St. Patricks Day in Dublin – 10 spectacular events

by Justin Delaney on

With St. Patrick’s Day less than a month away, it may be time to start making some serious plans. If you have tired of drinking stale green beer and attending arbitrary parades that rarely coincide with the real St. Patty’s Day, then maybe it is time to celebrate the Irish festival in the land where it all began – Ireland.

In a country with pubs older than the Magna Carta, history abounds. You come to Ireland for this history, and perhaps the Guinness. Beyond these draws though, the kindness, spirit, and wit of the Irish is what truly sets Ireland apart. What better way to take in St. Patrick’s Day than with some gregarious locals in the Irish capital of Dublin?

Since Ireland was hit with a particularly nasty strain of the financial crisis, great deals are to be had. You can rent a car and take to the countryside for less than 10 Euros per day. Posh hotels like the Merrion that used to cost fortunes can now be had for just a hair over one-hundred US dollars per night. Round-trip flights from major U.S. travel hubs hover around $600. If ever a time existed to visit the Emerald Isle, that time is now.Dublin throws an amazing party for St. Patricks Day with events catering to both the boozy crowd and culture seeking revelers. The festivities last from March 16 to March 20, with the big parade on March 17. You can view the events program at the St. Patrick’s Festival website, but ten of the highlights include:

1. In the footsteps of St. Patrick walking tour – walking tour of Dublin based on St. Patrick, with the tour comes discounted entry into the Guinness Storehouse – free if your name is Patrick

2. Kilfenora Ceili Band – a 100 year old traveling Irish dance band

3. CEOL St. Patrick’s Day Eve – several well known Irish musicians perform on Vicar Street

4. Ganon Cup University Boat Race – a 60 year old tradition pits University College Dublin against Trinity College Dublin on a boat race down the River Liffey

5. St. Patrick’s Day Parade – Ireland’s top performance acts line the streets in an unforgettable parade

6. City at Play Funfairs – parts of Dublin are turned into Carnival fairgrounds

7. Text in the city – the audience texts topics to the Irish comedians onstage that perform hilarious skits similar to “Whose Line is it Anyways”

8. Between the Canals Premiere – movie premiere for a “gritty energetic urban tale”

9. Sharon Shannon – One of Ireland’s top musicians performs at the National Concert Hall

10. The Commitments 20th Anniversary Reunion Concert – the stars of the 1991 Irish film – The Commitments, will be performing a full concert together for the first time ever, at the O2.


flickr images via Infomatique

Why You Should Go to Belfast Right Now

by David Farley on
There’s a second-floor lounge across the street from Belfast’s ornate city hall. It looks like a lot of cosmopolitan lounges in any capital city on the planet: colored backlighting, sleek banquettes, and electonica seeping from the speakers. But Apartment, as it’s called, is kind of radical. Why? Because of the floor-to-ceiling front windows.

To understand why these windows are so revolutionary, let’s go back ten years. Apartment opened in 2000 when the center of town was still desolate and citizens were still wary of car bombs. “People thought we were mad when we first opened,” said Apartment’s manager, Morgan Watson, when I sat down with him for a drink, amid the club’s thumping DJ beats and crammed cocktail-quaffing crowd. “After the Good Friday peace agreement in 1998, we thought it was time to take back the city center. And the floor-to-ceiling windows which look out at city hall are symbolic of this—it’s our way of saying let’s look at the future.” Since then a dozens pubs and clubs have popped up, all evoking more SoHo chic than the sectarian sensibilities of the past.

Which is why Belfast is one of the most exciting places to go right now. This city of 275,000 people was once a city with reputation for having the world’s best knee and skull reconstruction specialists in the world. And for good reason. There was a demand for them. But, as evidenced by the continued (peaceful) existence of Apartment’s front windows, all that is changing.

Titanic-sized portions of foreign investment have transformed the city’s Victorian streets–many of which still boast ’50s and ’60s–era butcher shops and pharmacies-into a cosmopolitan 21st-century city; and where an infectious spirit of optimism has emerged, one akin to Eastern Europe a few years after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Sure, there have been a few hiccups in the peace process, but going to Belfast now is no longer a dare in the way it used to be. When I spent a few days there, I couldn’t help but feel I was watching the city’s rebirth happen in front of my eyes.

But, you’re probably recalling right now, weren’t there some flair-ups of the Troubles in Belfast just this last July? There were, but that was because of the usually incendiary Orange Order parade, a Protestant procession that occurs annually in mid July. Just avoid Belfast and Northern Ireland’s six counties around then, and you’ll be fine. And even if you do find yourself in Northern Ireland during the procession, have no fear. If there is violence, it’s not aimed at tourists.

“We’ve been trying to put Belfast on the nightlife map,” Watson told me, regarding both Apartment and the city’s next generation. “People are starting to realize that there’s more to Belfast than just bombs and bullets.”

That said, one of the most intriguing aspects of the city is taking in the graffiti along the walls that still separate the Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods.

The next morning, accompanied by Hugh, a friend of a friend, I left the center of town and headed for Shankill Road and Falls Road, two infamous Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods, respectively. Seeing these parts of the city–knowing that this reality still exists–Hugh explained, is an integral part of the Belfast experience.

As our BMW freely glided from religiously segregated neighborhood to religiously segregated neighborhood, barbed wire-topped “peace” walls separating them and flags marking each area’s allegiance, Belfast seemed to go from optimistic to ominous. Though British troops are gone and neighborhood checkpoints have disappeared, the out-of-the-center neighborhoods are a sober reminder of the recently ended Troubles. Hugh steered my attention to various points of past thuggery: a bomb blew up a pub here, stray bullets killed innocent people there. Now, I thought, was as good a time as ever to ask an important question: how can you tell who’s who?

“Spell my name,” he said, as if he’d been expecting the question.

“H-U-G-H”

“Right,” said Hugh, as he swung the car around slower traffic. “That’s how it would sound if I spelled it also. But a Protestant would spell it like this: H-U-G-H. Hear the difference?”

I didn’t. To my non-Catholic, non-Protestant, non-Irish ears, it all sounded the same.

“It doesn’t really matter to us either,” Hugh said. “Though we’re not fully integrated, we’re also not worried about these differences now.”

Just then, Hugh stopped the car. We idled in the shadow of a towering, gray wall. “People come from all over the world and leave their messages here,” he said, and then pointed to some squiggly red lines painted on the wall. “See what some Berliners did–they painted those red lines on the wall to symbolize cracks in it.” A nearby spray painted slogan read, “The biggest wall in Belfast is the one in people’s minds.”

That night, as I ate at Cayenne, a restaurant from one-time Michelin-starred chef Paul Rankin, who has received accolades the world over for serving elevated Irish fare, I realized there was a big picture window in the front of the restaurant. I think I’ll never think of windows the same again.

Weekend travel media’s top five

by Alex Robertson Textor on

Here are some keepers from this past weekend’s English-language newspaper travel sections.

1. In the Financial Times, Philip Horne writes a fascinating North Dakota pilgrimage story that traces Theodore Roosevelt’s tenure in the Peace Garden State.

2. In the Guardian, Haroon Siddique writes about the Bed&Fed phenomenon (a couchsurfing/hostelling hybrid) across the UK and Ireland.

3. Also in the Guardian, Gemma Bowes weighs in on remarkable deals in Greece this summer, including an overview of luxury villas, some of which turn out to be surprisingly inexpensive.

4. In the New York Times, Jeremy Peters ponders 36 Hours in Genoa. In between his hunger-inducing restaurant and wine bar recommendations, Peters helps readers envision a day and a half of well-met culinary urges.

5. In the Times of London, Tom Chesshyre, Daniel Start, Alex Wade, Derwent May and Rufus Purdy list the UK’s 40 best beaches, from Land’s End to the Isle of Skye.

(Image Credit: Flickr/cm195902)

Love the past? There’s a new website for you

by Sean McLachlan on

Hotels have review sites, restaurants have review sites, heck even strip clubs have review sites, so why not ancient monuments?

The folks at Current Publishing, who publish two of the UK’s most popular archaeology magazines, Current Archaeology and World Archaeology, have started a website so people can review archaeological attractions in England, Scotland, Ireland (North and Republic), Wales, and the Isle of Man. Reviews cover everything from museums to stone circles and there are interactive maps based on subject, region, or managing organization. There’s a special section for Stonehenge and its surrounding area, as well as Hadrian’s Wall.

There’s also a section reviewing archaeological digs that accept volunteers. Volunteering on an excavation is a different and rewarding way to spend a vacation.

Called I Love The Past.com, this site has a nice, clean layout without a lot of the flashy features that distract the reader and clog up bandwidth. It’s simple to navigate and the maps make it easy to discover places near where you’re traveling. The downside is that as a new project, most sites only have one review, and some important sites are not yet covered. There’s nothing on the archaeologically rich Orkney Isles, for example. A forum would be a nice addition too, as it would encourage discussion and probably lead to more reviews being posted. Still, it’s an interesting concept and different than the flashier and bigger Heritage Key, which focuses on articles and well worth a look if you have a fast connection. If you’re a museum or ruins junkie, I Love the Past has some potential.

Worst travel mistakes of the 2000’s: Driving through Dingle

by Melanie Nayer on

Let me be clear about one thing before I launch into my story: I do know how to drive. I have a valid driver’s license and while I don’t own a car, I believe I’ve had a hand in keeping Zipcar in business this year. I know how to drive manual cars and actually learned how to drive on a Toyota Celica two-door manual shift, so it would stand to reason that I can operate a stick-shift on any car in any country for the rest of my life. Right?

Over the past decade I’ve traveled through most of Europe, spent countless hours in airport bars and lounges, cuddled up next to perfect strangers as I squeezed into the middle seat on last-minutes flights, and scoured some of the best (and worst) hotels around the world. It’s a dream job and despite popular belief, it’s not easy. Being a travel writer means long days, even longer nights, and endless reporting from the road. Sleep is a luxury I don’t often get but I’m not complaining – I wouldn’t trade this for the world. However, it’s fair to say that even travel writers hit their point of exhaustion and as anyone knows, making decisions when you’re exhausted is never a good idea. With that, I give you my biggest travel mistake of the 2000s:

Destination: Ireland

It was my first trip to the Emerald Isle and I was overjoyed. Visions of rolling green hills, farmers and sheep herders, bottomless glasses of whiskey and endless nights of Irish sing-a-longs filled my head as I reclined in my seat on my way to Shannon International Airport. Six hours later I arrived in Ireland, standing in line at the rental car counter waiting for the keys my mid-sized four-door Ford or ‘something similar.’

The man came from behind counter with the keys to the Ford and a neatly packed GPS system in a black box, and pointed to a little blue 4-door parked in spot 17. It didn’t seem that difficult. We’d both driven a stick-shift car in the past and now, all we had to do was remember that we’re driving on the opposite side of the road. Even on no sleep I can do this, or so I thought…I’ll spare you the details of the drive to the Cliffs of Moher in the fog, the flat tire somewhere between Shannon and Tralee, and the head-on collissions we escaped by thismuch as we drove our stick-shift car through Ireland. The pièce de résistance comes at the end of our trip as we made our way to the Dingle Penisula for a drive to Dingle Bay. (If you’ve been to the Dingle Peninsula you know what’s about to happen. For those travelers who haven’t been, pay close attention and repeat after me: automatic car.)

I took the wheel, put the pedal to the metal, and recalled the standard H-shift of my youth. The first part of the drive to Dingle was easy — flat roads and plenty of stop-signs allowed me the opportunity to get comfortable with the shift again, all the while driving on the wrong side of the road. As we slowly climbed up the mountain, I gazed out the window and admired the green hills filled with sheep, the old pubs on the side of the road, Gaelic signs and cows for miles. I had neglected to process one thing: I’m on a mountain — a steep mountain — with narrow lanes and sharp cruves. In order to get to Dingle Bay, one has to actually drive up and over the mountain.

The narrow roads were the least of my concerns. Do I downshift or switch to a higher gear? Do I ride the clutch or ride the brake? Do I gun it and hope for the best? At exactly the wrong moment, I looked in my rearview mirror and realized we were at what seemed like a 90-degree angle on the mountain, looking down on fields of sheep, perfectly spaced green patches of land, and miles of ocean. Panic stricken and realizing I had no where to go but up, I started my deep breathing (and silent praying).

The road was too narrow to turn around now, and trying to navigate a 3-point turn might have resulted with us in an unfortunate position with our car and a family of sheep. With the encouraging words of my friend in the passenger seat, I made it over the mountain just as it started to rain. I pulled the car over as the road widened, turned off the engine, handed my friend the keys, and calmly searched my bag for a Valium.

Moral of the story: While it’s fine to skimp on some things, like paying less for coach seats so you can afford a fancier hotel, it’s not a good idea to skimp out on the simple luxuires of the modern-day world, like automatic cars. Save yourself the headache – and the near-death experience – and just pay for an upgraded vehicle. Any travel writer will tell you so.