into Arlington hotel O'Connel bridge and as the name suggested the hotel was situated just by the famous O'Connel bridge. The bridge is constructed over River Liffey and we soon realised that just by crossing the bridge and entering one of the lanes opposite side to our hotel we would be in the famous pub district of Dublin - which housed  very many famous pubs including the famous 'Temple Bar.' If you are planning a visit to Dublin, make sure that your hotel is walking distance to the Temple Bar. This will ensure that you are close to almost everything relevant in Dublin.

O'Connel bridge has a unique feature - its length and width are of same size. A gentleman photographer named Arthur Fields popularly known as the 'The man on the Bridge' had this obsession about photographing pedestrians on O'Connel bridge. He took around 1,82,000 pictures of pedestrians crossing the bridge between 1930's and 1980's. We crossed the bridge several times a day and were content with our own selfies. 

The famous Temple Bar 

The decked up Temple Bar

Temple Bar was actually Temple Barr once upon a time. 'Barr' was the raised estuary sandbank or a 'sea wall' built by the owner Sir John Temple to save the house from the river Liffey.  While Temple Bar prides itself of having a rare collection of 450 great whiskies from around the world, there is a buzz around the place which you can't ignore. From the exterior the bar doesn't seem too large but once inside you you can move from room to room and go up and down the steps to get the feel of different sections. It is pretty large and decor is quite interesting. A corner is even dedicated to Sir James Joyce, the famous son of Ireland and as mentioned earlier - a famous author . As the evening progresses the live bands come alive and you can have a drink while listening to some great music. You can make yourself comfortable in any part of the pub. Many musicians from all over the world travel to play in Temple Bar and one can get a schedule from the web. The service is pretty good and if you engage one of the waiters when the time is not so busy, you can get a lot of information from them about the country and its culture and the history behind several famous Irish proverbs.

The music floats out from all the lanes as music is part of the culture of Dubliners. You don't have to go to the Temple Bar - there is abundant choice around the place with famous pubs like Porterhouse, The Quays bar, Foggy Dew, Stag's head and Auld Dubliner. Dublin may appear to be a smallish city but it has 666 licensed bars. The oldest pub here is known as the 'Brazen head' and it  was opened in 12th century. Much of the pub culture could be from the fact that Dublin boasts of the youngest population in Europe. As you roam around the city - this shows.

Guinness is everywhere

As you go around the city which is set around the river Liffey, you will see bars everywhere and you will see those pints of dark bubbly drink in several hands . This is a drink which is most popular in Ireland and it's called  'The Guinness.' 

After roaming around the town and 7 storeys of Guinness Storehouse - a Pint was well deserved. 

Along with the Temple Bar the most famous tourist attraction of Dublin is the 'Guinness storehouse.' This is a 7 story structure which explains the history of the beer and the brewery's founder Arthur Guinness. A lot of information is imparted about the process of making this beer and importance of the quality and sourcing of  ingredients - ' water, barley, hops and yeast.' The charges to enter are not cheap - I think it was around Euro 18.50 per person. The interesting part was a bar offering several flavours of guinness for tasting and a room in which Guiness advertisements down the ages are exhibited. The storehouse did offer a pint of Beer with each ticket at one of the several bars inside the facility including the rooftop 360 degree bar called ' the Gravity.' The Gravity offered some lovely views of the city and the beer here was nice and fresh. But there were several other bars at lower levels as well where you could redeem your coupon. Guinness in Ireland tasted divine and most of us were soon addicted to it. No wonder Dublin produces a whopping 10 million pints of Guinness per day.

At the Gravity Bar

We would have been content to just roam around the streets near our hotel but now that we were in Dublin, we wanted to tick all the boxes. So we took a hop on and hop off bus. It took us around some famous places like Ha'penny bridge, St Patrick's cathedral, The Dublin Castle , Trinity college and the popular for shopping- Grafton street.  Authors such as Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift and Bram Stoker (author of Dracula) are all from Trinity college which we saw from outside.

Wasting our time waiting for hop on hop off bus. 

The bus kept going up and down the Liffey river crossing some bridge periodically. Most touristy things were located close to each other and very central. Actually most of it was near our hotel. One could have just walked to most destinations. In several cities now I have had bad experience with the hop on hop off buses. In the mornings you see many buses on the streets but by  afternoon they suddenly disappear. It's frustrating waiting for these buses and the same thing happened here as buses wouldn't come for long intervals and outside the cathedral we waited for almost an hour. Similar thing had happened in Sweden, Barcelona  and Paris with me so maybe it is time to look for some other method of sightseeing.

At the Cathedral

 'Dublin Mountains Way' was recently voted as one of the most scenic routes in the world. It stretches 25 miles and covers mountain trails, country paths and rural roads. There are several other short trips from the town and if you can hire a vehicle, it becomes even better as everything is very scenic and green at that part of the world. But we had prioritized a visit to 'Cliffs of Moher' and the famous village of Doolin. For that we had decided to spend a few days at 'Galway.' So it was time to leave Dublin just 36 hours after arrival . We had done quite a bit at Dublin in just 36 hours including visiting  about 10 famous Irish pubs. For the time being it was time to travel to Galway by Irish Railways and check out whether all the good things written about Galway were true or not.

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