Wednesday, November 23rd - North Of The Liffey

I checked into my hotel room at 8:30AM or so. I was waiting for a hearty Irish brogue but was greeted by a weak English accent at the desk. Never the less, I was in my room, showered, and out by 10AM.

I spent most of my first day North of the Liffey, since that is where my hotel is located. The River Liffey cuts the city in half. North of the Liffey covers the northside of the city and is considered more gritty compared to things south of the Liffey which are considered more posh. I guess I’m just slumming it with the working class heroes.

The City consist of nine general neighborhoods – North of the Liffey, Grafton Street, Merrion Square, Temple Bar, Kilmainham and the Liberties, the Docklands, Phoenix Park, beyond the Grand Canal, and Beyond the Royal Canal. My first day I stuck close to my new ‘hood.

My first stop was the Hugh Lane which is the Dublin City Gallery. Hugh Lane was a rich Irish man who spent many years trying to convince his nation to fund his art gallery. Annoyed, he re-wrote his will to donate his art to the National Gallery of London. He then proceeded to go down on the Lusitania. Although he had submitted an amended will to return his art to Ireland, that will was never witnessed. After a long, drawn out debate, the two galleries agreed to share his bequest.

Ultimately, this is a small collection in an old house. The big draw is the Francis Bacon Studio which was torn apart in London and rebuilt exactly as the dump it was in the gallery (Bacon was a bit of a slob). Why was Irishman Francis Bacon working in London?  It seems that Ireland has a bit of a history of chasing its tortured artist overseas. Anyway, the two galleries are still haggling over who should have what when. Currently, in addition to all the Francis Bacon stuff, the Hugh Lane has a nice Manet and a nice Pissarro.

As the weather was mercurial, I took a chance between the clouds to walk across the street to the Garden of Remembrance which was empty (maybe people forgot). There is a large bronze statue by Olsin Kelly entitled Children of Lir. It depicts an old Irish legend where the wicked stepmother turned her step-children into swans. They were cursed to travel to three islands for three hundred years each. Upon their return home, nine hundred years later, they returned to human form and immediate to dust (since they were nine hundred years old). Much of Irish folklore and legends are peppered with unhappy endings. Hence, probably, the association of this story to the Easter uprising of 1916 (which is what the garden is trying to remember).

I bounced right back across the street to the Dublin Writer’s Museum. This museum attempted to cover every Irish writer of note. The most interesting thing to me was a first edition of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It appears that Mr. Stoker worked in the tax office.  Many people believe that he drew the spirit of his story from that job function. Other famous Irish writers include W.B. Yeats, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Samuel Becket, and George Bernard Shaw.

Staying in North of Liffey, I moved over to the James Joyce Cultural Museum. The museum, while nice, was every bit as obscure as Ulysses.  James Joyce's lasting legacy is that he is the greatest writer never read, according to most of the scholars quoted there.

After clearing my head, I ventured over to O’Connell Street, which is the city’s main drag. It is a wide boulevard with a generous median strip used to house taxi stands and various statues and monuments including the Spire which is also affectionately known as the stiletto in the ghetto or the erection at the intersection. Apparently, the city has mixed feelings about this relative recent addition. The London artist who inflicted the highest sculpture in the world upon this city is Ian Ritchie and, I hope, no relation.

Right by the Spire is the General Post Office (GPO). This would be an ordinary government building if not for the fact that the leaders of the 1916 Easter uprising made this their headquarters on those days in April. You can still see the bullet holes in the large columns out front. The uprising lasted about six days in which the English shelled much of the area. The Irish lost, the rebels were executed, and another chance for independence slipped away.

I wandered down along the Liffey to the Four Courts. This is Dublin’s massive legal building. Everyone was running around looking very officious. You would think those powdered wigs and robes would like archaically silly (I always envision John Cleese) but they had a few rather attractive women running around in them.

As the day started to escape, I visited St. Michan’s Church. Supposedly, the organ in the church was the first place Handel played the Messiah.  Hallelujah. The real draw is the mummified remains in the vaults below. Apparently, the combination of limestone, which draws away moisture, and methane, which comes from cows, makes a perfect preserver. Open caskets included remains of a nun and a knight. Before anyone gets all horrified, the church did not open the caskets. In the vaults, families stacked caskets up like books on shelves.  Over time, the weight of the caskets above crushed open the caskets below and the bodies fell out. This is how they discovered their preservative situation.

On my way back to the hotel, I tried to find the National Leprechaun Museum but I think, like the elusive pot of gold, it does not exists. I will try and find that tomorrow.

I am holding off on the Old Jamison Distillery, which is at the west end of the neighborhood. I intend to lump that together with the Guinness Storehouse tour for a lovely but blurry day.

I heard the Whispering Stairs was one of the places to eat so I ducked into there for dinner. My only meal of the day had been some sort of savory treat at the Hugh Lane served by some guy who was like Serge from 48 Hours. The fish I had was excellent. The beans and sausage was very European.

My lack of sleep caught up with me and I crashed around 7PM. Even though I flew under the United banner, I was on a Continental plane. Now I remember why I never flew Continental; they must have the smallest seats in the air. It is hard to catch some sleep while sitting on a postage stamp. So, all this waking and traveling made for an interesting night’s sleep - up at midnight; up at 3AM, when I received a page from someone in San Francisco asking if I was “here”; woke up at 8:30 to the knock of the maid because I forgot to put my door hanger up.

I covered a lot of ground today. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.