Insider
Info
Be right as rain: “Don’t
just wish on a four leaf
clover for good weather;
be prepared and always
carry an umbrella when
you’re in Ireland. While
temperatures are generally mild, rain is common
throughout the country.
But if the weather does
turn foul, duck into a
local Irish pub for island
hospitality and musthave fish and chips.”
– Selena Harrison, CAA
Travel Consultant
Visit Selena at our St.
Anne’s service centre or
email her at selenah@
caamanitoba.com
And for more travel tips,
call 204 262 6000 or
1 800 222 4357
48
SPRING 2016
CAA MANITOBA
AFTER NEARLY seven hours in the air, I
catch my first glimpse of Irish shores.
For all my imagining, I hadn’t foreseen
Ireland’s real, physical depth. The hills,
though rounded and gentle, are substantial—the legions of sheep that call
this landscape home are undoubtedly
in amazing physical condition.
Descending toward Dublin, I brace
for the moment when the plane’s
wheels make contact with the runway,
marking the moment I officially start
reconnecting with my past.
Ten steps inside the Dublin airport,
I meet the first of what would prove to
be many false preconceptions I held
about Ireland: English is not the country’s first official language—that would
be Gaelic. In fact, signs throughout
the country are written in Gaelic with
English subtitles. And despite my tenuous connection to this land, Gaelic
might as well be Klingon to me. I
would later learn that though Gaelic is
taught in Ireland’s public schools, few
folks here actually speak it.
Twenty steps inside the Dublin airport, my first accurate preconception
about Ireland is confirmed: The
people here are incredibly friendly and
genuine. If you stay in the same spot
alone for longer than 15 seconds, a
local will start a conversation with you.
Dublin is a wide, low city that
stretches out for 115 square kilometres, but it has few buildings higher
than five storeys. The architecture is a
surprisingly coherent mishmash of the
old and contemporary. Centuries-old
church spires play against the gleaming
“BACK IN THE GOOD OLD days you’d see
public executions here,” says Pat Liddy,
gesturing wistfully to the park across
the street. I’ve joined Pat’s group walking tour of Dublin city. During our
trek, he guides us through the heart
of Dublin, pointing out bizarre details
that we surely would have missed if left
to our own devices.
“Do you see the monkeys playing pool
there carved at the base of that column? This is the Kildare Street Club.
Architect Benjamin Woodward put
that detail there as a kind of inside joke
about the fellas who commissioned it.”
Sure enough, monkeys.
We amble past rows of unassuming
townhomes, noting the plaques that
bear witness to their famous former
inhabitants: James Joyce, W.B. Yeats,
Samuel Beckett, Bram Stoker. Each
called Dublin home at one time. A
young Oscar Wilde reclines on a
park bench, perfectly positioned for
optimum people watching. Even Phil
Lynott, lead vocalist for 70s rock band
Thin Lizzy, is immortalized in bronze
outside a pub in the city’s Temple Bar
section. And of course, tributes to Irish
mega-rock stars U2 are everywhere.
Pat leads us past an array of sites,
like a small Huguenot cemetery dating back to the 1600s that sits near
(ROSS CASTLE) DOMINGO LEIVA NICOLAS/GETTY; (HARRISON) EBONIE KLASSEN
Ross Castle rises up in
Killarney National Park
modern buildings of the Financial District—reminding me that I’m not actually travelling back in time. Yet, despite
the enormous disparity in styles, the
horizon is a study in harmony and
illustrates the city’s evolution.
On my first evening in the city, I
find respite from the chilly rain inside
O’Donahue’s (pronounced o-dun-uhhose), a traditional and incredibly
narrow pub. Guinness and Bulmer’s
cider scent the air while spontaneous conversations ebb and flow, and
a revolving cast of fiddlers, pickers,
drummers and pipers dazzle the crowd.
My thoughts turn to my mother, who
never left home without her accordion.
Level of talent notwithstanding, the
scene at the pub that night could very
well have been playing out in my backyard in the 1970s. Even patrons’ faces
seem uncannily familiar. But if my
constant studying and staring offend
anyone, they never let on.