A View of Dublin

  
Last week was a whirlwind trip to Dublin, Ireland for my corporate job. The week was busy with meetings and dinners and travel, but I did manage to squeeze in a day and a half of exploring the city over the weekend before heading home. Here are a few images of this great city. I hope to get back very soon!

I started out wandering the streets… Yes, Starbucks is everywhere.

  
My favorite thing is finding interesting scenes on streets and back alleys. Oh, and bicycles. Mission accomplished in the Temple Bar area!
  
  
Wandering into Trinity College is like pausing for a deep breath in the middle of the busy city.

  
I saw the Book of Kells (no pictures allowed) and the amazing old library. A true book lover’s dream, that library. I stayed in there for a while, just soaking up the feel and the smell of the place.

  
  
Midday I met up with my friend Tom who recently moved from Corvallis to Ireland. Together we wandered some more, me always looking for interesting scenes, sometimes dragging Tom across streets and down alleys. 

   
   
Eventually we found our way to the National Gallery to take in a Turner exhibition, and then met up with some other new friends from work. We went to this amazing Italian restaurant, where I had the best gnocchi since living in Italy. Mmmmm.

Meeting and connecting with people through work is one of the more wonderful parts of business travel. While I often don’t have much time for outside exploring and socialization, the connections with the people I work with, sometimes extending to their families and friends, makes the experience of the place so much richer than when you visit solely as a tourist. I’ve learned to always take up offers to meet for a meal, or a walk, or to see a sight that is important to the culture or a shared interest. My experience of a place is so, so much richer. 

Before heading out to the airport, I managed to squeeze in a visit to Kilmainham Gaol, learning more about the history of Ireland in the process.

  
And a quick visit to the Irish Museum of Modern Art as well. This 1937 Salvador Dali painting, Couple with Their Heads Full of Clouds, was part of a temporary exhibition on love. Not a big fan of surrealism, this is one of the few Dali paintings I have ever liked.

My favorite exhibition was Nick Miller and the studio of Edward McGuire. In 2009, Irish painter Edward McGuire’s widow donated 130 items from his studio to the museum. To “avoid a detached, museological approach” of displaying and explained the studio contents, artist Nick Miller researched and reinterpreted the items through his own work. It was exceptionally interesting and well done. I don’t have any good pictures of this exhibition unfortunately, but there is some additional information you can explore online.

Then it was off to the airport to discover one of my flights had been cancelled due to the weather on the east coast, and to be rerouted I would have to leave the following day. A small glitch in plans, an extra night in an airport hotel, and I made it home safe and sound.

  
And speaking of safe and sound… Patrick and Brandon were in a car accident while I was gone. It was a hit and run, the other drivers fault. They walked away without a scratch, but my car is likely totaled. 

  
Scary all around, but makes you realize what is truly important in life: It’s people, always people. Everything else is secondary.

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