Bus Tour Of Dublin

[Dermot]

On my recent trip to Ireland I had to take a bus from dublin airport into the city centre to catch a train. It was a double-decker bus and I sat upstairs at the front window. As we sat there waiting for other people to get on I thought I would get out my digital camera and see if I could take some photos through the window. Well I kept taking photos as we drove all the way to Heuston station.

I combined the photos into a video with MS Photo Story and added some music. So I thought I would share it. If you have never been to Dublin it will give a kind of virtual tour. Use the link below to view. Keep in mind I know very little about photography or video.

Dublin Bus Tour

It is best viewed in full screen.

Enjoy.

Dermot

[Corey]

Wow. Very cool! My Grandma was Irish, so I guess I'm partly too. Maybe that's why I'm dying to skate that tunnel. Also those sidewalks as seen at 1:59, wide and smooth, perfect for skating. Beautiful. Amazing how much construction is going on, I've never seen that many cranes in one spot before.

Great tune BTW.

I can't believe how few ads/signs they have on their streets. In our city there are thousands of ads and signs everywhere, it's a mess. Dublin looks much more majestic than this generic mess we have here. I love those statues too, we have nothing like that here at all except for the perfunctory generic abstract crap they put in front of these new office buildings. (usually commissioned from some politician's kid at great expense)

Ah Dublin, me heart is with ye. Thanks for the clip Dermot, that was great. Those streets really got to me, I'm going to go skate it off for a few hours.

[gbrown]

Way cool indeed !

[Dermot]

Glad you enjoyed it.

I love big statues and monuments like the ones on O'Connell street. Infact O'Connell street is one of my favourite streets. Its big, wide and even though there are 8 lanes of traffic there is plenty of room for pedestrians. It has at least a 50 foot wide median in the middle where people gather. That's about as wide as the whole of the main shopping street in Vancouver, Robson Street.



...and don't forget the "Floozy In The Jacuzzi"



Unfortunatly modern monuments are not so interesting. This is the latest addition to O'connell street. Its a stainless steel spire or "The Spike' as the locals call it.



Dermot

[Corey]

I don't know, the Spike is not without some appeal just for what it is. But I do see your point, I doubt it would sustain my interest for very long. Yeah I love those Dublin streets, I wish we had streets like those here in Calgary.

[Intrigued]

I have never been to Dublin... so this really was a neat way to take the tour on the cheap!

Thanks Dermot

[JimS]

Dublin looks beautiful, thanks for sharing. That’s a great presentation.



.

[Intrigued]

A pint of Guiness would have been an even nicer touch though Dermot!



*wait, I stopped drinking about eight years ago, oh well, it's the suggestion that counts! *

[Corey]

It was largely Irish labor that fueled British expansion all over the world. That's a small part of why you can find stout *anywhere* in the world. No lie. Here in Canada if you go out east to the areas where this country was settled, it's incredible how Irish things are. Almost every family in those maritime communities has some trace of Irish lineage in them. And no matter how tiny the community is, you can always find a drink too. Heck some of the people I've met from the maritimes speak with such an Irish accent that you can barely understand them at first, in particularly from small communities in Newfoundland for example.

The surrealest of all is down in the Carribean where there's tons of decidely non-Irish folks in places like Jamaica and Trinidad with names like "O'Brien", "Doyle", "Donnelly", etc. It's very common. And again, no matter how tiny the community is, you can always find a stout.

The really interesting part is that the English specifically kept the Irish from the history books in many of these areas for whatever reason, so to read about it these people never really existed but if you visit the communities you see another story. Scottish too BTW, not just Irish. For example the real name of Peter Tosh, arguably one of the most prominent reggae singers in history was actually "Winston Hubert Macintosh".

In fact if you look at a map of Jamaica, there's tons of places like "Patrick Town" and "Moneague" for the Irish, "Aberdeen" and "Glengoffe" for the Scottish, "Llandewey" for the Welsh, etc.
http://www.caribbean-on-line.com/jm/jmmap.shtml

And even though the residents are overwhelmingly of African heritage you can *always* find a stout in any of these communities, no matter how tiny it may be. Even if it's nothing more than a junction between two roads, you can still rely on there being a small blue shack on the corner with 10-15 items for sale, one of which will always be some sort of stout, i.e. Guinness.

[Dermot]

Here is an interesting article on the Irish in Argentina.

Irish Surnames In Argentina

I visited the town of San Antonio de Areco in the Province of Buenos Aires, north of the city of Buenos Aires...... To visit the nearby cemetery was like visiting an Irish cemetery with tombstones showing Longford names like Farrell, Geoghegan and Campbell; Brennan from Wexford; O’Farrell, and Morgan from Cork and Brady, Geraghty, Murray, Mooney and Kelly from Westmeath. Of course, the intense heat reminded one that one was not in an actual Irish cemetery.

Dermot

[Dermot]

The Irish also fought in many wars for other countries often on both sides as in the Spanish and American civil wars.

The Irish At War

Dermot

[Corey]

in no part of the world, in the same space of time have Irish settlers made such large fortunes

Wow, that's a killer article. Thanks for the links. As for the fighting Irish, you sure don't have to tell me, I just got judo chopped at by an Irish bloke as recently as last week.

P.S. I never knew "Nugent" was an Irish name, interesting...

[Bruce]

Wow Dermot thanks so much! That was well done.

[tsbpd]

Thanks for the flashback - very well done! I spent a week in Dublin while on a 10-minute job signing-off on an application at Interactive Enterprises. I played tourist for several days and took a bunch of pictures, but none of them hold a candle to your .wmv!

I had wondered where that gal on the old IndigoRose website went to!
-top left at- (www.)iel.ie

[Desmond]

Killer movie, i really enjoyed it. I have relatives in Ireland . . . i think it's high time I went to visit. Perhaps next year.