Dublin, A confused City

I have just returned from the fair city of Dublin, where myself and Rosslyn have spent the past week. She looking at the sites and sounds of the City, and myself beavering away for my RHCE certification.

Dublin strikes me as a very confused City. It’s neither one thing nor the other. There are no quaters, no sensible collections of resteraunts. It’s also very expensibe. We found it very difficult to find somewhere to eat at a sensible price.

Being not very big, walking around the City was fairly easy. Even though there seemed to be a load of bussess moving regularly around the city, trying to find a map of where they were going, and where they stopped seemed to be impossible. We were there for a week and didn’t manage it.

The saving grace, though, was the tourist map. It was detailed enough to allow me to find my training center, even though it didn’t actually show up on the map, and Dubliners, as it’s is said about them, are actually fairly friendly people, so asking for directions wasn’t that painful.

There are two places that we found that are really worth stopping by to eat at.

The first is a small place called Isaacs, it’s down near the bus terminus in Dublin. It does does food at a sensible price (For dublin, about 10 euros), and the portions are quite good. The music’s not to bad either, and they appear to have a tango floor on a Monday (if your into that sort of thing).

The other is O’Shea’s. The food there is also sensibly priced, but it gets full REALLY quickly. IT’s best to try to make it there as early as possible of an evening, otherwise your not likely to get a seat.

We would also recommend the Irish National Art Gallery. It’s well worth the Visit. Rosslyn really enjoyed herself there. The strange thing about the place is that it’s like a warren, you find yourself wandering around, and finding these objects of art, mostly pictures. Each wing has a different style to the rooms, some or ancient, some are modern, and it’s all designed to improve the look of the painting. The only downside is the insistance of shining lights at the paintings, which if they are oil, causes a really annoying glare. Why is it that galleries can’t figure out that what people actually want to do is to SEE the paintings? not the glare from their lights?

I would suggest that you also visit the Museam, but don’t plan to spend a lot of time there. They have some interesting things that are worth seeing, but their information is lacking, and occasionally difficult to find. The place is also laid out very baddly, for a museam. The people found in the peat are very interesting, as are the clothing that they managed to recover from the bogs as well. I would probably plan to spend an afternoon there, though you can do the entire museam in a few hours.

Enjoy Dublin,.

Black Xanthus