Full of Dublin

We landed in Dublin last night around 7.20pm after a long day of travel - a 15 hour flight from Tokyo to London and then a one hour flight to Dublin (preceded by an overlong wait in transit in the cesspit that is Heathrow Airport - UGH!!!).

A 15 hour flight is quite bearable in Business Class comfort - but we felt the British Airways version did not match up to the JAL version from Sydney to Tokyo, in our experience - although the BA plane and all its fittings were quite new. We're not really experienced enough at this sort of flying to be experts, but our JAL experience is definitely the pinnacle so far!

 

We collapsed into bed last night, slept well and woke up early to a drizzly, cold Dublin morning. This is the view from our Grand Canal Hotel room window.

Our first stop of the day was for a warming breakfast and good cup of coffee at the 3fe Cafe in Hogan Place, a short walk towards town from our hotel. Along the way we admired this lovely old "The Storyteller" pub, its Guinness sign a reminder of things to come. Our hotel is near the European headquarters of Google (.com) so the area is an odd mixture of cutting edge architecture, futuristic fitouts, old Dublin pubs and suburbia, and great coffee shops along the way.

From our hotel it was an easy kilometre walk to Dublin's most famous landmark - Trinity College.

In our wander around the grounds we came across the unique architecture of the Samuel Beckett Theatre.

Europe's largest and most active theatre society - over 40 plays a year!

Trinity College was established in 1592. Samuel Beckett is just one of its many illustrious literary alumni. Others include ....... Oscar Wilde, GB Shaw, Jonathon Swift, Bram Stoker - and many others.

We'd come to the college for a tour of Trinity's magnificent Old Library and a viewing of The Book of Kells exhibition.

No photographs were allowed in the exhibition and only one page of the manuscript was available for viewing today, from the Gospel of Mark. But that was ok because the extensive digitised Book of Kells exhibition is so immersive and interesting in its own right that we felt very engaged, and learnt so much about this most precious cultural/artistic artefact.

I took a picture of the digitised image of the way the book's scribers created the letter P. There was no j in the original Latin, so j's evolved from the way i's were written.

A highlight for us was seeing the Long Room of Trinity College's iconic Old Library. Originally built between 1712 - 1732, and extended in 1860, the book collection is now under exhaustive (and mammoth) conservation orders. Consequently most of the shelving in the Old Library is now empty - but it doesn't take away from the beauty, the history and the resonating atmosphere of this glorious place.

The Gaia art work was installed in the Old Library in 2023 to remind us of the fragility of the planet (and maybe the fragility of learning/civilisation as represented by the library collection??).

The beautiful "Brian Boru" harp - the oldest harp in Ireland and adopted as the official symbol of the Irish government in 1922.

It was also a thrill to see and read an original poster of the proclamation of Irish independence by the provisional government of the Irish Republic (1916).

We both loved our Trinity College experience!!

We were able to visit the National Irish Museum around the corner in Kildare Street after this. Only a short walk down Nassau St and a turn right into Kildare Street......

Apart from the beautiful building, highlights of this visit were definitely seeing the Bog Bodies Research project in the Kingship and Sacrifice exhibition....... Its believed that human and animals were sacrificed (often quite brutally) and deposed in bogs (not just in Ireland but in other European countries as well) as a form of kingly ritual in the Iron Age (1200-500BC). It was very affecting to see these remains on display and so carefully explained.

As a complete contrast another highlight of the museum for us was seeing the museum's beautiful collection of prehistoric gold jewellery 2200-500BC. This collar piece is quite large - designed to rest on the chest of the male wearer!

We also had time to look at a wonderful WB Yeats exhibition at Ireland's National Library, in a matching building just next door to the Museum. Rob and I both enjoyed this comprehensive exhibition - even prompting us to try to recall Yeats poems we'd read and studied oh so many years ago. "Sailing to Byzantium" was one we could both remember ...... if only we hadn't had to study that when we were so young and ignorant!

We walked the 2.5 klm distance from the Library to our next stop - the famous Guinness Storehouse in St James' Gate in SW Dublin - Ireland's oldest and most famous brewery (since 1795).

We enjoyed all the walking today - to get a feel for the city. Along the way to the Guinness Storehouse we saw St Patrick's Cathedral - built on the site where St Patrick was believed to have baptised new converts to Christianity. A church, designated as a cathedral has been built on this site since 1190. The current building dates from 1220-1259.

And there were more street views for Rob to admire ......

Until we eventually got to the Guinness Storehouse for our pre booked tour to "learn about the history, the heart and the soul of Guinness" ......

The tour experience was pretty mind blowing: art works, amazing architecture within the walls of the old warehouses, digital installations, a stunning rooftop space, tasting rooms, cafes, bars, live music, rising on seven levels, and all very crowded  .....

.... but strong underlying messages about commitment to quality, a unique way of growing, sourcing and crafting the 4 ingredients of Guinness: (roasted) barley, hops, water and yeast - and lots of scientific research and entrepreneurship to make this ..........

As part of the experience this guy got the whole room to learn and join him in playing Irish drums to some fast jig beats - great fun!

This was one of the views from the rooftop bar - the brewery fills a huge swathe of Dublin real estate these days!

And the Guinness tasted just great - with a seafood chowder and Guinness soda bread (of course)

It was around 5.00 before we finished this tour (and tasting) and we were starting to feel exhausted so we caught a local bus back to our hotel. It was great for sightseeing .............

and I took a window pic of the "Pen Corner" building from the bus - very Dublin, I think!

We feel like we have absorbed so much Irish history, culture and folklore today - and all after losing a fair bit of sleep because of the travel time difference. We've done well to keep up I think (thanks to the Guinness maybe).

Harajuku, Minamiaoyama, Shibuya - in the rain

It rained pretty much all day today - soaking, continuous rain and lower than usual temperatures too for this time of the year - so difficult conditions for tourists. We set out this morning with high hopes and umbrellas - which as it turned out weren't quite enough for all the walking we were planning!

First stop was Harajuku Station and the start of the famous Takeshita-Dori Street, site of every tween age dream of all that is cute and whacky  .......

 

Although these crepes looked nightmarish to us ......

As did Tokyo's first and only micro pig cafe "Mipig Cafe". And there was a queue of people waiting to enter!!

But we were just passing through Takeshita-Dori .... on our way to the oh so sedate and classy Ota Memorial Museum of Art. This museum presents rotating exhibitions of woodblock prints, displayed in small themed exhibitions changing every month. We were looking forward to seeing more Hokusai prints and sitting in the "serene rock garden" inside the museum - but unfortunately it was CLOSED today (with no apparent explanation)!

We did take the time to admire its beautiful bronze doors however!

From here we made our way to Omote-sando, a long, beautiful, tree lined avenue of glossy luxury brand flagship stores, wealthy looking shoppers (under umbrellas today) and cars to match ............

We were intrigued by this "Gentle Monster" store next to Prada Tower.

We read later that Gentle Monster started in South Korea (selling luxury sunglasses - now a multibillion dollar business) and this store, its first in Tokyo, only opened last month. There was a queue about 500mts long (in the RAIN) all along the avenue waiting to be allowed into the shop.

Rob had a good look at the Fender (made in Japan) store - celebrating the 70th birthday of Fender guitar making!

Our destination was the exquisite Nezu Museum in Minamiaoyama. The museum is home to the private collection of pre-modern Japanese and East Asian Art assembled by the wealthy industrialist Nezu Kaichiro (who died in 1940).

Everything about this small museum was exquisite - the minimalist architecture, the small but high quality collections, the landscaped garden, the focus on perfect design - just beautiful!

Although one particular collection did leave us wondering just how Nezu got his Chinese Shang dynasty bronzes (17th - 11th century BC) out of China in the 1930s - and how China must feel about that right now?

No photography was allowed inside the building - but the museum gardens got everyone clicking......

We spent quite a while at this beautiful museum, and with rain still falling we decided to walk back to Shibuya - site of that very famous Shibuya Scramble Crossing in Tokyo's version of Times Square. Along the way I was struck by the sight of this stylish young couple, both doing the art museum trek today - like we were (except we were doing it a lot less stylishly).

But this photo shows as close as we got to the Shibuyu Scramble Crossing today. By this stage we were cold, hungry and very damp and had no wish to join the other thousands of people wrangling umbrellas down on the square below (and we had done all that on our last trip to Tokyo, anyway!).

Instead we found a small scale restaurant and settled in for a warming bowl of dumpling soup and a jug of Asahi beer and dried out for a while.

But it's challenging doing the electronic orders for food when it’s all in Japanese!!!

But with a little assistance we ended up with a delicious, warming meal.

We bought a few snacks at the Shibuyu Station afterwards - but didn't get any strawberries (15 for $21AUD).

Nor any figs - $25 AUD for three.

On the train back to Hamamatsucho I took a quick (sneaky) photo of 3 striking looking fellow passengers. None of them were looking at their phones either, which is remarkable!

We got back to the hotel early today, a bit after 3 - in now heavy rain! We did some laundry and enjoyed our last excellent flat white coffee at our local Byron Bay Cafe. We have an early start in the morning ready for our 8.50am departure for Dublin (via London). We've loved our Tokyo stay and hope we'll be back some day. There's so much more to see and do in this wonderful city!