{"id":521,"date":"2015-03-17T08:47:28","date_gmt":"2015-03-16T22:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marianmcguinness.com\/?p=521"},"modified":"2015-03-17T08:47:28","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T22:47:28","slug":"ireland-an-intoxicating-welcome-to-dublin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marianmcguinness.com\/index.php\/2015\/03\/17\/ireland-an-intoxicating-welcome-to-dublin\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland: An intoxicating welcome to Dublin"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Gathering<\/a>

gathering outside The Duke hotel<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re here for the drink, you\u2019ll have to put up with the literature.\u201d Welcome to The Duke hotel in Dublin. It\u2019s a cracking venue to begin the Literary Pub Crawl.<\/p>\n

Two actors, 50 people, 4 pubs. Singing, acting, reciting, drinking, laughing, the Gift of the Gab and lots of craic. What a great few hours we \u2018crawlers\u2019 had.<\/p>\n

Derek and Finbar, two actors of stage and television, greeted us in the upstairs room of The Duke hotel. The song\u00a0Waxies\u2019 Dargle<\/em>\u00a0brought us all together as we raised our pints of Guinness and sang the refrain about cobblers (who waxed their stitches for waterproofing) celebrating at their annual picnic \u2026 \u201cI\u2019ll have a pint, yes, I\u2019ll have a pint with you, sir!\u201d<\/p>\n

The boys started with a rendition of Samuel Beckett\u2019s Waiting for Godot<\/em>. They had us hooked. Pathos and humour so closely aligned.<\/p>\n

\"Waiting<\/a>

Waiting for Godot<\/p><\/div>\n

Swift, Stoker, Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, Behan, Heaney. We were to channel them all through the articulate and witty Derek and Finbar.<\/p>\n

Back out on the street we gathered at the steps of Trinity College Library and listened to anecdotes of those writers who had attended the College. It was \u201ca culture stop with no drinks,\u201d said Finbar as he took on the flamboyant persona of Oscar Wilde and his travels to the silver mines of Colorado and then the poignancy of James Joyce \u2026 the grey block of Trinity \u2026 set heavily in the city\u2019s ignorance like a dull stone set in a cumbrous ring …<\/em><\/p>\n

\"the<\/a>

Derek and Finbar weave their magic at Trinity College<\/p><\/div>\n

More serious drinking and stories took place in the snug of O\u2019Neill\u2019s pub frequented by Trinity students past and present.<\/p>\n

Meandering the streets of Dublin we stopped at another great pub, The Old Stand; the headquarters of Michael Collins during the War of Independence.<\/p>\n

\"SAMSUNG<\/a><\/p>\n

Awkward beginnings of our global group soon turned to more lubricated interactions as we drank and shared our love of literature.<\/p>\n

At Davy Byrnes\u2019 pub we partook in an episode from Joyce\u2019s\u00a0Ulysses<\/em> and learned that Brendan Behan, one of the most colourful characters to walk the streets of Dublin, was born \u201ca drinker with a writing problem.\u201d He started drinking at the age of eight and equated jugs of Guinness with holy water.<\/p>\n

At the end of the night in a dark alley with the chill wind whipping off the Liffey we huddled for the evening-ending quiz of all we\u2019d heard through the skits, witticisms and history of this city of literature. The last two standing were a lad from Newfoundland and a lass from Australia. He beat me to the final answer, but I was happy with a bottle of Bushmills Irish Whiskey as my prize.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a great irony in replacing the brain cells while drowning them. Pass the Guinness please. Next stop, the Irish Writers\u2019 Centre. Perhaps you have another suggestion for getting under the skin of Dublin.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.dublinpubcrawl.com<\/p>\n

\"yes,<\/a>

yes, Marian, there are leprechauns in Dublin<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf you\u2019re here for the drink, you\u2019ll have to put up with the literature.\u201d Welcome to The Duke hotel in Dublin. It\u2019s a cracking venue to begin the Literary Pub Crawl. Two actors, 50 people, 4 pubs. Singing, acting, reciting, drinking, laughing, the Gift of the Gab and lots of craic. What a great few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[22,21,24,23],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n