Dublin

i spent a month there in 1999 when i was 20. i liked the touristy shit! i took a bus across to galway and the cliffs and all that, too. Oirland!!

oh and i drank a lot.

uh so see the book of kells. and i dimly remember lots of literary type walking tours you can do, joyce, yeats, synge, etc. the guiness brewery tour was not really worth it, you don't even get to see the vats!

best parts- genuinely good city for culture and things to do. good night life, pub life.

worst parts- price of everything, the locals.

i'm a bit biased against the dubs, this is documented in other, older threads about ireland.

you posted a thread asking for advice a few months ago, didn't you? glad to hear you got somewhere ok.

yeah, i did post a thread, but it didn't show up in my search for some reason so i started a new one.
and i did end up living in awful overcrowded expensive student housing! don't mind so much, though.

So!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/02/ireland

http://io9.com/5646181/dublins-long+lost-viking-sister-city-finally-rediscovered

Hurrah!

The Dublin C or D thread that was full of abuse was locked and deleted, which was fair enough, except for the bit at the end asking for real information...

How come I can still read it then? And how come it's appearing in SNA?

truth will out imo

dublin: top three*

01. Sundays in Phoenix Park
02. gigs at The Olympia
03. Trinity Ball

dublin: bottom three

01. Dublin Bus
02. ridiculously short days in the dead of winter
03. classic gigs at The Point rendered dud b/c of worst venue acoustics in showbiz

*honorable mention: McSorley's Pub in Ranelagh

McSorley's? Oh dear, I think not.

dublin top three

1. Porterhouse/Czech Inn conveniently across from each other
2. Bruxelles/McDaids conveniently across from each other
3. Dawson St

Porterhouse otm. The food's good too.

Porterhouse is quite good, but it seems to be always full and has a lot of lamer music on in it. I think basically that the one on Parliament Street is a bit too much for tourists (not that I have anything against tourists etc.).

Against the Grain is a pleasant spot - nice beer, nice food.

The Hop House on Parnell Street is great for Korean and (possibly) Japanese food.

porterhouse a touch for the yanks alright

Dublin Bus is decent now they have the real-time update thingy. Very handy

2. Bruxelles/McDaids conveniently across from each other

OTM

McSorley's? Oh dear, I think not.

― The New Dirty Vicar, Tuesday, November 15, 2011 7:23 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

For me, its classic status probably has much to do w/ the fact that it was a neighborhood spot & thus my primary craic house. See also: Slattery in Rathmines

One neat gimmick w/ McSorley's is that it doubles as museum of 19th Century pharmacy - appropriate for boozing!

Is Porterhouse a multi-level brewpub w/ a number of nookish taprooms, not far from Temple Bar iirc? If so, yeah that place is great!

porterhouse a touch for the yanks alright

It is basically an American-style microbrew outpost, but they elude novelty status by doing a very good job of it! (at least they did circa-2001)

that's the place

Porterhouse has a number of branches now, there's one in Phibsboro and another off Nassau Street. The amount of choice tends to interfere with my simple desire to get drunk though

There's even a Porterhouse in London. The original is in Bray, beloved town of my school years.

I thought one of these Porterhouses, where I went with the Vicar years ago, was more like Pearse Street

what's special about Dawson Street?

The Vicar showed me a coffee place that looked bland on the outside but did a tremendous cappucino

Good thing about Dublin: Joyce's commonplace book c. 1902 digitally readable at NLI exhibit, 2011

another: the Swiss Embassy which is on a street of embassies, near Ballsbridge, that I never knew existed till the Vicar and I arrived there in a taxi one clear early evening this summer

places I have not been:

Phoenix Park
Chapelizod
Heuston Station
Castleknock
the Famine Ship exhibit (seems a bit spooky tbh) and other things east down the modernized Liffey

otherwise I have been to quite a lot of places, in Dublin.

the new dirty vicar of bray <-- i am too tired to make the actual joke here, perhaps you can assemble the parts yourself and think of me as you lol

Nassau Street Porterhouse would be the nearest one to Pearse Street pinefox

Only thing I cared about on Dawson Street was the bookshops and there's only one now :(

murder inc rip

Dawson st's just a nice one to wander, i find. Coffeehouses and upscale gent's outfitters and ok bookshops are gone but i remember them fondly

Porterhouse to which i refer is at the west end of temple bar area.

There's a great run of embassies around wellington rd in ballsbridge

Phoenix park is nice, and enormous

Heuston is like a railed port for famine ships bringin the hopeless back west, you'll always meet a fella there you know 'from before'

there is a porterhouse in westport now, while we're logging them.

This is probably the emigrant in me speaking, but by far my favourite thing about Dublin is simply "being in Dublin".

If I had to make a top three:

- Running in the Phoenix Park
- Grogan's on Castle Street (not a regular haunt of mine but quite special)
- TCD Front Square late at night (so peaceful it barely feels like you're in a city at all) and at dawn

Not sure anyone needs to see Chapelizod before they die ime.

it's best imagined using phonetic prophecy

last time i was home my friends took me to crackbird on south william st, which is a sort of pop up fried chicken place, good fun and a good atmosphere. may contain irish version of hipsters.

bar-wise i'm fairly out of the loop but georges street has many of the best imo, or if you go further south from there there are some good pubs a lot of the way along.

Yeah, I mainly frequent the hipstery bars so i'm keeping quiet on that score. Not a hipster though I swear

what are the hipstery bars? i tend to go to the bernard shaw just cos i used to dj with bodytonic so i am always likely to meet some of the old pals there, that and they sell decent beer.

Hipstery bars of my time (1999-2001): Modern Green Bar, Hogan's

The Shaw, Pygmalion, Twisted Pepper. Generally at the Bodytonic spots just cause they book good people

Whelan's, depending on who was playing

Whelans is hipstery to an extent but it's just too much of an institution now

I recall a dance club, not so noteworthy on its own, but which hosted a weekly DJ set consisting of 80s/early-90s indie, shoegaze, space rock & such.. That was always a reliably great night out & hipster central full-stop.

idk i dont like dublin that much, i guess i would probably say top three douglas hyde gallery, the luas, and getting late coffee on south williams street, which i guess makes me super boring

I would like to add to the top of my bottom three: Registering w/ the Garda - the fucking worst!

Ronan will sort that one out for you.

Best part of living in Dublin for me, as someone who goes to a lot of gigs, is simply having access to a wider variety of live music. Like i lived in Galway for years and it was always immensely frustrating having to travel to Dublin or miss out. Galway has actually gotten a lot better in that respect in recent years though, basically since i left

pub wise I have had some of my best times in the Lord Edward

also the Stag's Head
O'Neill's, granted it's a sprawl
and Nealon's which was once the Vicar's local
in fact that pub on or near Camden Street which was the Vicar's local later on was also good

went to Guinness Brewery with Lara Byrne once, that was a good time

All those pubs are solid choices. To be honest, when I lived in Dublin I went to Doyle's more than anywhere else (lol student) so I still have a lot of affection for there even if it's pretty unexceptional.

doyle's is a fixture alright

What's the place opposite, or close to opposite dublin castle? Thomas read's? Good pub.

i felt a twinge of guilt about berating him about his opinions on black panther after his impeccable hospitality but y’know it had to be done and anyway i’d crossed a sea i wasn’t gonna miss my chance

Top work lads.

When you say chicken sandwich, please tell me you meant chicken roll?

*chicken fillet roll

i’d characterise it more as a roll than a sandwich, yeah

it was a chicken club on an onion bap

philistine, dunno why i bothered

he had a right go about black panther but it was background noise i was talkin to a cute blonde at the time

can confirm that "the one north of manhattan" also known as "the one spiderman attended" is indeed columbia fyi

https://media.giphy.com/media/GgL288OGdmkGA/giphy.gif

can confirm that "the one north of manhattan" also known as "the one spiderman attended" is indeed columbia fyi

― deemsthelarker (darraghmac), Tuesday, May 14, 2019 7:23 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

except it's in the north of manhattan, not north of manhattan

everything's relative smartass

look just as long as we can all agree that it’s the alma mater of peter parker, the amazing spider-man

yeah i was hardly off by miles

i got sunburned btw, thanks for nothing dublin

actually, Peter Parker attended "Empire State University" in the comics

an why you be like that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLA67dbBLAc

they were puns about miles morales and nyu

Any suggestions of particularly good pubs within about a 15 minute walk of Trinity College?

that's pretty much all of them!

but more specifically, The Long Hall (Georges Street), Mulligans (Poolbeg Street), Grogans (South William Street)

Thanks! Yeah I don’t have my head around the distances yet, I suspect everything is closer than it looks on a map.

I used to like O’Neills in Suffolk St but haven’t been there in about 10 years.

everything is walkable.

the whiskey bar beside/adjoining porterhouse nassau st is good for whiskey

upstairs at rustic stone for cocktails

upstairs at central hotel for sherlock holmesy ambience

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/06/how-rentier-capitalism-is-destroying-dublin

https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/02/dublin-bus-station-busaras-modernism-architecture

BUSARAS

all my Busáras memories involve being cold

work trip so free time is limited, but i'll be in dublin next week. anything good as far as coffee, whiskey, books, records, etc?

the celtic whiskey store on dawson st is the best shop in ireland, jameson various tours and experiences are good, coffee generally a good experience round or about the place ill think of a few

i presume d2 neck of woods

that’s right, staying in d2 though the work location looks to be more suburban.

went to this place every morning while there, since it was just around the corner

https://www.twopupscoffee.com/

Here is good too:
https://www.ilvalentino.ie/

Books: Chapters on Parnell Square, Books Upstairs on D'Olier St, Gutter Bookshop on Cow's Lane, Oxfambooks on Parliament St. They also do good books and vinyl in Oxfam on Georges St.

I’m annoyed that the Chester Beatty, my preferred place to hide when I’m in Dublin, will be closed for the whole second half of the year because of the EU presidency.

What!!!

thats disgraceful

but if its open while you're there CAD its the must-visit in town

shoe lane coffee good

reading thread back and as far as bar recs for a pint go, the names offered over the years have stayed pleasingly solid recs

long hall for ambience

bowes is good for whiskey selection and a nice sit-in boozer

Long hall very much otm, gorgeous place. Where was that other place we went where I tried on the flat cap? That was good as well.

Deems would we recommend Winding Stair? Cad a man of taste and I wouldn’t want to disappoint him with a bad rec but I also do think it was pretty nice?

thanks friends, these are great recs. the chester beatty looks *exactly* like my thing and doesn't close till 15 june!

I ate at Winding Stair the one night I was in Dublin three years ago and thought it was great.

Yeah, restaurants I don’t know. I usually eat at Andra Bhavan on Marlborough St when I’m in Dublin. Excellent south Indian food. 10% discount if you pay cash.

some of my regular spots when I'm back

pubs: Long Hall (as above), Cobblestone (a bit touristy but in a good/buzzy way)
whiskey: you can get Redbreast/Spot anywhere really so just go to a nice pub, for cocktails Bar 1661 is decent
coffee: Mantle, Indigo and Cloth; the place serious coffee dudes (always dudes) talk about is Unfiltered but it's a bit out of the centre and I haven't made it up there yet
food: Two Pups (as above) for breakfast/brunch, they also do a nice wine/small plates thing in the evenings; for slightly fancy food I rate Library Street and Bar Pez; really want to go to Assassination Custard but I think you have to book by telephone and I've never figured it out
other things: there's always something interesting to see at the Royal Hibernian Academy; The Library Project for photography/books; Hugh Lane Gallery (but looks to be closed atm); Printing Museum is a niche gem

yes winding stair absolutely a rec

assassination custard is like hiring a whimsical chef and small restaurant for whatever time you can agree. ive never been but it comes highly recommended from others

gyac i cannot remember where or if you tried on a flat cap but it may have been bowes also

cad im not about otherwise id offer a meet but the above list def sees you well covered for most things, by all means set out more requirements im sure th hivemind here can come up with plenty

stoneybatter has l mulligans, grano and walsh's which would be a fine way to spend an evening imo, you could get the cobblestone in the same effort

The National Gallery has a gorgeous Caravaggio and it’s free!

I’m actually in Dublin end of the month for an afternoon and so disappointed to hear about Hugh Lane…I’ll make sure to go to Chester Beatty though

The Hugh Lane Gallery will close on 28 September 2025 for refurbishment and is expected to remain closed for at least three years. Find out more below.

i’m going to tick off at least a few of these! free day time mostly limited to sunday and a bit of friday but i should have a couple evenings to wander to some of the pubs mentioned here.

today: stumbled on the winding stair, too early for food but got a copy of the dalkey archive which i haven’t read and a couple of picture books to bring back to the child.

also stumbled on the national gallery, can confirm it is free and that the carvaggio is a treat. some wildly creative stained glass too by a guy called harry clarke.

What a relief. For a second I was picturing "stumbled on the Winding Stair, now I'm in the hospital."

Excellent work

it's pretty touristy but we enjoyed EPIC when we went a couple of years ago https://epicchq.com/

harry clarke and francis bacon exhibitions were all in hugh lane last i saw glad you caught some of the former, astonishing stuff

Well, this answers my question about the Silk Road cafe at the Chester Beatty and how they're going to manage with having to shut down for six months.