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Last Update: 2 June, 2008 9:38 AM

07/05/2007
A TRAVELLERS GUIDE TO . . . DUBLIN

Travel
Author: Gary Baker

THE GIRLS are supposed to be so pretty in Dublin, according to the legend of Molly Malone. But it is not only the ladies who are attractive - the city itself, as discovered on my first trip to the Irish capital, is quite superb as well.

Cheap flights from the UK have made Ireland almost as accessible as anywhere on the British mainland and it was a case of no sooner being up in the air from Bristol Airport than the flight was landing in the Emerald Isle's capital for this trip.

Those flights are so easy to give up if you can't make it. After all, what is £50 for a return ticket? That was the cost of this journey that I would have had to cancel because a business colleague had to go to another meeting elsewhere in Ireland..

But what is life for if not having a go for things? Why not have a daytrip over there on a Thursday and look around the place rather than be stuck in the office?

So, up at 4am for a 5am bus to Bristol and, at 6am, the Bristol Flyer shuttle coach headed to the airport where a number of Welsh people were waiting for the same flight over to see the national football team play the Republic of Ireland at Croke Park that Saturday.

At around 8.30am, the engines roared and the plane went up. An hour later, we were on the tarmac and quickly whisking away down the arrivals corridor and out through the front door onto another shuttle bus that took passengers into O'Connell Street.

Timing with some of these flights is the key thing as rush hour in any city is horrible and it seemed to take an age to get to the centre of Dublin and walk along Europe's widest street. One word of advice. If you are taking a daytrip like this and have never been to a city like the Irish capital before, give yourself at least an hour just to wander around and get your bearings.

The best place to head for is over O'Connell Bridge (pictured above) and near the famous Temple Bar district, which is famous for its restaurants and pubs but also houses the Tourist Information Office, built into an old church.

This was an inspired choice to make as, not only are there numerous free leaflets about almost everything you would wish to know, but the extremely courtious and helpful staff and volunteers cannot do enough to point you in the right direction.

As it was, my wanderings took me out of the information bureau and up another of Dublin's famous roads, Grafton Street, which is a big shopping thoroughfare with designer clothes shops mixed with the usual outlets. Ireland - and Dublin in particular - has grown into one of the most cosmopolitan and 'young rich' capitals in Europe. Here, the yuppies we once saw in London seem to have decamped - only with Irish accents.

Yet who can blame them? Dublin is beautiful and, as the sun beamed down through the clouds onto St Stephens Gardens, just being there felt good.

My mission, as a sports fanatic, was two-fold. One was to see the legendary Croke Park which was the shrine to everything traditional in Irish sport, such as hurling and Gaelic football, but is now being used as the home of the Irish soccer and rugby union teams, and to visit the one stadium from the old Five Nations I had not visited yet - Lansdowne Road.

So, after coffee in a shopping mall that was three storeys high and very modern, there was a good old walk to be taken. The map directed me easily to Lansdowne Road but the sight I saw when I got there was not one to remember.

The old stadium was looking terrible. That very day - March 22 - the Dublin city fathers would decide on planning permission to upgrade Ireland's most famous of rugby arenas. The cottage of Lansdowne Rugby Club that famously sits in the corner looked in disrepair while the stands themselves were overgrown with fungus.

The stands of Lansdowne Road are planned to be pulled down and replaced with an ulta-modern stadium to match the incredible Croke Park.

Gaelic football's holy shrine is far and away removed from any other stadium in the whole of Ireland and is on an equal standing with anything the rest of Europe can offer.

Dublin's tremendous local railway system runs under one of the Lansdowne Road stands and the stop back into town is only feet away from the stadium walls. It is modern and very good and in keeping with the 21st century Dublin.

One main centre of the city is near the River Liffey itself where the business district of Ireland's capital lays. This river frontage is as cosmopoliton as anywhere in Cardiff, Swansea, Bristol or even London. The walk over the bridge back to near the Temple Bar district brings you past Trinity College and the tourist buses that encircle the city.

These take an hour or so to show you where the great and good live, including the Irish Prime Minister's pad and that of Mary McConnell, the Republic's president that lays, unlike that of Bertie A'Herne, is situated in splendid grounds in Pheonix Park over the road from the Papal Cross where hundreds of thousands flocked when Pope John Paul II once held mass.

Of course, there is one other big religon which thousands of pilgrims to Dublin enjoy - Guinness. And a trip around the Guinness Storehouse (pictured) is a certain 'must do' when there. For 12 euros or so, you get a tour of the most famous brewery in the world plus a pint at the top of the tower with spectacular views for miles and miles.

Another pint or two near O'Connell Street and the daytripper's time is up. The flight leaves at 9pm and it is near 7pm now. The traffic is just as bad going out of the city as it was coming in and, unfortunately, there was no time to take in that tour of Croke Park. Nevertheless, on the way back to the airport, there she stands in all her glory in the distance on the right.

Back up in the air and back down - the flight seems just as short returning to mainland Britain than it was leaving. The shuttle bus took us back to Bristol Temple Meads but, right at the last, the railway system let us down as the last train back to Wales was cancelled due to a fatality on the line.

By hook and by crook, home was reached near 1am the following day. It was a long, long time awake but a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable day in the fair city of Dublin - and the Irish stew was good as well!

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