If you read my review of the Peat and Diesel concert, you already know that the lovely Ms. Virgindog and I went to Dublin, and why. Here’s how our trip went.
The cheapest flight available was on Icelandair.
They’ve just added a direct flight from Nashville to Reykjavik with service continuing to various points in Europe, and you can layover for a day or two or six in Iceland.
In fact, we had to stay a day because the time between arrival in Keflavik and the next flight to Dublin is 23 hours.
My friend and former fellow Pussycat Doghouse member, Ashley, drove us to the airport and fed our cats when we were away. The flight left at 9:00pm and arrived in Iceland at 8:30 the next morning, local time.
Our suitcase, however, didn’t.
Icelandair’s baggage service staff were really nice, and they located our suitcase back in Nashville. It hadn’t been put on the plane. It would arrive on the next flight at 8:30 the following morning. By that time, we’d already be in the air on the way to Dublin. The suitcase would be a day behind us, but we had some essentials in our carry-ons so we’d be OK for a day.
The Charm of Reykjavik
Iceland is notoriously expensive.
The city bus from the airport to Reykjavik and back costs almost as much for two people as it does to rent a car for the day. So we rented a car.
It was a beautiful, cloudless day, with the sun low in the sky. It never gets high that far north.
Iceland is a volcanic island, of course.
Even with the sunshine, it made for an eerie drive into Reykjavik.
The city is small, walkable, and surprisingly quiet. Our first stop was a familiar but unexpected sight.
There’s a dwarf statue, a companion to the ones in Wrocław that I wrote about a couple weeks ago. Ms. Virgindog is from Wroclaw so she was delighted.
Only a couple blocks away is the Monument to Civil Disobedience that I wrote about.
It’s not big but it sure makes its point.
We walked across town to the northern shore and went inside the Harpa concert hall.
The shore next to the Harpa is now the farthest north I’ve ever been.
From the sublime to the ridiculous, we went below ground into what used to be a public toilet but is now The Icelandic Punk Museum.
After lunch, we walked up the rainbow painted street to the Hallgrimskirkja church.
It’s a modern architectural beauty.
Leaving Reykjavik, we drove through the most recent lava field, just north of Grindavik. A few months ago, lava covered the existing road so a temporary one was made of crushed volcanic rock. Once we got back on asphalt, we went to the Bridge Between the Continents. The European and North American tectonic plates meet in Iceland and are ever so slowly moving away from each other. You can walk across this bridge that connects the two.
Despite being tired, we didn’t want to check into the hotel yet so we got coffee in Keflavík and went to visit Giganta.
Based on a children’s story, she’s a kindhearted giant who lives in a cave with her big bed and enormous toothbrush.
She was snoring when we arrived, and to our delight she farted occasionally, too.
Exploring Dublin’s Streets and Guinness Pints
The next morning, a Wednesday, we got up at 4:30am (11:30pm back home) to catch our flight. By noon, we were in Dublin and checked into our hotel. I recommend the hotel, by the way.
It’s the Trinity City Hotel, near Trinity College, only a few blocks from the touristy Temple Bar area, and right across the street from the Dublin Express bus stop from the airport.
The room was comfortable and the staff were great. They pointed us to some stores where we could buy socks and underwear. That wasn’t on our original itinerary, but it became an improvised adventure. Icelandair said they’d reimburse us for any reasonable necessities, and it helped us learn our way around the city.
Dublin is a port city, but I was still surprised to hear all the seagulls.
We had dinner in a pub with a couple pints of Smithwick’s and had a good night’s sleep to adjust to the time zone.
We were happy to be there.
I had already bought tickets for two of Dublin’s attractions and both were scheduled for Thursday. In the morning, we went to the Book of Kells Experience. The book and its history are worth their own article but the Experience was a little Disneyfied. However, it ends in the Old Library, and that actually is an experience.
With its old books and shelves, it must have been an intense place to study.
It’d be hard to concentrate with all the tourists now, but the room is solemn, classic, and beautiful.
The busts of the great minds of yore remind us that intelligence is something to be admired and strived for.
We can do better.
About a mile down Thomas Street, we had lunch at Arthur’s Pub. I presume it’s named after Arthur Guinness.
There was a couple from California at the next table, in town for a day before their cruise ship continued on to Belfast, Liverpool, and beyond. They were maybe a dozen years older than me. Our conversation wasn’t long but the man said something in passing that stuck with me. He said, sort of to himself, that he wished they had retired younger when they could get around better. When they left, he walked with a limp.
As a friend of mine said later, that was the universe tapping me on the shoulder…
Arthur’s has a blues jam once a month and we asked our waitress about it. She was fascinating and fun, and was interested in checking out my writing. She may, in fact, read this. (Hi, Aoifa!) She recommended the Cobblestone Pub for its Irish music jam. Steve Martin plays banjo there when he’s in town. We went to check it out, but first….
We had tickets for the Guinness Storehouse.
This is another must-see for tourists. It starts in the basement and goes up seven floors, each explaining the company’s history and the steps in brewing Guinness. The top floor has a 360 degree view of the city and is where you get your free pint. It was crowded so we shared a table with a Canadian couple on their honeymoon. Turns out that he’s a bass player, too, so we had lots to talk about. (Hi, Robin and Amanda!)
Surprises Along the Way: New Friendships
This is the best part of traveling. Yes, scenery like Iceland’s can be moving, but talking with people you would never meet otherwise — like Aoifa, Robin, Amanda, and the couple from California — can change the way you see the world. That’s why Muhammed said, “Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have traveled.”
You always hear that Guinness tastes different in Ireland. If it was different, it wasn’t by much.
It’s very good, but I also recommend Murphy‘s and Beamish.
After looking over the city from that height, Ms. Virgindog brilliantly observed that Dublin feels like a New England mill town crossed with a continental European city. It has the brick buildings of Manchester, NH and the cobblestone streets of Dusseldorf. It’s not as dirty as Worcester, MA but not as clean as Barcelona. It’s right in the middle.
Aoifa was right about the Cobblestone Pub. There was an Irish jam going on but it was so full of patrons that we couldn’t see the musicians and could barely hear them over the ruckus. We left without even getting through the crowd to the bar.
A Day in the Life of Dublin: Pubs, Music, and Art
Our plan for Friday was to take a train somewhere outside of Dublin, possibly Kilkenny or Skerries, to see some Irish countryside. Our suitcase, however, still hadn’t arrived and we were out of fresh clothes. After some shopping, we went back to the hotel and, lo and behold, our suitcase showed up.
To my great annoyance, someone had gone through the bag and didn’t put everything back. Lots of our clothes were missing:
Including my Virgindog t-shirts.
I spent an hour filling out a complaint form on the airline website, and then we went shopping again.
We were grumpy — I was actually angry, and I never get angry — and there wasn’t enough time in the day to go anywhere. We stayed in Dublin and had lunch in a shopping mall food court.
Iceland’s Lunar Landscapes, and Ireland’s Cultural Heart
Early Saturday morning, your friend and mine, JJ Live At Leeds and his family arrived. We had a leisurely breakfast as we got to know each other beyond our comment section interactions. He’s now the seventh TNOCS-er I’ve met in person, and his wife and daughter are delightful.
We saw the statue of Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott and walked through St. Stephen’s Green.
We also ran into an anti-immigration protest. Or maybe it was a pro-immigration protest.
When it came time to go see Peat & Diesel – (remember them from the first paragraph? They’re the whole reason we’re in Dublin.), the five of us walked to the theater in the Temple Bar neighborhood. It reminded me of downtown Nashville, because it was loud and crowded and chaotic and there were more tourists than locals.
JJ’s wife and daughter left us at the venue — it was an 18 and up show — and went back to the hotel. As I mentioned in the concert review, it was seriously fun.
On Sunday morning, the five of us had breakfast in the hotel and then went to the National Gallery of Ireland.
They had paintings and sculptures by Irish artists with a special exhibit of stained glass works. I gravitated, as I always do, to the stuff from the Impressionist era and later. Prior to that, art was commissioned by the rich and royal. I prefer art from the heart.
We had lunch at the restaurant next to the Phil Lynott statue, and they seated us in a small room with just enough room for the five of us.
Lynott’s picture was on the wall. His presence is everywhere.
JJ’s daughter wanted to go to the Disney store, which we did, and then it was time for them to catch the bus to the airport. We waited together, and said our goodbyes when the bus came.
JJ and his family are lovely people, as you would expect, and I’m so happy to have met them.
Rather than have dinner at a pub again, we walked in a direction we hadn’t gone before and ate at Nutbutter on the Grand Dock, away from the tourist areas. I really do love pub food but enough’s enough…
– and Nutbutter was cheap, good, and healthy. We ate outside with the locals and seagulls.
We went for a long walk in the morning. Our flight didn’t leave until 2:15pm and we knew we’d be sitting for hours. We had pastries and coffee at Bread 41.
Our flights home were easier than the flights east. Europe-bound flights are usually at night and sleeping on a plane is hard. Going home, it’s just a long day.
I caught this photo over Labrador.
Ashley picked us up at the Nashville airport, the cats pretended not to be happy to see us, and I went to work in the morning.
The first thing I did was hand in my notice.
I’ll retire in August.
My new job will be to stay healthy as long as possible and to see more of Iceland… Ireland…
…And the rest of this astonishing world.
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Great write up Bill and a pleasure to meet my first TNOCS-er in person. We really enjoyed wandering the city and the conversation with you and Ms VDog.
Funnily enough, last night without knowing this would be up today, my daughter referred to the pulled pork focaccia she had in the Hotel Bruxelles next to Phil, as the greatest sandwich she’d ever had. She’s quite prepared to fly back to Dublin just for lunch! From your descriptions I guess she would really love Papa Turney’s.
I am a little envious of the picture across the bay outside the Harpa and the clear blue skies. We stayed in a hotel not far from the waterfront on our visit to Reykjavik in 2016. Across 4 days that view was constantly obscured by low lying cloud. Aside from that we enjoyed our visit.
Any time you guys want to visit Papa Turney’s, dinner’s on me!
Great story, V-dog! And happy retirement! So glad that you and JJ were able to connect in person. I guess I’m overdue to do the same with you. Cstolliver and I live near each other, maybe you can swing over to Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina sometime after you finish work in August?
And I’m so glad that they still pay tribute to Phil Lynott there. More places should do the same for their musical heroes.
Raleigh is definitely on my list, so yes, you guys will help me make it to meeting at least nine TNOCSers. I’m collecting you all like Pokémon!
So cool you and JJ got to meet up and that you got such a great trip out of it.
I was particularly interested to read about Iceland, as it has always fascinated me but I know little about it.
I knew there was a Phil Lynott statue in Dublin but I’ve never seen a picture of it. So great that you got to go to the restaurant right next to it.
But this was my favorite line from the article-
The busts of the great minds of yore remind us that intelligence is something to be admired and strived for.
We can do better.
Iceland is phenomenal. 23 hours was not enough. I’m hoping to someday rent a camper van there and do the whole island for a couple weeks, but that sounds very expensive.
I didn’t include a close up, but check out the Lynott statue again. People put guitar picks under the strings of his bass.
Thanks, and I’ll always stand by that statement. We can do better.
You buried the lede, brother, but it was worth the wait. Great write-up!
And, yes, whether it’s you making the road trip or Ozmoe and me, a meeting is overdue. Maybe Ozmoe and I need to do the traveling because ltc isn’t too far from you, right? Any other folks in your neck of the woods?
Travelling is expensive, and that ocean…it’s, like, big. But I sure would like to visit Europe someday. The physical scientist in me thinks it’s cool that you got to visit the rift zone between the NA and European tectonic plates! Stuff like that is cool.
But, other than learning about your pending retirement, the most interesting thing to me is that while destinations are very cool to visit, the people that we meet along the way are just as cool.
I’ve seen nine-to-ten Icelandic films. The best one, in my opinion, is the hard-to-stream Cold Fever by Fridrik Thor Fridriksson(the English version of the filmmaker’s real name). There is a lot of overlap, in regard to locations. I almost feel like I’ve been there. For instance, that four-lane highway(freeway?). It’s in every movie. Iceland is near the top of my list as a dream destination. I love watching the local celebrations on YouTube after their EURO upset. My boss was so psyched he told me the score, then apologized, because I was talking about the match-up before it started.