In Dublin

I went to Dublin on a business trip September 23 to 26. It was my first time ever I went there and it was great! I stayed at the Morrison Hotel, very chic and trendy and by the river Liffey. Across, on the other side of the river is Temple Bar which is an area with a lot of pubs and restaurants. The colleagues and I ended up at Temple Bar every night of the stay. The first evening we had Fish´n Chips and an unknown quantity of pints of Guinness at the Oliver St. John Gogarty pub. It seems like everybody in Ireland drink mainly Guinness. I tried Harps and Smithwicks but then I switched back to Guinness as well. All of my Irish colleagues drank nothing but this brew so I guess that is what you need to be drinking if you want to be Irish. The brewery is promoting Guinness North Star, made from a recepy that originates from the 18th century. Slainte! By the way, when people in Ireland talk about their native language, Gaelic, they say Irish really. So, Irish is different from English and they do not want to say Gaelic since it could be Spanish-, French or Irish-Gaelic…

Here is a brief lesson in Irish:
[go-ro-ma-hag-t] means “thanks”
[slan-tchi] means “cheers”.
[ni-hig-m?] means “What did you say?”
This concludes the lesson, I have found out that with these phrases it is easy to get around in Dublin. You do not need to know more actually…

The city is growing fast. The population is 500,000 now and will reach 2,000,000 in a couple of years according to a cabdriver. Traffic jams are a major problem! The cab took 45 minutes to get to the office and cost 30 euro. With the train, the DART as it is called it takes 20 minutes and costs 2 euro! OK, you actually need to walk to and from the train station and that takes another ten to fifteen minutes.

We had dinner at the Purty Kitchen, a pub restaurant in the Temple Bar. Purty is a word that has something to do with food I believe but nobody could tell me for sure. I tried the clam chowder, I can not recommend it. It was like the chef had scraped the bottom of Liffey, put the findings in a bowl and then heated it four minutes in a micro oven! The main course was Surf´n Turf with jumbo prawns and tenderloin, very tasty. The pint of Guinness nearby was delicious.

The best meal I had was a braised lamb shank at Fitzers, also located in the Temple Bar. Recommendable. The Guinness was also good there.

In all the pubs we went to they played live, Irish music. The best band played at Oliver St. John Gogarty´s I think. Four guys, one on guitar, one on flute, one on violin and one on a bagpipe called the ellin pipe (“ellin” or maybe “illin” means elbow in Irish).

I bought two whiskies to bring back to Brazil, a bottle of Bushmill Black and a bottle of Powers 12 year-old. I do not know much about whisky but the bottles look nice at least!

Sunset over the river Liffey.

Looking cool (well, trying to at least...) in Dublin.

Live music at Oliver St. John Gogarty´s.