A place like Dublin deserves a good pub crawl to really say that you’ve been there. Whether you drink or not isn’t the point, it’s the opportunity to immerse yourself into Irish culture and celebrate life all at once that makes a pub crawl a great experience. Of course, if you partake a few drinks can help one in that immersion business.
The name “pub” is short for “public house”, which itself was used to differentiate them from private houses and thus able to serve alcohol. You’ll still see many a pub calling themselves a public house, and it brings us full circle back to the roots. Whatever you call them, they’ve become central community gathering places for generations, making them integral to our cultural history. I’ll drink to that!
There are a few things one ought to seek out in a pub when choosing which of the hundreds in a place like Dublin to visit. For me, a bit of history counts for a lot. If I never get to Dublin again in my lifetime (and that would be a pity), then I’d want to get to a place with some history. No pub has more of that than Ireland’s oldest pub, The Brazen Head, a place that “has been a hostelry… since 1198. The present building was built in 1754 as a coaching inn.” The food was excellent and the Guinness was a perfect compliment. Walking around it, you feel you’re living your moment in its long history.
Darkey Kelly’s isn’t quite as old as The Brazen Head, but it has its own rich history. “Darkey” Kelly was a brothel-keeper who was burned at the stake in Dublin in 1761 for witchcraft. She almost certainly wasn’t a witch, but there was evidence that she was a serial killer. Rough way to go for anyone, of course, and why did it always seem to be the women being burned at the stake? Anyway, the pub itself was lively and filled with music and conversation, everything you’d want in a pub. The Irish whiskey collection was the largest I’ve seen. And as a bonus the Ireland-New Zealand rugby match was on, capturing the enthusiastic attention of the locals. It was my favorite of the bunch.
As a nightcap for the evening, The Old Storehouse, brought more live music with a young and active drinking crowd. In fact, noticeably younger. The later it gets, the younger the crowd gets. And that young crowd surprised me as they belted out the hits of the 70’s and 80’s as if they grew up with them )which of course they have, they were merely reminding me). The duo played to the crowd with far more rock and disco hits than traditional Irish music, but with a talented fiddle player sprinkling beautiful Celtic all over them.
No trip to Dublin would be complete without at least a pass by The Temple Bar. It’s surely lovely to look at, but more than any other pub it’s geared towards the tourists, prices and all. Still, worthy of a quick visit, if only for the obligatory photo with it. After all, what’s a pub crawl without seeing and being seen with the most famous of them all?
