Dublin Travel Guide
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It's nearly impossible for first-time visitors to appreciate just how far Dublin has come in a very short time. Native "Dubs," however, who left years ago and returned to the "Celtic Tiger" economy, can't believe their eyes. Their beloved -- if slightly down-at-the-heels -- hometown has metamorphosed into a bastion of trendy coffee shops and juice bars, fusion-cuisine restaurants, minimalist interiors, designer boutiques, and Mercedes-Benz and BMW dealerships. In the late 1990s, Ireland had the fastest-growing economy in the European Union and continues to thrive economically. And Dublin, as Ireland's capital, is at the epicenter of the boom.
Twenty years ago most visitors to Ireland either bypassed "dirty aul' Dublin" altogether or made a mad dash from the ferry to the train station, determined to spend their first night beyond the pale. Now Dublin certainly gets the glamour vote as one of Europe's trendiest cities. Sightings of Julianne Moore, Gwyneth Paltrow, Britney Spears, Robert DeNiro, and Cate Blanchett have become so commonplace that locals barely blink an eye. (The Irish polite indifference to celebrity is a slice of nirvana for privacy-loving stars.)
Greater Dublin's population has swollen to 1.5 million; more than a third of the entire country lives here. The time has passed when aspiring Irish artists owed it to themselves to emigrate. Today they dig in. If Joyce and Beckett and Wilde could see Dublin today, they'd be back.
Dublin, like most ancient cities, lies sprawled along a river. The Liffey has divided Dublin into north and south for more than 1,000 years. Neither as romantic as the Seine nor as mighty as the Mississippi, the Liffey is just there, old and polluted, with walls to sit on or lean against when your legs give out. Still, it always has been the center of things here, and it does make for a pretty picture on a good day. The Liffey continues to divide the town as it once divided Viking from Celt and Norman from Norse.
As long as anyone can remember, the buzzing, prosperous hub of Dublin has lay mostly south of the Liffey. The area containing most of the best hotels, restaurants, shops, and sights is a small, well-defined compound that can be easily walked in an hour. It comprises a large part of Dublin 2, beginning with the Georgian elegance of St. Stephen's Green, moving toward the river via bustling Grafton Street, heading farther north and west through the trendy cafe scene of Temple Bar.
That said, a visit confined to this small pocket of Dublin is not a true visit to Dublin. An hour's walk from the top of Grafton Street, across the Liffey, up O'Connell Street, and farther into north Dublin is a walk through time and, simultaneously, a glimpse of some of the pieces that must eventually fit together. Explore, get a haircut (in a barbershop, not a salon), get lost and ask directions, and you may uncover a time capsule from the Dublin of a century ago -- or was it only a generation?
