September 2024

• Last week, I was fortunate enough to spend some time with my family in Ireland.
• I spent most of my time in Dublin – a fun, vibrant city with very friendly people.
• I recommend a trip to Ireland and look forward to the time when I can return.

What kind of title is that? One that makes me laugh. I was trying to think of the dumbest, most stereotypical American thing to say about Ireland. And that’s what I came up with. 

Why Ireland? Well because this week’s blog entry is a little different. I went with my family to Dublin, Ireland last week. And I wanted to talk about it a bit in this blog. A little bit on why Ireland is cool and why you should go there if you have not yet. And I’ll try to add in some real estate because this is nominally a commercial real estate blog. So let’s talk about it.

City of a Thousand Welcomes

This was my first time in Dublin. If you have not been there before, I highly recommend it. It’s a very fun city with a lot of history. We had a pretty large group, which was the best part. My mom was one of ten children. As a result, I have … a lot of cousins. And so, a number of those cousins, along with my sister and her husband and my brother and his wife, went to find our roots. 

Unfortunately, I could only stay for five days – I had to leave early to head to Ann Arbor to see my beloved Michigan Wolverines take it on the chin from the dastardly Texas Longhorns.

As a result, my time was spent mostly in Dublin. I did not get to see some of the beautiful rolling hills and castles of rural Ireland. My brother and his wife did, however, as they travelled throughout the country. That is something I would definitely do if and when I return to Ireland. 

Dublin itself is a very fun and scenic city with a lot of history. It is built a lot like London (and other European cities) where there are not a lot of tall buildings. But there are beautiful, old stone buildings that are four or five stories high. 

It is also a city with a lot of culture. And not all of that involves drinking. Though I have to say – drinking is certainly a big part. There are A LOT of pubs in Dublin. It seems like there is one about every ten feet. And as far as I can tell from my short time there, they all seem to be full all the time. Of course, to understand that, I had to spend a little time in those pubs myself. One benefit of those pubs – a lot of them have live music. 

But, of course, its not all drinking. There are a lot of great tours and tourist attractions. Some of them that we visited – The Little Museum of Dublin, the Guinness tour, Trinity College, and a Literary Pub Crawl – where two local actors took us to a number of pubs around town and regaled us with stories of Irish literary heroes. And I realize that two of those four tourist events including drinking. But hey … when in Ireland…

So that’s what I did on my summer vacation. If you have not been to Dublin, I recommend it. It’s a very nice city with very friendly people who sort of speak English. I look forward to the day when I will return.