Dublin, Feature

Dear Dublin

-Helena Thompson gets a taste for Ireland's intimate capital.

'A dear dirty dumpling' - that's what Joyce called his birthplace. In search of something tastier I head towards The Kitchen, only to find myself in a club part owned by U2. Dublin writers Yeats, Shaw and Beckett could not have prepared me for the big beats and disco pop on the menu.

Dublin is full of literary ghosts. Quite apart from housing Ireland's largest collection of books and manuscripts, descendents of the street trading Molly Malone seem to be everywhere as I plunge through the markets full of women selling fruit, toys or bric-a-brac from prams and battered baby carriages. They stop their banter to recommend the Old Jameson Distillery - the perfect place to sip a pint and learn how Dubliners make the whisky they call 'holy water.'

A Guinness is a meal in itself, and I'm ready to sample the cultural fare of Ireland's National theatre company at the Abbey theatre. Unlike Yeats, I feel quite pleased to be 'dropped in wretched Dublin.'

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