Dublin

The first thing that struck me when we were landing was how flat the city is, no hill or mountain in sight.

It is a human sized city with buildings being the perfect 12 or fewer stories . It is a city that is very car centric with few crosswalks and when you press the button to change to walk it is not clear the light will ever really change for you, so you watch, mostly to see if cars are coming and walk across.

Dublin professes to be a thousand years old, they had a celebration in 1988. There is some question about this date.

We went to the delightful Little Museum of Dublin which has rubbish and great artifacts of Dublin. The jewel though is Emma who presents to the group the history of Dublin in an oral history fashion that provides the chronological order of events with a great tone that reflects the irony and humour of the Irish.

Dublin’s architecture is a stunning series of street after street of Georgian houses constructed in the mid 1700’s and 1800’s. Some were built for the aristocracy with the servants in the upper floors and the kitchen in the basements. Our hotel is in one of these homes (we are in the servant quarters). In the beginning of the 1900’s Ireland broke away from England and as part of the rebellion they had torn down 8 of these Georgian homes. After they received that independence, the Irish started the civil war….less emphasis on the destruction of architecture with that rebellion.

Dublin is flat and beautiful. The people are warm and friendly. Such a great start.