Dublin – St. Patrick’s and Temple Bar
August 21, 2009
We visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral twice during our trip. The first time was just walking the grounds after arriving on an early morning flight. The second time we paid to go in. The donation required was a bit steep, particularly since the store had closed and for various reasons that was one of my main reasons for going. Oh well.
The cathedral itself was rather unique. In addition to a plethora of statues and various other pieces of art, it had no small number of flags, usually martial in origin, that in many cases were so old they were quite threadbare. Seeing them like that had a definite power to it, almost like viewing a ruin. I do think that American memorials should probably make more use of ruins when the commemorate the victims of some destructive act. Symbolism can be powerful, but it is very difficult to match the psychology effect of seeing that which remains and not an abstract version of it. I am a definite fan of the Vietnam memorial, but for 9/11 I think we would probably have been better served by keeping more of the remains of the buildings themselves.
On a less portentous note, two interesting fact about St. Patrick’s. First, unlike the one in New York, it is not a Roman Catholic cathedral. St. Patrick far predated the breakaway of the Church of England, so this isn’t a huge surprise really if you think about it. Second, the most famous deans of the cathedral was Jonathan Swift.
After visiting the cathedral we wandered around Temple Bar and had dinner at a crepe place. There were a fair number of buskers in Temple Bar as well as at the pedestrian mall at Grafton street. Generally speaking they were all pretty good and got a few coins from me. There were also a fair number of homeless people around, not more than I see in DC but more than I expected. They also tended to look younger than I typically see back home. Also, as a quick factual footnote, we actually rode the light rail after seeing the cathedral, but I don’t think this chronological aberration is really a huge deal.