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Approaching Ireland by ferry. . . The long coastline, a low sky with the light of morning beginning to rise, and welcoming faces all around at Dun Laoghaire port... Unfortunately I have been gathering too many brochures and souvenirs, mementoes and impulse purchases in the past two weeks, and have started quoting the Stone Roses, "the pack on my back is aching, the strap seams cut me like a knife..." In one blinding instant, I realise that I do not have the address of my bed and breakfast. Not even a telephone number. All I have is an e-mail and a vague idea of how to reach the city centre by DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit). I rush around in the rain, and as my bags grow heavier and heavier, I have to stop in the middle of the street more than once to rest my hands and shoulders. I run into the first Internet cafe I see; there it is, Mrs. Byrne, Richmon House, Rathfarnham 14. Only where is Rathfarnham? My worst fears are confirmed by the look on the face of the girl behind the counter. She steals a glance out the window, then turns back to me and my wet hair and overflowing luggage; relief is transparent on her features - she does not have to make that journey in such weather! Bus Number 16A, she tells me. But she is not sure, and I may have to switch buses later on. For now I am grateful that Rathfarnham is at least on my tiny map, even if it is along the border. And while standing at the bus stop I can rest from lugging my load... Another half-hour passes before the bus arrives, and I sit upstairs on the double decker, treated to a panoramic view of the city streets as we drive past landmarks like Trinity College and St. Patrick's Cathedral. Except the most prominent landmark I can see are all the election campaign posters, most of them for Eoin Ryan and Bertie Ahern of the Fianna Fáil, the incumbent Republican Party. In two minutes, I have already memorised the slogan that will haunt me everywhere for the next few days, "A lot done. More to do." I ask the bus driver for help and he lets me off at Rathfarnham village. I walk around the village and through a shopping centre, and all around Marian Crescent, asking directions at every turn, until I stumble at last on to the front porch of Richmon House, nearly collapsing into the arms of Mrs. Byrne herself. The afternoon brings a complete reversal of fortune. Freed of my baggage, and on the advice of my hostess, I take convenient bus 15B from down the street, straight into the heart of Dublin, Trinity College. I would like to see the Book of Kells, one of the oldest illustrated manuscripts in Gaelic, but the entrance fee is an exorbitant 16 Euros! I hurry back outside and resume reading the Gaelic street signs ("làna bus" is the easiest to decipher), which are not half as valuable or interesting, but a little more affordable... I head through Merrion Square to reach the National Museum, passing Oscar Wilde's house, and one of W. B. Yeats' houses. Modest plaques beside the doors belie the fact that such distinguished men once loomed large on these streets. Wilde's statue lounges in a corner of the park in the centre of the square, ideally sculpted for tourists to pose casually beside and take photographs, remembering, or not, that: "things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the arts that have influenced us. To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty... Art is a symbol, because man is a symbol." Dublin ("Blackpool" in Gaelic) has in recent years expanded rapidly as a city. Yet it retains the charms of a small town, with its low buildings stretching along either side of the River Liffey, intersected every few streets by bridges with enchanting names like Butt Bridge and Ha'penny Bridge, the latter bridge still in use since the last century. Dublin is not half so hurried or rude as London is, and if it must be compared at all then it is closest in tone and style to Montreal. One of those cities that are both European in the Continental sense, yet have a distinctive character arising from their own cultural background, and including an acute awareness that this tradition is constantly threatened by the homogenisation of the world. In some way this is best discernible in the world of James Joyce's writing; that author who left Ireland early, with an air of finality and vowing never to return, yet through his novels and stories tarried in the Emerald Isle nearly every day of his life. I spend close to an entire day following the footsteps of Joyce's Leopold Bloom, including having a pint at Davy Byrne's, where I try to order a gorgonzola cheese sandwich, only to learn that they serve them solely on Bloomsday (June 16). I break up the walk at intervals, first spending hours at the relatively new Joyce Centre, where there is always a chance of running into one of Joyce's descendants. The centre has an extensive library of Joyce's works, in nearly every language, as well as many of the best biographies and critical works based on his life and writings. There are original photographs of every one of the houses he lived in as a child, the family constantly on the move to keep ahead of Joyce Senior's debts. Also, there are the usual one or two items of furniture with their tentative connections to the author; but I still stand before them, graze the back of an armchair with a reverent finger, and wonder what it is that makes brilliant, inspiring writing imbue even the author's friend's chair with a sense of strength and power... At other intervals along Bloom's route I visit the covered market between George and Drury streets, and the book fair in Temple Bar Square. As I cross back and forth from one side of the Liffey to the other, I come across the Clarence Hotel, nearly directly opposite the Ormond Hotel, the last public stop of Bloom's day. I almost decide to have my evening drink at the Clarence instead of the Ormond, favouring for a minute the property of contemporary musicians (U2) over a half-hearted link to a belated poet. Yet the doorman at the Clarence is frightfully imposing, and gives me such a glare as I step forward, that in that one second I turn and scuttle across the Grattan Bridge, having missed even a glimpse of the interior. I'll have to rent the film I suppose (Million Dollar Hotel)... It is too late in the day to enter the Guinness Brewery by the time I have made my way up the Liffey to Phoenix Park, the largest enclosed park in all of Europe. I explore a few hundred metres of the park before heading across the river. More miles under my feet, as I discover a way through the Brewery complex, along streets those have been preserved for centuries, past the towering buildings that are reservoirs for "Guinness. Pure genius." My walk is only interrupted by a few hours' sleep; the next morning I am on my feet again, south toward Sandymount Strand, almost a two-hour walk from the city centre. The tide is out far along the beach, almost at the horizon, and on the road just above, the Fianna Fail campaigners are gathering. A lot done. More to do... Yeats was born in Sandymount, and at Ryan Park in the town centre, I have my lunch on a bench next to the pedestal from which his bust looks critically down at my sparse meal, a sandwich, an apple and juice. In the evening, my last evening in Dublin, I am to meet him again, in slightly more sociable surroundings. I join the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl, an event held every few nights by a few Dublin actors, featuring songs, re-enactments, anecdotes, and many pub visits, all centred on the writings and lives of some of Ireland's most famous exports. The story I like best is about Brendan Behan, who was asked in Toronto during a book tour why he drank so much. He replied that he had seen a sign in Ireland: "Drink Canada Dry" and he was doing the best he could... Already my weekend in Dublin is at an end; I am at the halfway point of my vacation, headed for Liverpool on the morrow... A lot done. More to do...
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