where.i.am: Ireland

St Stephen's Green shrouded in mist

Our first day in Dublin was jam packed. We took a stroll into the city centre via St Stephen’s Green, which was covered in this eerie mist, then onto Grafton Street which is the pedestrianised ‘high street’. Spent a lovely morning ambling and poking around, found a superb shopping precinct which is basically like a design centre set in an old Georgian building. Inside lots of design studios, art galleries, décor stores set around a central atrium with arty restaurants.

Heaven in a cup, our first flat white of the day and it was damn good

We visited Trinity College (attended by luminaries like Oscar Wilde – who apparently described his peers as ‘simply awful’ - and Bernard Shaw) which is home to the famous Book of Kells, which is four gospels written by four artists. We were amazed at the artistry of the book and its history in the museum, but a bit disappointed in the book itself (we thought it would be gigantic!). Near to Trinity College is a statue of Oscar Wild which is most amusing because I think they really captured his arrogance, along with a whole lot of his quotes, my favourite being his response when asked if he had anything to declare when he arrived at immigration at Heathrow airport, ‘Nothing but my brilliance’. The Irish churned out a lot of other famous writers and Nobel Laureates, including Keats, Davy Byrnes and CS Lewis. Most of them have pubs named after them. On that note, we did a literary pub crawl on the Thursday night and Allan joined us. We visited four pubs and two actors did skits and gave us the history of the pubs and linked the artists and writers to them. Fascinating.

One of many Irish pubs...

This deli had the most amazing selection of cheese

A collection of arty stores, cafes and galleries in a renovated old Georgian house.

Trinity College, home to the Book of Kells

Lyfie River

Not Crouch End but pretty close!

Temple Bar

View over Dublin from the Gravity Bar on the 7th floor of the Guinness storehouse

Slainte!

We also paid the obligatory visit to the Guinness Storehouse, and after the tour enjoyed a Guinness in the Gravity Bar on the seventh floor which has 360 degree views of Dublin. Very cool! We have subsequently learnt that Ady’s Great-Great-Grandmother was a Guinness. But the Irish family always reiterate that the Du Toits are descended from the banker Guinesses and not the drinking Guinesses. Lol

We also visited the National Photographic Archives and Gallery of Photography, where we were thrilled to see a show by Steve McCurry’s which had just opened that day – he took the famous photo of the Afghan girl with the green eyes. His other work is so poignant and a lot of places he documents are places we have been (Angkor temples, Chiang Mai, Cambodia) or plan to visit.

Needless to say we both slept like the dead that night.

Selfe-portrait

Traditional Irish cuisines at Gallagher's Boxty House, Temple Bar (bacon and colcannon)

Literary Pub Crawl with Allan

Friday was a bit more of a leisurely start. We went to Kilmainhard jail which was harrowing and the parallels with SA freedom fighter history were quite obvious. The jail is pretty famous, U2 shot the music video for A Celebration there (worth googling it on YouTube if only to see Bono’s scary 80s hair) and some movies have been filmed there too (the original Italian Job is one of them). It basically explained the 1916 Easter Uprisings and the fight for independence from the English. Northern Ireland is still British territory so to this day there is North/South conflict, which has been polarised into Catholic (Irish) and Protestant (Irish) camps. More about that later when we tell you about Belfast.

Kilmainharn Prison (the East Wing, where U2 shot 'A Celebration')

Oscar Wilde

Katie, Adi and Mark pubcrawling in Belfast

So we jumped on a train to Belfast – two hours – and Katie met us at the station. After dinner we hit another pub crawl, which was a highlight for Ady because we went to one real local joint with Irish musicians sitting in a corner jamming for their own benefit, rather than as a touristy thing. Too many Guinesses later we went home and passed out on Kate’s blow-up mattress (this was about 1.30am) – at least we had had the foresight to blow it up before we went out. On Saturday we went to the local organic market (that’s not in the Lonely Planet, you have to be a real insider to know about that it seems ;) and spent a long time there browsing and tasting and having breakfast/lunch. Next we took a Black Taxi Tour of the murals in Shankill (Protestant) and Falls (Catholic) roads, which are the two communities at war with each other. There is actually a wall erected between the two to keep them separate, and our tour guide told us it will never come down. The tension is too raw – in fact we asked when the last bomb was planted and he said they found one two weeks ago! We couldn’t really get our head around this whole thing, I mean it seems so absurd to still be so segregated based on religion, but the bigger picture I guess is that it is really tied to politics and Northern Ireland is still not free. We later went for lunch at Whites which claims to be the oldest pub in Belfast (1600s) for their steak and Guiness pie, on Greg’s recommendation. That was fun.

Traditional Irish musicians jamming in the corner

St George's Market for organic produce and live music

City Hall (which Durban modelled its City Hall on)

Murals in Shankil Road warning Catholics to keep out (the protestant community)

The Peace Wall separates Falls Road (Catholics) and Shankil Road. They say it will never come down...

That evening Biddy came to fetch us (this is Ady’s mom’s cousin for those who don’t know – she was at our wedding where we met her for the first time) and she took us back to stay at her home in Hillsborough which is a really pretty part of norther Ireland. We had dinner in town with Ian and Colette (Ian is Ady’s aunt Kay’s brother, who we met at Geoff’s wedding). Drank too much wine and suffered on Sunday morning, but we tried to walk it off in the forest. Gorgeous scenery. The whole of Bid’s family came to lunch with kids aged 2, 3, 5 and 8 so it was chaotic trying to edit out the cacophony of children (two of them French who don’t speak any English) amid all the new names and faces. Biddy’s sister Sue brought an old photo album of their trip to SA 29 years ago, with photos of Ady, Kate and Pam as babies – Ady was going through his grumpy phase, so he was just a fat, frowning little thing. Vastly different now, as Sue and Kyle pointed out, whereas Katie is unchanged!

We would love to go back in summer as the landscape is gorgeous but with the grey skies and mist it reminded us of Cormack McCarthy’s haunting depictions in The Road – which isn’t exactly a compliment. Next time we will hire a car and explore the west coast around Galway and maybe up north.