Dubliners are a famously
friendly bunch who are always
up for the, craic
, the Irish word
for ‘fun’. Their city on the
banks of the River Liffey is an
energetic place packed full of
great museums, galleries and
art festivals. Vikings hung out
here hundreds of years ago,
but today you’re more likely
to bump into noisy partygoers,
lively street musicians and
chattering shoppers.
PINT-SIZED
Three million pints
(1.7 million litres) of
black, frothy Guinness
are brewed every
day in Dublin’s
St James’s Gate
Brewery. Guinness
is a much-loved beer
with a thick, creamy
‘head’ on top. In the
Guinness Storehouse
Museum, visitors are
able to stand inside the
world’s largest
pint glass!
THE BOYS
IN BLUE
Forget soccer, Dublin kids
prefer playing Gaelic football.
The fast-paced field game is a
high-octane mix of rugby, basketball
and soccer. As one of the world’s
few amateur sports, none of the
players, coaches and managers
can be paid. The Dubliners’
team is known as the 'Dubs'
or the ‘Boys in Blue’.
SAINT VALENTINE
If you thought the most romantic thing you could do on Valentine’s Day
was give a soppy card, think again! Hopeless romantics head for a shrine in
Whitefriar Street Church. The bones of the real Saint Valentine are believed
to rest inside, brought to Dublin from Rome in 1836. Couples pray here and
light candles in the hope that their relationship will be a happy one.
THE DUBLIN LION
The first lion to star in the ‘roaring lion’ logo of
Hollywood film studio MGM was a Dubliner. Slats the lion was
born in Dublin Zoo in 1919. He later left for the USA, before
becoming a world-famous movie star in 1924.
LUCKY LEPRECHAUNS
Irish folklore echoes with the laughter
of leprechauns – tiny green-clad men
with pointy ears. Dublin’s National
Leprechaun Museum is dedicated to
the mischievous imps and the myths
that they have inspired. Did you
know that the little men are
said to hide pots of
gold at the end of
rainbows? Inside
the museum,
people have the
chance to follow
a rainbow to its
very end and
discover what
it’s like to be
shrunk down to
leprechaun-size.
THE BOOK OF KELLS
This national treasure is kept under lock and key in
Trinity College Library. Paintings in the sacred gold
book are so tiny modern readers need a magnifying
glass to study them. Imagine the strain on the eyes of
the poor Celtic monks who had to painstakingly write
and decorate the pages back in the 9th century!
BOG BODIES
There are some seriously spooky exhibits waiting behind the doors of the National Museum of Ireland. Visitors can pore
over perfectly preserved human bodies from the Iron Age, dug up from Irish peat bogs. Stinky peat is dried, cut and
burnt like wood in the fireplaces of Dublin homes, but it is also a brilliant way of stopping dead corpses from rotting!