Showing posts with label Ireland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ireland. Show all posts

Thursday, January 10, 2013

The ten oldest bars and restaurants in the world


I once drank at a pub in Ireland where Vikings had commiserated after invading the Green Isle.  It was older than you or I, our great grandparents, or even the Magna Carta.  It was from the dark ages for sure, and where once Vikings swilled brews, today, tourists eat fish and chips while locals complain about Eurozone politics.  If you look closely enough and kind of squint at the Brazen Head, you can just barely picture middle ages Dublin.  You can almost smell the smoke.  If those walls could talk, they would tell the tale of mankind's ascent into a sophisticated society, for better and worse.  I wondered while I sat at the bar scribbling into my little notebook, how many other really old places are out there?

It is rare for a restaurant or bar to last a very long time - where a long time is determined with a measuring stick notched in decades.  The public houses, inns, and restaurants on this list evade conventional measurement, lasting centuries atop centuries.  These are places where arguments took place about the events we only read about in history class.  The oldest companies in the world are Japanese, but every spot on this list is European.  The Germanic people, it seems, are especially adept at building things that last a very long time. They dominate this list.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Ireland Countryside 2008

An Irish country home

Wicklow County


A Stream

More stream

Irish Round Tower in old graveyard
Beautiful Headstone

A Church

Celtic crosses everywhere

More greenage

This is where the Excalibur comes from

Newgrange - 5000 years old, we were allowed inside,
some fat lady got claustrophbic and wigged out

View from Hill of Tara

Entrance to Newgrange

The stone was supposed to sing for me

Dublin 2008

Trinity College at dawn

A very nice residence

Guinness 

St. Stephen's Green 

Sculpture by Edward Delaney outside St. Stephen's Green

View from Guinness Gravity Bar

Temple Bar 

Buildings along the Liffey

Ireland 

Molly Malone

Shopping mall by Grafton Street

Famine Sculpture by Dublin docks

A jail cell in Kilmainham Gaol

Kilmainham Gaol - famous Dublin prison where many 
rebellion leaders were held

Kilmainham Gaol