Dublin in 30 hours

Tuesday, May 24 2011

No, we didn’t head home from Rome, we made a whirlwind trip to Dublin, Ireland.  At first glance this seems odd… and it kind of was.  A few months ago we heard about the Roger Waters (from Pink Floyd), The Wall tour.  Pink Floyd has always been on our list and we happened upon fairly inexpensive tickets to go see him in Dublin.  Aside from that, Ireland was equally high on our list so an excuse to go to Dublin and get a sneak peak was easily justified!

We finally made it into Dublin a little after midnight after a couple-hour delay from Rome.  Luckily the airport shuttle to our hotel was still running because it was cold when we landed (and we were still dressed for 80 degree Rome). 

We were not expecting what we arrived to see at the hotel (although maybe we should have—it’s Ireland after all).  The hotel lobby is basically a huge lounge area and there were a good 75 people enjoying themselves, beers in hand (at 1:00 am on a Monday night/Tuesday morning).  The smell of liquor hit us the second we stepped in the door.  We hate to reinforce stereotypes, but, come on. :)  We were tempted to join the locals for the atmosphere alone but we were worn out from a long day of travel.

The 'Spire of Dublin'
Tallest sculpture in the world (400 ft)

The next morning we didn’t try to cram too much in because we knew we would return to Dublin someday to do the city justice and didn’t want to exhaust our legs before the concert.  We took the city bus into town and made it in by noon.  Our first impression of Dublin was that it is clean and cozy.  It didn’t take long for Dave to turn on Geneva and dream about how life would have been like living in Dublin (we heard Dublin was in the running with Geneva as the site for the new Expedia office).  The people were fantastic, they spoke English (even though it sometimes sounds like another language) and food/drink was delicious.  (In the end, he came to his senses - and admitted that Geneva is a great place to be and he wouldn’t have had it any other way.)

Sorry for the digression… back to lovely Dublin!  Question: How does a man know that he has a great wife?  Try this – knowing we were short on time that day, what was the only thing on the agenda besides the concert?  You guessed it, the Guinness Brewery tour!  For the record, this was her idea, and she doesn’t even like Guinness. :)  The tour was more than we expected.  The building, known as the Storehouse, was originally a fermentation plant built in 1904.  It closed in 1988 when a more state of the art fermentation plant was built on a different part of the grounds and it was converted to the current “museum” in 2000.  Surprisingly they have had over 4 million visitors since then.  The unique draw, besides the beer, is that the building is designed with a large Guinness pint glass running through the middle of it.  Another draw was the “free” sample at the end.  To our delight, not only did we get to enjoy a nice cold Guinness, but they taught us how to poor our own perfect pint!  Yes, it was a little touristy, but what would you expect?  

Perfect concentration for the perfect pint

After enjoying our pints (Ang put up a valiant effort and drank almost half of hers for the experience, so Dave scored a pint and a half), we grabbed a chocolate Guinness muffin (did we mention that Guinness knows how to get the most out of their branding opportunities?) and some amazing scones at one of the bars onsite.  We followed that up with a quick peek into the Gravity Bar, which has a 360-degree panorama view of surrounding Dublin (the bar is located, naturally, at the “Head of the Pint” when looking at the building from outside).

After our fun and souvenir shopping it was just about time to head off to the show.  For dinner we quickly popped into the Temple Bar Pub, which is one of the oldest Pubs in Dublin, dating back to 1840.  Besides a colorful atmosphere, they have amazing sandwiches and olive trays.  :)

Onto the show.  Ok, we will preface our review of the show by saying we were a little unprepared going in.  We’ll call it “too busy to research.”  But honestly, it didn’t even occur to us that this show would literally be Roger Waters (and band) playing the entire The Wall album straight through.  In our minds, perhaps “The Wall” was just the name of a greatest hits tour.  Plenty of bands have done that in the past, right?  But, alas, this was only, and all of, The Wall.  It was great for the super fans out there that know The Wall front and back, but we didn’t.  We know the Dark Side of the Moon album really well, and other random hits from the rest of the albums.  The worst part was that The Wall is a very politically charged album, which definitely came through in the show (see the video below as the band is in military uniforms and you can see some mock Apple “i” products being named on the wall, like “iKill”, etc.).  For those of you that know and love The Wall you’ll probably think we are crazy, but we left the show feeling slightly empty.  Definitely the most bizarre show we have ever been to (yes, in the second video he is shooting everyone).

  

 

On the bright side, the stage setup was pretty awesome (like any Pink Floyd show it was visually intriguing), and they really made the wall come alive with the production values.  Throughout the first half of the show, the wall was being built up while the band played which you can see happening in the video below.  By the beginning of the second half of the show, the wall was entirely up and it acted as a backdrop to plenty of, albeit strange, animation and graphics.  Thankfully we did hear some of our absolute favorites, like Another Brick in the Wall, Comfortably Numb and Hey You, but would have enjoyed a bit more of the classics that we were familiar with.  In the second video (below), notice the adorably awkward little girl showing off her dance moves during the guitar solo (toward the end of the video clip)-- we definitely enjoyed how brave she was. :)  All in all it wasn’t a loss – it gave us the perfect reason to buy the entire album once we got home (which is actually pretty good in hindsight)!

 

Oh yeah, another cool thing was watching them tear down the sections of the wall that remained standing post-show.  Not quite as dramatic as it was with the music blasting but we still got a kick out of it.

One of the best parts of the night was chatting with two of security guards, who were incredibly friendly and had awesome Irish accents. :)  One of them had to be in his early 70s-- he was great.  We asked him about all of the concerts he's been able to see while working security and which was his favorite.  Never in a million years would we have correctly guessed his response-- Lady Gaga.  Hilarious. :)

After the show we took a cab back to our hotel and, to confirm how much we love Dublin, had the most pleasant conversation with the driver.  She was a woman in her late 50’s and it felt like we had known her for years.  Throw in the accent and we were sold!  I don’t think we’ve ever thoroughly enjoyed a taxi ride until that night.  The whirlwind trip ended the next morning as we caught the 6:30 am flight back to Geneva and just in time for work.