Asquithians do Dublin

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Welcome to our little blog - we had hoped to be able to include some pics - after all, they are the most interesting part - but after some time trying to upload, discovered that Apple does not support upload on iPad for this site. Rats! So what follows is a somewhat drab account of our journey, and you will be forgiven for logging out right now and waiting for the holiday snaps at a later date. Masochists, read on:

This week has been a hectic schedule of events literary, culinary and cultural. On our arrival day we were all met by Dublin book club members, according to a schedule arranged by Shirley. After that long flight we were amazingly still energized enough to meet at Clontarf Castle for drinks and dinner. We started our schedule the next day with a short visit to the beautiful National Library for some family history research, then a lunchtime concert at the National Concert Hall and then a stroll through the city.

On Wednesday we saw a terrific Diego Rivera and Frieda Carlo exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, then on to high tea at the Westin Hotel. This was a James Joyce event inspired by Leopold Bloom's gift of Banbury buns to the seagulls on Sackville Bridge. The food was spectacular - tea time treats inspired by Ulysses (think gorgonzola and burgundy) with two harpists providing music from the period, then a talk by a Joycean scholar, Gerry Dukes.
That evening was the big one - the book club meeting for Aussie "Asquithians" and the Dublin "Chicks". 12 in all plus Keith and host Larry. The discussion centred on our set reading, "The Turning" plus their set reading for us, "Dubliners".
The big day was Thursday, Bloomsday, the annual celebration of Joyce's book Ulysses. We dressed up in Edwardian gear and got into the swing of it - first with a Bloomsday breakfast at the Gresham Hotel ( features in Joyce's short story The Dead). This celebrated the breakfast Leopold Bloom enjoyed - kidneys, bacon,sausages, black and white pudding and of course eggs and toast. Heavy fare I hear you say, and you are right. During the breakfast there were some very good performances of scenes from Ulysses. From there we headed down to Stephens Green where there were more performances and readings by Joycean scholars such as David Norris (who is currently running for President of Ireland), and Alan Stanford, a well known Irish actor. That evening we all met up at Howth, a beautiful fishing port on the north of the bay, for drinks and dinner.

Friday we visited the Chester Beatty library in Dublin Castle for an extraordinary Asian collection with early Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and Jain objects and a special exhibition of Matisse, including his illustrations for Ulysses. After that, and I hope you are keeping up with me dear reader because after that, I headed off to Christchurch Cathedral and then St Patricks Cathedral where Jonathan Swift was Dean, then to the National Archives for some more family history research. In the meantime Keith and a few of the other girls took in the Guiness tour..... before dinner at The Church (a church converted into a bar/restaurant - there are plenty of "former church"es in Dublin - and a performance at the Abbey Theatre.
By Saturday Kerry, Ros and Joy had left us, so as a much smaller group, we went to the National Gallery for a wonderful selection of Irish painters and Old Masters. Christine Murray and I then went on a guided tour from the James Joyce Centre which was a two hour walk around Dublin taking in locations important to Joyce's life and to stories from The Dubliners. That evening we had another guided tour - this time a Literary Pub Crawl which was a great hoot, taking in four pubs and again with performances from various Irish plays and poetry. At the last pub, Davy Byrne's, we sat next to the musicians, a wonderful duo of guitar and banjo, who played all our requests! You probably won't be surprised to hear this was an even of over indulgence, particularly Keith and the Guinness...
On Sunday we went to an extraordinary Neolithic site, Newgrange, which is one thousand years earlier than Stonehenge and three thousand years earlier than the Pyramids. This is in the Boyne Valley north of Dublin - amazing mounds with chambers inside - for burial and other ceremonial purposes. It is part of a cluster of related sites in that area.

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