Dublin

262 Pages·2016·44.871 MB·English

by  Fionn Davenport

P
D
F
Dublin
PDF ebook
Edition 10th Edition
Release Date November 2016
Pages 260
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©Lonely Planet Publications Pty Ltd
Plan Your Trip 1
Dublin
“All you’ve got to do is decide to go
and the hardest part is over.
So go!”
TONY WHEELER, COFOUNDER – LONELY PLANET
THIS EDITION WRITTEN AND RESEARCHED BY
Fionn Davenport
CCoonntteennttss
PPllaann Y Yoouurr T Trriipp page 1 4
Welcome to Dublin ..........4 If You Like... ....................18 Eating ...........................29
Dublin’s Top 10 ................6 Month by Month ............21 Drinking & Nightlife...33
What’s New ....................13 With Kids .......................24 Entertainment ............38
Need to Know ................14 Like a Local ...................26 Shopping ......................42
Top Itineraries ...............16 For Free .........................28 Sports & Activities ....44
Explore Dublin 48
Grafton Street Kilmainham Day Trips
& Around .......................52 & the Liberties .............110 from Dublin ................157
Merrion Square North of the Liffey .......128 Sleeping ......................177
& Around .......................82
Docklands & the
Temple Bar ....................98 Grand Canal ................150
Understand Dublin 189
Dublin Today ................190 Literary Dublin ............205 Architecture .................212
History ..........................192 Musical Dublin ............209
Survival Guide 215
Transport ....................216 Directory A–Z .............222 Index ............................228
Dublin Maps 237
DAVE G KELLY / GETTY IMAGES © RICHARD I’ANSON / GETTY IMAGES ©
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North of
the Liffey
p128
Temple Bar
p98
Merrion
Kilmainham & Grafton Square &
the Liberties Street & Around
p110 Around p82
p52
Docklands &
the Grand Canal
p150
©Lonely Planet Publications Pty Ltd
Welcome to
Dublin
A small capital with a huge
reputation, Dublin’s mix of heritage
and hedonism will not disappoint.
All you have to do is show up.
Layers of History A Few Scoops
Dublin has been in the news since the 9th To experience Dubliners at their most com-
century, and while traces of its Viking past fortable and convivial, you’ll have to spend
have been largely washed away, the city is some time in a pub. Dublin’s relationship
a living museum of its history since then, with alcohol is complex and conflicted,
with medieval castles and cathedrals on dis- but at its very best, a night out in the pub
play alongside the architectural splendours remains the city’s favourite social lubricant
of its 18th-century heyday, when Dublin was and one of the most memorable experiences
the most handsome Georgian city of the of a visit to Ireland. Everyone has their fa-
British Empire and a fine reflection of the vourite pub: for some it’s a never-changing
aspirations of its most privileged burghers. traditional haunt; for others, it’s wherever
How power was wrested from their hands the beautiful people are currently at. Either
is another story, and you’ll learn that one in way, you’ll have over 1000 to choose from.
its museums and on its walking tours.
All the World Is Dublin
Personality Goes a Long Way
Dublin may be a small capital, but its
Even Dubliners will admit that theirs isn’t cosmopolitan bone fides have been firmly
the most beautiful city in the world, telling established. Beyond its impressive collection
you that pretty things are as easy to like of museums and galleries, and its choice of
as they are to forget…before showing you food from all four corners of the globe – in
the showstopper Georgian bits to prove both restaurant and market form – this is a
that Dublin has a fine line in sophisticated city that conspicuously embraces diversity
elegance. Their beloved capital, about which and has been transformed by two decades
they can be brutally unsentimental, has of multiculturalism. It used to be said that
personality, which is much more important ‘real’ Dubs had to be born within the canals
and lasts far longer. Garrulous, amiable and like their parents and grandparents before
witty, Dubliners at their ease are the greatest them: these days, you’re as likely to meet a
hosts of all, a charismatic bunch whose soul Dub whose parents were born in Warsaw,
and sociability are so compelling and infec- Lagos or Beijing.
tious that you mightn’t ever want to leave.
RICHARD I’ANSON / GETTY IM
AGES ©
Why I Love Dublin
By Fionn Davenport, Writer
More than anything I love Dublin’s intimacy. It’s really just a big capital village, where going
for a walk is as much an opportunity for socialising as actually making an arrangement
to meet someone. As a travel writer, I’ve always played host to visitors from out of town,
which means I get the chance to experience the city with an outsider’s perspective, ex-
ploring those corners I often take for granted and discovering new bits to be enthusiastic
about.
For more about our writers, see p260.
Top: O’Connell Bridge, River Liffey
©Lonely Planet Publications Pty Ltd
6
Dublin’s
Top 10
7
A Dublin Pub (p33) Trinity College (p54)
1 ‘A good puzzle would be to cross 2 Since its foundation in 1592, Trinity
Dublin without passing a pub’, mused College has become one of the
Leopold Bloom in James Joyce’s Ulysses. world’s most famous universities; it’s the
A conundrum, given there’s at least one alma mater of Swift, Wilde and Beckett,
on every street, but the answer is simple: and the home of the world’s most famous
go into each one you find. A hundred years illuminated Gospel, the Book of Kells.
later, the alpha and omega of all social life Its 16 hectares are an oasis of aesthetic
in Dublin remains the bar. There are over elegance, its cobbled quadrangles lined
1000, from traditional boozers like Kehoe’s with handsome neoclassical buildings that
to the trendiest watering holes. It’s where lend an air of magisterial calm to the cam-
you’ll meet Dubliners at their convivial, pus, evident as soon as you walk through
easy-going best and get a sense of what Front Arch.
makes this city tick. BELOW LEFT: TEMPLE BAR 1G rafton Street & Around
PUB (P106)
6D rinking & Nightlife
YOHAN LB/500PX / GETTY IMAGES © BRUCE YUANYUE BI / GETTY IMAGES ©
8
Dublin City Gallery – National Museum
The Hugh Lane (p133) of Ireland (p84, p90, p134)
3 Hanging on the walls of a magnificent 4 The artefacts of a nation are to be
Georgian pile is arguably the city’s found in this eminent institution,
finest collection of modern and contempo- which opened in 1890 with a fine collec-
rary art, which runs the gamut from Im- tion of coins, medals and ‘significant Irish
P
L pressionist masterpieces (Degas, Monet, antiquities’. The collection has grown
A
N Manet et al) to Irish artists such as Dorothy significantly since then, and now num-
Y Cross and Sean Scully. The gallery’s extra- bers in excess of four million objects split
O
U special treat is Dublin-born Francis across three separate museum buildings,
R T Bacon’s actual London studio, brought including prehistoric archaeological finds
R over piece by piece and painstakingly re- and Celtic and medieval treasures, an ex-
IP assembled in all its glorious mess. tensive folklore collection, and the stuffed
DU 1N orth of the Liffey beasts and skeletons of the natural history
B section.
Lin 1M errion Square & Around; North
’s of the Liffey
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AGES ©
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AGES © PLA
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Kilmainham
DESIGN PICS INC / GETTY IM 5bnGeloyao , odaIinrynled dla(ea pntpnh1ded1i sn8t’se )df msoetrnprbcueiedgs dgtwuilneao gsfu o apsr r joisuorn-
AGES © played a role in it for nearly
150 years. Unoccupied since
1924, it is now a museum with
an enthralling exhibit on the
history of Irish nationalism.
The guided tour of its grim
cells and corridors is highly
memorable and it finishes in
the yard where the leaders of
the failed 1916 Easter Rising
were executed.
1K ilmainham & the
Liberties