Dawn Xiana Moon: Intelligent folk pop with influences from jazz and traditional Chinese music. From Chicago.

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Sunday, September 06, 2009

Greetings from Dublin

I love wandering through cities on foot - it's the best way to get a sense of a new place, and it's always fun to discover interesting shops and architecture. On a map, Dublin's city center looks much larger than it is - everything is just a few minutes' walk, and it's much more tightly condensed than Chicago (even if you were to limit yourself to the Loop). All day, I stumbled across places that I'd read about in articles or seen photos of, completely unintentionally. Flamenco in Dublin

Carolyn, a fellow swing dancer and friend from my Michigan days, and I arrived in the center around 8:00am, and much to our surprise, the streets were empty and most of the cafes were closed. Apparently Dublin wakes up late on the weekend. For breakfast, we wandered over to the Temple Bar Food Market, where everything looked amazing - it's actually not a very large outdoor market, but I could have eaten there all week. Unfortunately they're only open on Saturdays. After much deliberation, we both decided on Guinness steak pies, which we ate while listening to the musician in the photo on the left play flamenco guitar. The pies were crisp, with a fluffy crust, and full of flavor.

Grafton Street felt familiar, even though this was my first trip to Dublin. After watching a marionette dancing to Macy Gray, a giant leprechaun, a "coin-operated" man, living statues, and scores of musicians, I realized that Once must have been filmed on Grafton. (When I returned later to my computer, I discovered that Glen Hansard, the actor/musician from the film, and Damien Rice both used to busk there - which makes some sense, since the quality of the performers today was surprisingly high).

St. Ann's Church

The River Liffey is Dublin's equivalent of the Seine - it's similar to Paris in that the river divides portions of the city and its banks are walled in by stone. A few artists have booths along the north side, and I bought a black and white print there for my brother, an amateur photographer. With our accents, Dubliners can immediately tell that Carolyn and I are from the States, and they all ask where we're from. When I mentioned Chicago, the photographer exclaimed, "Obama's from Chicago!" He was relieved that Bush is no longer in office. Almost everyone we talk to mentions Obama, and a man selling scarves from a small storefront even knew our mayor: "You know the Irish, your mayor's name is Daley."

Dinner was at the restaurant of the first chef in Ireland to earn two Michelin stars, Kevin Thornton. They're running a special pre-theatre menu that effectively is a way to eat three courses (plus a chef's choice starter) at Thornton's for the price of an entree from their a la carte menu. While our meal was good, I have to say that I wasn't blown away. Across the board, the presentation was beautiful - I've never seen anyone else serve tea the way that they do - but the dishes themselves did not amaze me. In spite of this, it was fun to meet Thornton himself, who popped out of the kitchen for a few minutes to greet all of the guests who were seated before the main dinner rush.

All in all, it was an excellent first day.

Labels: Dublin, food, Ireland, travel

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