This is a marvelous city for walking: to cathedrals, museums, libraries, parks, pubs, theaters, cabarets, shops, restaurants. The visitor hoofs it on pilgrimages to the places where Brendan Behan used to drink. He hikes to the still bullet-pocked General Post Office where in 1916 the Irish declared their independence from England and ultimately won it. He tailors his own little shank`s mare trips for an hour, an afternoon or a day. It is all very pleasant and uncomplicated.
The compactness of Dublin`s central area gives it an attractive quality of essence, of distillation. Ireland is a nation of sharp regional contrasts, despite its modest size (smaller than Illinois). Yet Dublin seems to incorporate most of the national character traits, customs and links to its remote past. The capital that is celebrating its 1,000th birthday this year is about as Irish as Irish can be.
If there is a single dominant characteristic peculiar to Dublin, it is its literary tradition. In no other English-speaking city, perhaps, does the remembrance of so many brilliantly creative men writing novels and plays and poetry so strongly infuse the physical marrow of a place.
Good heavens, look at a partial list: James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Jonathon Swift, Thomas Moore, Sean O`Casey, William Butler Yeats, John Millington Synge and James Stephens! And of course the talented but alcoholic Mr. Behan, who drank in dozens of Dublin pubs, but favored McDaid`s at 3 Harry St., where he kept a typewriter in the corner until his death at the age of 41. Drop in for a pint and they`ll show you the corner.
James Joyce leads this literary pack in a certain geographic sense, since he squeezed so many Dublin settings into his best known book, ”Ulysses.”
Joyce buffs can ramble about the city and retrace the steps of the character Leopold Bloom with gleeful accuracy. The Irish Tourist Board, in fact, will supply you with a Ulysses Map of Dublin so you may find such places as 7 Eccles St., where the fictional Bloom lived. It is much easier to find your way around the city than to navigate through ”Ulysses,” by the way.
Dublin`s literary flavor is complemented by its state of physical preservation and remarkable freedom from 1980s sleaze. It looks essentially as it did a century ago, although most of it is obviously far older than that. Much of its Georgian architecture was senselessly destroyed until
preservationists put a stop to the wrecking, but enough of such 18th Century structures remain to comprise some quietly handsome streetscapes. There are no skyscrapers in Dublin, and remarkably few modern commercial buildings whose appearance is out of character with the rest of the town. Nor is the place overrun by the visual blight of too many fast food and retail chain outlets.
Still, the absence of entrepreneurial ugliness does not alone a great city make. To be dead honest, Dublin also lacks a single sightseeing attraction that would leap to the mind of anyone who had never been there. That goes for the rest of the country, too, despite its uniformly spectacular scenery.
Putting an even finer point on it, if you aren`t a Joyce or a Behan fan, why would you ever want to make Dublin a vacation destination city? The answer does not reveal itself in any dramatic way. This is not a metropolis fond of slogans or trite merchandising, and the Disney and Rouse people have passed it by.
The briefest way to describe Dublin is to say that it is civilized. Not snooty, not upper crusty (although there is wealth and proud intellect in good measure there). Just civilized, in the way that, say, a city like Boston is civilized. But most of all, in the sense that Dublin is full of civil, courteous, friendly people. Could there be a better definition?
Nobody seems to be on the hustle in Dublin. Tourists are not perceived as sheep begging to be sheared. One does not seem expected to solve Ireland`s economic problems with Visa and American Express cards. Bellmen, porters and others who serve travelers from abroad routinely decline tips for services that would bring a gratuity in just about any other city you can think of.
”Oh, no, thank you sir, glad to do it for you!”-and with a smile, they turn away. It`s astounding.
Being a city of some 600,000, Dublin is neither physically nor socially unflawed. There are slums as well as mansions in this capital. The bizarrely dressed, dyed-hair young punkers who parade noisily in the breezier precincts of Rome, Chicago and Paris can be found in Dublin as well. But their presence is diluted to a trifling trickle by the solid, feet-on-the-ground, good-humored Irish men and women who seem predominant at every social level.
One of the best things about Dublin and all of Ireland is that the Irish seem to live up to all of the most attractive stereotypes that have been woven around them. If these are sometimes tempered by a dark and brooding quality, so be it. Without the gall and the melancholy, Ireland would never have given us Joyce, Yeats and Behan.
The dark side of Dublin is, in fact, built into its very name. The city founded by the Vikings in 988 A.D. was named from the words ”dubh,” meaning black, and ”linn,” meaning pool. This was probably a reference to a body of water in a branch of the River Liffey that runs through the center of town.
The Vikings built Dublin`s Christ Church Cathedral in the 1000s. Norman soldiers from England captured the city in 1170 and constructed St. Patrick`s Cathedral and Dublin Castle. All three landmarks survive in altered form and deserve a place on everybody`s sightseeing list.
Dublin Castle was the centerpiece of British rule in Ireland for more than 700 years. The city was the focus of battles for liberation fought by the Irish into the 20th Century and the famous Easter week rebellion of 1916. That uprising led to formation of the Republic of Ireland and to a war that was finally ended by the Treaty of 1921. A civil war followed in 1922-23, and it was during those years of urban tumult that the downtown post office acquired its still prominent bullet scars.
The Irish Republic declared itself a sovereign democratic state in 1937 and pulled out of the British Commonwealth in 1948. The British retained control over the six counties comprising Northern Ireland, where tangled political-religious terrorism continues to this day. Some tourists, fearful of the occasional violence, shun the North. As a practical matter, however, visiting there is uncomplicated.
The best way by far to tour the whole of Ireland is by rented car, but the first-time visitor driving into Dublin is well advised to put the car in a garage and keep it there. The city`s compactness makes a car unnecessary, and the complicated street patterns make driving exasperating. Walking will take you to most destinations if your accommodations are downtown. Buses and cabs offer good service.
Hotel and guesthouse rooms are available in a broad price range in downtown Dublin and outlying areas. If you want to splurge a bit, you can do no better than stay at the Shelbourne, a deluxe hotel that is beautifully situated, elegantly appointed and staffed with people who are used to dealing with guests who brook no nonsense about anything.
Should the Shelbourne be your choice, ask for a room facing St. Stephen`s Green, just across the street, and you will simultaneously get a view of the Dublin Mountains in the distance. St. Stephen`s is a peaceful, finely manicured, 20-acre park long ago bequeathed to the city by the Guinness Brewery family and graced by ponds, swans, fountains and flower gardens. Its grass is so intensely green that it almost hurts your eyes. This is true of all grass in Ireland, a chromatic fact that you must accept on faith if you have never been there. The evenness of Ireland`s drizzly rainfall is responsible.
St. Stephen`s is a good departure or orientation point for your strolls around Dublin, because most of the things you`ll want to see are no more than a 30-minute walk to the east, west, or north of the park.
Within a stone`s throw of St. Stephen`s, for example, is Mansion House, the handsome if excessively rococo residence of Dublin`s lord mayors. Perhaps you are old enough to remember when the late Lord Mayor Robert Briscoe visited Chicago in 1957 and jollied it up with Richard J. Daley. Briscoe was Jewish, which led to some of the mayor-to-mayor jocularity. A few years later, Briscoe`s daughter entered a Roman Catholic convent near Dublin to become a Carmelite nun.
(It is good to know these things if you want to hold your own in pub conversations with native Irishmen. It is even more fun to tell unknowing Dubliners about how Chicago dyes its river green on St. Patrick`s Day.)
Also angling off from St. Stephen`s is Grafton Street, a fashionable shopping thoroughfare where the Irish made a pedestrian mall without spending a dime simply by banning motor traffic. This less-is-more approach to urbanism is typically European, works very well and will thus never be copied in America-except badly.
A saunter down Grafton Street takes you to the campus of Trinity College, another downtown oasis where about 7,000 students pursue degrees in a setting established by Elizabeth I in 1592. One assumes they all read Swift, Wilde and Yeats in their spare time if they have good sense.
Trinity College`s classically styled stone buildings, cobbled courtyards and campanile are worth a once-around, but the place where you must make a stop is the campus library. On display there is the ”Book of Kells,” an 8th Century manuscript of the Gospels illuminated by monks in a spectacularly flamboyant style and shown in a beautiful, 209-foot long room. Drop by the tasteful library gift shop on the way out, and you may also want to browse through the book shops on Nassau Street, just outside the campus.
Leaving Trinity, you reach the River Liffey and cross over to O`Connell Street, a boulevard whose 150-foot width makes it one of the broadest in Europe. Standing here in the very center of Dublin and consulting your map, you may suddenly realize that the city`s harbor facing the Irish Sea is some distance off to the east and a bit remote from standard tourist turf.
At least two stops on O`Connell Street are practically mandatory. One is the main Post Office, where you may record the bullet marks with your Instamatic (a companion should be pointing to them, for maximum effect). The other, immediately across the street, is the big Irish Tourist Board information office, where they seem to know absolutely everything about the whole country and will do things like make theater reservations or help you rent a car.
Even the briefest tour of Dublin should also include St. Patrick`s Cathedral, which dates from 1190 and is the national Cathedral of the Protestant Church of Ireland. Dublin, never short on surprises, has no Roman Catholic cathedral.
St. Patrick`s is Ireland`s most capacious church, a quality that Oliver Cromwell found useful when his troops needed a place to stable their horses in 1649. The Guinness family repaired that barbaric damage in the 1860s. The cathedral is most famous, however, because Jonathan Swift served as its dean from 1713 to 1745. A guide will show you how Swift was wheeled around on a portable pulpit to deliver locomotive sermons to his stationary congregation. You will also be shown his tomb in the south aisle, and his epitaph, described by Yeats as the greatest of all time. Its six lines:
Swift has sailed into his rest;
Savage indignation there
Cannot lacerate his breast.
Imitate him if you dare
World-besotted traveler: he
Served human liberty.
Of Dublin`s outlying public attractions beyond walking distance of downtown, the most popular is Phoenix Park, a huge (1,760 acres) expanse of green open spaces and woodland. It is a splendid place to spend any fair day, but Sundays are best because it is then that the soccer, cricket, polo and other playing fields are most active and an outdoor antiques market is open.
Phoenix Park is also home to the world`s third oldest zoo, highly respected for success in breeding lions. And know this: The growling, trademark lion that appears at the beginning of every MGM movie is an Irish lion that was photographed while yawning at the Dublin Zoo. The roar of an American lion was dubbed over in Hollywood.
Other Phoenix Park sights include the private Irish president`s residence, its resemblance to the White House in Wasington attributable to architect James Hoban, who helped design both buildings. Even more visually prominent in the park are a 205-foot obelisk paying tribute to the Duke of Wellington and a huge steel cross marking the place where John Paul II celebrated mass during a 1979 papal visit.
As always, the first-time visitor to Dublin-or any big city-is well advised not to skimp on pre-departure background reading, the better to learn about the city`s other major and lesser known sights. Another old tip that applies even to the compact Irish capital: Take a standard rubberneck bus tour of the city on your first day to get a feeling for the place and decide how you may want to reorder your priorities. One thing you will quickly notice is an abundance of shops that offer essentially the same tweeds, crystal, linens and crafts usually associated with such cities as Donegal and Waterford.
Dublin offers the usual entertainment pleasures of a vacation city in fairly generous measure. It is not a la dolce vita town, to be sure, but there is no reason to be bored when the sun goes down.
You will surely want to take in a play at the Abbey Theater. Founded in 1898 to house a national repertory company that provided a voice for such playwrights as O`Casey and Synge, it also helped launch the careers of actors Cyril Cusack, Siobhan McKenna and Barry Fitzgerald. There are experimental and other ”off-Broadway” venues, too, and theaters such as the Gaiety and the Olympia where you may catch a delightful mainstream Irish musical comedy or a spot of vaudeville.
Irish cabaret is featured regularly at some of the hotels, where you can hear a tenor belt out ”Danny Boy,” watch costumed troupes dance jigs and reels or listen to a standup comic tell corny jokes. Dinner package deals are available for those who want, say, potatoes and cabbage with their ”Rose of Tralee.” Tourists love it, and so do locals.
Traditional Irish folk music of a bit more passionate and fiercely authentic sort can be heard nightly at such places as Culturlann na hEireann, or at one of the ”singing pubs” such as Kennedy`s, Slattery`s and the Lower Deck. Cover charges are cheap when they are levied at all. It is also possible to find jazz and rock if that is what you really came all the way to Ireland to do.
The place of pubs in Irish life, and how you may want to fit them into your visit, is rather too complex and richly nuanced a subject to go into here. But be informed that pubs in Dublin, as in the rest of Ireland, are the best places to have a simple soup-and-sandwich lunch that won`t cost much or take two hours out of your day. The best guide to such matters presently in print is ”Ireland`s Pubs,” by Sybil Taylor (Penguin, 256 pages, $7.95).
Pub grub`s soundness notwithstanding, it isn`t likely that you will return from Ireland with memories of culinary ecstacy foremost in your mind. Granted, if light breakfasts appeal to you, you`ll be pleased by the way the Irish serve up hot buttered scones and zesty tea. Yes, you may recall a good bowl of potato soup that you ate in a saloon, or a superb dish of homemade mint ice cream served up at an overnight tourist cottage. Still, even the best cooking in Ireland is unusally uninspired, most people will conclude after eating a few dozen meals there. Plain almost to a fault, let us say.
On the other hand, one does not go to Dublin just to eat any more than one travels to Zagreb to see the works of Monet and Degas. There are obviously more than enough other reasons to make a few days` stay in Dublin highly recommended. The Irish have had 1,000 years to fine-tune their most important city, after all, and they have certainly done a civilized job of it. I`d almost go back just to experience those people refusing tips.
BIRTHDAY INFORMATION
Dublin`s millennium celebration continues until the end of 1988. Visitors bound for Dublin can get a calendar of events as well as general information on Ireland by writing to the Irish Tourist Board, 757 3d Ave., New York, N.Y. 10017, or phoning 212-418-0800.
