IRELAND, DUBLIN'S GRAFTON STREET: DAVEY BYRNE'S PUB AND BEWLEY'S CAFE AND THEATER

 July 12, 2024

Many cities have "their street," the one that is associated with only that city and uniquely theirs--Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, 5th Avenue in New York City, Champs-Élysées in Paris, Downing Street in London. In Dublin, it is Grafton Street, a mostly pedestrian street that was a fashionable residential street in the 1700s, a dilapidated, crime-ridden street through the 1900s, and a shopping thoroughfare since the 20th century. It runs from Trinity College to St. Stevens Green, a distance of about 1600 feet. According to Wikipedia, it has some of the most expensive rent of any retail street in the world.

If you like people-watching and beautiful sites, Grafton Street is a great place to spend an hour or two, and compared to what we are used to in the United States, prices did not seem all that expensive.

The street is particularly famous for its buskers, and we saw at least a dozen. Most of them were unusually good. I was thinking, "Here's material for Ireland's Got Talent"!

No, this isn't a busker. It is a statue of Phil Lynott, an Irish musician who founded and was the lead vocalist for the hard rock band Thin Lizzy. Remember the song "The Boys Are Back in Town" that was a big hit in the late 1970s? That was his. Sadly, like so many rock musicians, he died at age 36 of health issues related to his drug and alcohol dependency.

It didn't take us long to find one of our favorite strolling-along-the-boulevard shops:

Gino's is "Ireland's favourite dessert destination" and focuses on "using the highest quality ingredients and organic Irish milk."

Yup, pretty high quality. We tried it again later in the day just to make sure.  Same results.

It turns out that Grafton Street is a good place to buy a piece of jewelry made with Connemara marble.

It was time for lunch. Bob had scouted out a place called Davy Byrne's Pub.

What makes this pub so special? First, it was established in 1889 by the eponymous Davy Byrnes himself, and it has been operating continuously since then. Second, it used to be the favorite hangout of many of the literary giants of the day, including none other than the Irish writer James Joyce, who even included this spot in his books Dubliners and Ulysses. The pub also played a role in the Irish War of Independence, providing a location for revolutionaries like Michael Collins to hold meetings.

Lunch was yummy I don't remember what Bob had, but I had a salad with goat cheese, apples, walnuts, and mixed greens . . .

. . . and potato and herb gnocchi soup:

Our next stop on Grafton Street was Bewley's Oriental Cafe, home to a theater that has been giving intimate, mid-day stage performances for the past 25 years. Tickets are very reasonable, just €12 to €15.

We were there for stage adaptations of two of the stories from Joyce's book Dubliners: "Counterparts" and "A Little Cloud."  (Not all the plays are based on works by James Joyce. We just happened to be there on the right day.) There was pre-play musical entertainment, and these two men also provided some of the atmospheric background accompaniment during the stage performance.

The setting was intimate and the performances were excellent. This was a fun literary compliment to our lunch at Davy Byrne's.

On our way out after the performance, we admired these beautiful modern stained glass windows in the cafe.

One more iconic piece to see in the Grafton Street area is the statue of Molly Malone. Molly is featured in the song "In Dublin's Fair City." Some locals are sure Molly was a real woman who lived in the 17th century, but there is no evidence for that. The statue was erected in 1988 at the end of Grafton Street but was moved a short distance away to Suffolk Street to make way for tram tracks. There are those who are not happy about sheen created by caressing hands, and there is even a campaign by a local busker named "Leave Molly mAlone."

You really need to listen to the song to fully appreciate the statue:

READING

I read a fair amount of James Joyce when I was in college, but I haven't read any of his works since. Revisiting him 40+ years later without the benefit of a professor or class discussion to guide my understanding was challenging but rewarding. I read the Penguin Classics edition of Dubliners, which has extensive end notes that helped me decipher dialect, colloquialisms, and cultural references that can make the book difficult reading.

But back to the novel. Dubliners, first published in 1914, is a collection of fifteen short stories that chronicle the desperate hopelessness of an assortment of Irish men and women at the turn of the 20^th century. Joyce describes the bleak inner and outer lives of the city's middle class, and it is not what you would imagine life in Ireland to be nor remotely related to the sparkling, joyful experiences we had as tourists. His characters suffer from uncertainty, paralysis, and disillusionment. It is realism, not romance.