to see as much of the city as you can and there's just three of you, all friends, all easygoing, and you're there for only three and a half days, and you went partly to celebrate Ben's eleven-month birthday and partly just because you could:
- See the Book of Kells and a play at the Abbey Theatre
- Listen to traditional music in a pub
- Take pictures of statues of Oscar Wilde and James Joyce
- Eat a Roo Burger (if you're Melinda)
- Watch a rugby game between Ireland and France from the comfort of a warm pub as it's raining outside
- Visit the Martello Tower, where the first episode of Ulysses is set
- And walk by Davy Byrnes's Pub, where another episode of Ulysses is set
- And win a t-shirt in a Literary Pub Crawl (if you're Ben; all this was because Ben loves James Joyce like I love Jane Austen; he even looks like Joyce in profile)
- Tour the Guinness Storehouse (best beverage tour ever) and Kilmainham Gaol
- Have your first-ever proper Guinness in the rooftop bar of the Guinness Storehouse
- Become a Guinness devotee (these last two if you're me)
- Learn three lovely literary facts: (a) Dorothy L. Sayers wrote jingles for Guinness; (b) the Guinness Book of World Records was first compiled to settle bar trivia disputes; (c) there was an Irish writer named Charles Robert Maturin, described as "eccentric and melancholy" (which sounds familiar as a description for a Maturin), who wrote a book called Melmoth the Wanderer, which provided the pseudonym "Sebastian Melmoth" for Maturin's nephew Oscar Wilde when he traveled the Continent after his sodomy trial
- Giggle immoderately at a store called "Knobs and Knockers," which really did sell doorknobs and front-door knockers
- Drag your two friends into every food shop in the city center in search of plain-chocolate McVitie's, which you will ultimately be denied because the city of Dublin seems to have an irrational prejudice against dark chocolate; this will require you to settle for milk-choc instead, but you can live with that if you get stroopwafels too (which you do; all this also if you're me)
- Drink many pints and talk talk talk
- And walk walk walk
- Be happy