or, Three Dublin Sights.
Temple Bar
Both the name of a particular bar and an area in central Dublin, Temple Bar is the place to go if you're in search of genuine Guinness and live Irish music - and it certainly flows a-plenty. Of course, Temple Bar is not so good if you're the sort of tourist who wants to go where no tourist has been before. The nightlife in Temple Bar is nearly completely touristocentric, with the result that it can feel a bit more like how you expect Ireland to be than how it really is: if I had a Guinness for every time I'd heard Whiskey in the Jar, I'd be a very happy man. Warning over, I'd still recommend Temple Bar to anyone wanting a great pub atmosphere with live music thrown in.
Trinity College Dublin
Trinity College Dublin is not only home to a large student population, but also houses the Book of Kells, a beautifully-preserved early Irish Bible manuscript. The Book of Kells exhibition was, in my opinion, fascinating. And even if I might be biased because of my fairly atypical interest in manuscripts, the venerable Trinity College library, which you walk through as part of the Book of Kells visit, is sure to leave anyone watery-mouthed with almost Dickensian piles of leather-bound books. On the downside, however, we got talked into joining a walking tour for only €1 more (it already cost about €9 to see the Book of Kells, so seemed worth it). Whilst not without value (we saw parts of Trinity College we would not otherwise have seen, and learnt about the university's historical quirks) the line between quirks and the sort of patronising fictions tour guides tell tourists because they're gullible was a little too frequently overstepped.. and our tour guide, a student at Trinity, kept making nauseating pleas for richer members of the tour group to subsidise her student lifestyle through tips, which some elderly gents indeed did. You've been warned.
Dublin Castle
This is a must-see for anyone who's a great believer in the Sacred Trinity of Tourism: Castle, Cathedral, Museum (..OK, only me then..). Stately from the outside, the Castle is more a 19th century palace-cum-parliament than a medieval motte-and-bailey construction, and showcases corridors full of portraits of figures from its rich and not entirely peaceful history. Perhaps the most surprising thing was the amount of British guilt the Castle's history made me feel. Bearing in mind that my knowledge of Irish history is limited to the Potato Famine, I wasn't expecting that the cultural narrative of being Irish would be quite so closely linked with not being British (whatever that means). Unlike in Germany, where no one is ignorant of the wrongs of the Nazi past, there's definitely a blind spot in the canon of British history, and visiting Dublin Castle (and Ireland in general) certainly fills in some of those worryingly fuzzy patches.
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