12: Dublin and the Best of Ireland in .NET

Drawer Code 128B in .NET 12: Dublin and the Best of Ireland

give you plenty of time to introduce yourself to Ireland s beer as you go The nightly tour begins in the upstairs room at Oliver St John Gogarty s pub at the corner of Fleet and Anglesea streets in Temple Bar Show up at 7:30 pm (from May through October) Succumbing to a hokey audiovisual History o Dublin experience: For a Disneylike tour of Dublin, check out the audiovisual tours that attempt to bring different past eras of Dublin back to life Trinity College has a 45-minute Dublin Experience video (% 01-608-1177 or 01-608-2320) that looks more like a tourist promo than a historical chronicle; you find it in the Davis Theater on Nassau Street The most corny version is Dublinia (% 01-679-4611), at Christ Church Place off High Street, which tries to evoke medieval Dublin from the Norman era through the 1530s Researching your Irish roots: If you re like me and approximately 40 million other Americans out there you ve got some Irish in ya Hundreds of Americans come to Ireland every year to seek out their ancestors here, and the Irish are much obliged to help (sometimes for a modest fee) First, the freebie services The National Library (% 01-603-0200; wwwnliie) and the National Archives (% 01407-2300; wwwnationalarchivesie for Northern Ireland, use % +44-(0)20-8876-3444; wwwnationalarchivesgovuk) are great places to start your search The Office of the Registrar General (% 01-635-4000; wwwgroirelandie) retains all the records on births, deaths, and marriages in the Republic of Ireland (if your ancestors hailed form Northern Ireland, contact the UK Public Record Office at % +44-(0)20-8876-3444; wwwprogovuk) The Web sites of commercial (for-a-fee) ancestor-research firms Irish Geneaology (wwwirishgenealogyie) and Irish Roots (wwwirish rootsnet) both have a good links lists to lots of local resources Discovering literary Dublin: If the Dublin Writers Museum (see Dublin s top sights earlier in this chapter) isn t enough, immerse yourself in literary Dublin by checking out the definitive James Joyce Cultural Centre, 35 North Great George s St (% 01-878-8547; www jamesjoyceie), and the Abbey Theatre (% 01-878-7222; www abbeytheatreie), founded at Lower Abbey Street by WB Yeats and Lady Gregory in 1904 (plays are performed Mon Sat at 8 pm) One of the most fun ways to visit the Dublin of books is to take the Literary Pub Crawl (% 01-670-5602; wwwdublinpubcrawlcom), a popular guided walking tour that meets at the Duke Pub at 9 Duke St nightly at 7:30 pm; on Sundays, a tour is also offered at noon December through March, tours are offered only Thursday through Sunday Or try the James Joyce Dublin Walking Tour (% 01-8788547), led by Ken Monaghan, the curator of the James Joyce Cultural Centre and Joyce s nephew

Shopping (finally!): This is the country that invented duty-free, so you d be remiss not to purchase a few items of local craft and tradition, from tweeds and tin whistles to Waterford crystal, woolen sweaters, and whiskey Dublin has several anything and everything Irish stores, which are like department store sized gift shops that cater exclusively to tourists A few, though, have high quality control and are great if you re on a tight time schedule (all but one of the following are on Nassau Street, across from the south flank of Trinity College) Head for House of Ireland, 37 38 Nassau St (% 01671-4543; wwwhouseofirelandcom), or the nearby The Kilkenny Shop, 5 6 Nassau St (% 01-677-7066) You don t have to go all the way to the Aran Islands to pick up thick Irish woolen sweaters Try the Blarney Woollen Mills, 21 23 Nassau Street (% 01-671-0068; wwwblarneycom), or, even better, Monaghan s, 15 17 Grafton Arcade on Grafton Street (% 01-677-0823)