All entries for Saturday 18 July 2009

Dublin Travelogue

A strange thing happens when you travel somewhere with a different currency (so for us in the UK, anywhere). You might know the exchange rate, but you can’t quite do the maths exactly in your head, so when you see something you want, your brain is able to convince you that it’s a bit cheaper than it is. It automatically rounds down, to make you feel better about it.

Thing is, the current exchange rate of Euros to Sterling is around 1:1. It’s closer to 1.1:1 but once you factor in commission it may as well be the same. That’s bad enough in itself: it means everything is about 30% more expensive than it is back here. But it also means the cost of everything is easy to work out: if it costs €4 then it will cost £4. There’s no fooling the brain: not only is everything more expensive, but you’re quite acutely aware of the fact.

Arriving into Dublin airport on Ryan Air from Birmingham, we head over to the town centre. It’s an oddity of Dublin, that despite an extensive tram system, coupled with good rail-links and specialised rail services like the DART, to get from or to the airport requires a bus.

We’re staying at the City Centre Apartments which are run by the Browns Hostel and located around the back of the Hostel itself. The apartment is wonderfully spacious, with a balcony (with a view of… other balconies), lounge/kitchen, large bedroom… the whole place is really nice and clean, and staying there Monday to Thursday we got a really good deal on it. Far, far better than a hotel if you don’t want (or can’t afford) luxuries like room service or on-site restaurants. It also meant we could prepare our own food which cut down on costs a lot, even if Tesco was still expensive-ish. Also, the fridge was broken, we had to put stuff in the freezer section to chill it, and we couldn’t freeze anything at all.

One oddity of Dublin was that it was nigh on impossible to find fruit cordial. That is, fruit juice that you dilute with water. I drink massive amounts of it, but it took searching about seven Tescos and Spars to find any, which was a little bizarre.

Our first few days were spent wondering Dublin town and finding interesting shops and things. Butler’s Chocolate Cafe seems to be the Ireland equivalent of Thorntons, but with nicer chocolate. Mmm. We were also ripped off at a bar, but then saw a comedy show for free there which was good, though I can’t remember his name.
We also had a look at the archaeology museum, which had wonderful classical mosaics on the floor, which the museum had seemingly gone to great lengths to cover up. That is, most of the visible floor was just blank filler, then every time there was a scene it was covered up almost entirely by a display case holding pots or such.

Wednesday was the reason I justified the whole trip in the first place: a James gig. At a small venue called the Academy (thankfully nothing to do with the UK Academy venues), we turned up at 7 and had to wait two hours for the band to come on, with no support act. Considering you could have got a local acoustic act to play for about the price we paid for two tickets to the show that was pretty bad form. Still, the band were great, even if the soundman seemed to have turned the volume up to 11. We got a new song (Shine), an old song (Dream Thrum), Johnny Yen to open, nearly all the hits and Stutter to close. They were certainly good but it really felt like a re-tread of last years arena tour. The lack of new tracks was understandable: as a festival warm-up they’d be practising the hits. The real disappointment was that none of the old tracks had been re-worked, no new arrangements, etc. That might seem like a strange complaint but the reason us fans go back to gigs year after year is because the band generally change things up so much. Still, it was fun, but not the highlight of the trip.

The next day we hopped on the Dart down to Dalkey, a small coastal village with an old castle. The castle gave ‘living history’ tours, so we were guided around by characters from medieval history, including an archer, cook and barber-surgeon.

We were grouped with a whole part of French people, and think at times we were the only ones with any clue what was going on, but nevertheless it was a great experience and well worth the €6. We then wondered along the coast to Coliemore Harbour, where on sunnier days you can get a boat over to Dalkey Island. We were content to just admire it from a distance.

Friday we first visited Dublinia , an interactive Viking exhibition. It’s laid out somewhat strangely, with a basic introduction on the ground floor that doesn’t cover things in much detail, but gives a brief overview. Then on the second floor the same things are covered again (albeit with a greater focus on historical Dublin) but in more detail, with smaller text on the info boards and a lot more writing.

There’s also a fun Viking fair where you can play games and dress up or wear a big chain mail headpiece. Then on the next floor up there’s a seemingly entirely unrelated archaeology exhibition which wasn’t all that interesting.

From there we head over to Dublin Castle. Dublin Castle is an odd one, as there’s not much of a castle left standing, and the buildings built in its place are still used today as rooms of state. The guided tour starts with a trip around the interior rooms, opulent bed chambers, dining halls and such. That they are so big, beautiful and impressive is less amazing than the fact that they’re still being used today for state visits, meetings and so forth.

The tour then moves under the castle to look at an excavation of the old castle foundations, with the remains of an old river still running through them, which was fascinating. We also had a look at the tax office museum, one of the strangest museums I’ve ever been too, that featured an interactive video-game where you had to search a boat for contraband. Bizarre.

From here we headed to Swords, as we were booked into a Travelodge closer to the airport for the last night. Swords is another strange place. We wondered into there at about 8pm at night to look for cheap fast food, and it was pretty quiet along what appeared to be the main high street, but we noticed a shopping centre that was still open. It looked new, with most of the units unoccupied, until we rounded a corner and it opened out into a huge shopping centre, with all sorts of shops, about three supermarkets, a cinema, and what could well have been the entire residence of the village, as the place was still open at 9pm, and pretty busy.

We didn’t stay out long, the net effect of four days walking around and standing up only a week after spending five days walking around and standing up in a field in Somerset being that our legs and feet were complaining quite loudly. The Travelodge at Swords was fine, and a nice enough place to spend the last night before heading over the airport on Saturday and flying back to Birmingham. We narrowly avoided having a long walk from the airport to the train station, as the monorail connecting the two had just been re-opened after the rather nasty weather of earlier in the day.

A great trip, marred somewhat by the huge expense of everything, meaning some more interesting looking things were out of our price range, but given we got 5 nights accommodation and flights for about £120 each it was pretty good value.

photos by Hannah Ross

Dean Love : 18 Jul 2009 19:47 |  Tags: Music Travel |  Comments (5) |  Close comments |  Report a problem