When traveling to Dublin, here are some of the must-see Irish sights:

Phoenix Park
For a little peace and quiet in one of Europe’s busiest cities, head to Phoenix Park, home to the Dublin Zoo, the Wellington Monument and the official residence of the President of Ireland. Although cars can go through the park, noise levels are reduced by forbidding buses.

IFC (Irish Film Centre)
Independent film buffs will enjoy the two art-house cinemas and comprehensive bookshop in the Temple Bar district. The café/bar/restaurant is worth visiting in its own right, if only to marvel at the award-winning architecture.

Doheny and Nesbitt
Dublin is filled with over a thousand pubs, most of them fairly noisy and boisterous. If you’re looking for a pub where you can actually have a conversation, head to the intimate journalists’ haunt of Doheny and Nesbitt on Baggot Street, which dates back to the late 1800s.

Octagon Bar
This favorite Dublin watering hole in the Clarence Hotel, owned by U2’s Bono and The Edge, attracts an eclectic mix and is a likely location to spot a local celebrity.

The Lord Mayor’s Lounge
Sink into a deep armchair at the Lord Mayor’s Lounge, overlooking St. Stephen’s Green, for an afternoon of tea and pastries. You’ll find this welcoming oasis in the historic Shelbourne Hotel, a Dublin destination all its own.

Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud
Should you grow tired of pub food, and want a meal worth writing home about, visit Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud in the Merrion Hotel for modern classic cuisine using Irish produce in season. It is also Ireland’s only Two-Star Michelin restaurant.

St. Ann’s Church
This newly renovated 18th century church features a Romanesque façade and beautiful stained glass windows. Sitting among the pews, you’ll be surprised to learn one of its famous past parishioners was Dracula author Bram Stoker.

Chester Beatty Library
Housing a collection of rare art and religious manuscripts that rival the Book of Kells, this free library is a must.

Grafton Street
Along this pedestrian street, you’ll find some of Dublin’s best shopping, street performers and musicians, not to mention the renowned Bewley’s Oriental Café.

We hope that these Dublin must-see sights will help you get more vacation from your vacation.  Make your trip even more unique and use our travel planning resources to help get your dream vacation underway. Start planning your European vacation today!

Wander the cobbled streets of Dublin’s Temple Bar district after 9.30 pm any night of the week and you will hear live traditional music wafting from many of the pubs, ranging in style from the raucously uplifting to the poignantly mournful.  Take advantage of the moment: The “sessions” of Irish musicians are impromptu, so planning out an entertainment schedule is a difficult feat.

This spontaneous element actually dates back for over three centuries.  When the English imposed their brutal rule over Ireland in the late 1600s, the whole Irish landowning class was replaced and the Irish language was suppressed.  The tongue was banned from schools, official correspondence and public encounters in an attempt to wipe it out.  But like an underground resistance, the Irish kept their culture alive though songs, which were performed in secret locales whenever the opportunity arose.

Far from prying English eyes (and ears), the oral history of the land was passed on from generation to generation.  But it was an impoverished, difficult time, and Irish musicians developed a fondness for cheap, simple instruments – the fiddles, accordions, spoons, flutes, harps, whistles and the bodhran, or Irish drums, that are still popular today.  Unaccompanied songs called sean-nos (“in the old style”) developed when there were no instruments at all.

Today, Irish music is world-famous, with U2, The Pogues, The Chieftains, The Cranberries and the singer Sinead O’Connor household names; groups like The Irish Tenors and Riverdance are major operations.  But it is still the spontaneous pub gatherings that capture the spirit of the Irish.  Good places to start looking in Dublin for “the craic” – fun or good times – are Fitsimmons Bar overlooking the River Liffey, Ha’Penny Bridge, Brogan’s Bar and the eponymous Temple Bar itself.

Wine-lovers may flock to the vineyards of France, but for connoisseurs of beer, Europe’s most sacred site is the Guinness Storehouse, a unique museum inside the St James’ Gate Brewery in Dublin.  The hallowed building was derelict when it was leased by Arthur Guinness in 1759 using £100 left by his godfather.  When a craze for a new, heavy style of beer called ‘porter’ began sweeping Dublin about 20 years later, Mr. Guinness decided to beat the English exporters at their own game, and came up with a brew that would ultimately become an Irish staple – the velvety, pitch-black Guinness Stout.

Today, Guinness is an international, US $3 billion-a-year business, but the recipe for “the Black Stuff” is still a closely guarded secret – part chemistry, part mystery.  We do know that Guinness’ unique color and flavor stem from the addition of rolled and roasted barley to beer’s traditional ingredients of malt, hops and yeast.  A substance obtained from fish bladders, known as isinglass finings, are added to help clarify the beer. But is the stout still aged to promote its sharp lactic flavor, as it was in the 18th century?  The current owners of the company, a conglomerate called Diageo, won’t say.  Finally, pouring a Guinness seems to involve as many arcane rules as its manufacture.  Diageo stipulates that the “perfect pint,” with the slow cascade of tiny bubbles and creamy head, can only be achieved in a slightly tipped, tulip shaped glass, with the temperature of the beer exactly 42.8 degrees Fahrenheit.  The famous “double pour,” whereby each glass of Guinness is half filled, allowed to sit before being topped up, should take exactly 119.53 seconds.

At the St. James’s Gate Brewery, a self-guided tour allows you to discover these and other eccentric facts, and revisit some of the company’s historic advertising campaigns.  “Guinness is good for you!” was one famous slogan in the 1920s, when it was discovered that the brew contained antioxidants that ward off heart disease and contains less calories than orange juice or skimmed milk.  The price of admission includes a free Guinness.  You can try pouring your own in the Source Bar, or be served in the top-floor Gravity Bar, which has splendid 360-degree views over Dublin.

Ireland is rich with literary history and every vacation to Dublin promises to full of prose, verse, drama and song.

The most entertaining anniversary in Dublin falls every June 16th – the date in 1904 when the fictional action takes place in Ulysses, the greatest novel by Ireland’s greatest writer, James Joyce.  Every year, thousands of literature fans descend on the city and follow the exact route taken by Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertising salesman, and Stephen Dedalus, an aspiring writer, as they meander across the city.

True devotees like to wear Edwardian period dress – the men in straw boaters, tinted spectacles and striped blazers, the women in bloomers and corsets in homage to the hero’s lascivious wife, Molly Bloom.  But even if you do not travel to Dublin for the June extravaganza, you can follow the key points of the Ulysses walking tour.

Start at the James Joyce Center (35 North Great George’s Street), a Georgian townhouse where the door to Leopold Bloom’s fictional home, which once stood on Eccles Street in Dublin, is kept on display.  Proceed to Davy Byrne’s pub (21 Duke Street), one of Joyce’s favorite drinking spots, where Bloom lunched on a gorgonzola cheese sandwich and glass of burgundy.  (“Nice quiet bar,” Bloom notes approvingly in Ulysses. “Nice piece of wood in that counter…Like the way it curves.”)  Finally, take the short train ride to Sandycove, where the imposing Martello Tower was the setting for the novel’s first chapter.  One of 15 defense posts set along the coast to protect against an invasion by Napoleon, it has today been named James Joyce Tower with a museum that displays, amongst other gems, a rare edition of Ulysses illustrated by the French Impressionist painter Matisse.

True Joyceans should then take a dip in the Forty Foot swimming hole beside the Tower, named after the 40th Regiment of Foot once stationed here.  In Joyce’s day it was male-only venue and swimming was only in the nude.  Today the hole is co-ed, and swimsuits are “required by order” – although literature fans will be delighted to know there is still a nude section.

The Emerald Isle is our next stop as our travel series takes us on a vacation to Dublin.

Full of history and rich with Celtic tradition, the lush green country side of Ireland and the busy metropolis of Dublin promises breathtaking views and memorable experiences.

During our two-week series we will immerse ourselves in the history of James Joyce, discover the must-see sights of Dublin and maybe find the luck of the Irish.

No trip to Ireland is complete without a tour of Waterford, the world-famous crystal factory, a stop in Avoca, the oldest handweaving mill, or a drive through the Wicklow Mountains.  So sit back, relax, and enjoy your Ireland vacation!

When traveling to Madrid, the Spanish capital here are some must-see sights:

Church of San Francisco El Grande
Visit this neoclassical masterpiece with the largest dome in Madrid. Its walls and ceilings are decorated with superb frescoes.

Austrias Old Madrid
Wander in old Madrid—a delight to explore with its squares and churches.

El Retiro Park
For some gentle relaxation, stroll in El Retiro. Dating back to the 1600s, the park features a lake, statues, and fountains.

El Botin
The oldest restaurant in the world, El Botin specializes in lamb and roast pork suckling dishes.

Tapas Tour
Enjoy the Spanish specialty in typical taverns in the old part of Madrid. Tapas are an excellent way to taste small portions of different foods. Also sample local wines, Sangria, or Spanish lemonade.

We hope that these Madrid must-see sights will help you get more vacation from your vacation.  Make your trip even more unique and use our travel planning resources to help get your dream vacation underway. Start planning your European vacation today!

Madrid may be a sprawling, energetic city & vacation destination today, but it was an unlikely choice to be named Spanish capital in the 16th century – and nobody was more astonished than the residents themselves.

In 1561, it was a small provincial outpost, hardly larger than a village, when King Philip II sent a letter announcing his royal court’s imminent arrival.  Local Castilian aristocrats had to scramble to purchase enough banquet food just for their monarch’s table, and they (like the rest of Spain) were baffled to learn that Philip decided to remain permanently.  Unlike the great cities of Toledo and Seville, Madrid had no cathedral, no grand avenues, no university; it didn’t even have one of the new-fangled printing presses, considered a symbol of progress at the time.  But what it did have was its central location; from Madrid, letters could reach any point in Spain within five days.  King Philip was a devout Catholic, painfully shy and austere; he had no talent for leading armies into battle and he also disliked traveling, so had decided to run the ever-expanding Spanish Empire by royal decree.  (A prince amongst bureaucrats, it was said that he would deal with 400 complex documents a day).

As soon as the news was out, the once-sleepy Madrid was flooded the with wealth of the court and its noble hangers-on; the city quickly became an enormous construction site, resulting in the ornate palaces, majestic and fabulously wealthy convents that we see in the historical center today.  And Philip’s rather dull, methodical nature did not make Madrid a quiet place; far from it.  Hordes of artists and writers followed the aristocracy seeking wealthy patrons, as well as con-men, petty criminals, prostitutes and the famous picaros: Spanish adventurers who lived on their wits.  The atmosphere resembled a free-wheeling Wild West town.  One writer, Antonio Liñan y Verdugo, penned a guidebook in 1620 for gold-digging Spaniards flocking to the city, called Guide and Advice to Strangers Who Come to the Court.  His description gave a more vivid idea of Madrid than history books.  He suggested that Madrid had become a vice-ridden “Babylon” filled with tricksters and illusory wonders – “dreamed-up marvels, fairy-tale treasures and figures like actors on a stage.”

A trip to Spain is not complete without viewing some of Picasso’s famous works.

Nobody remains impassive after entering the white-walled gallery room in the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid where Picasso’s Guernica is displayed: Some viewers gasp in recognition, others are stunned, a few older Spaniards even burst into tears.  The enormous canvas, where twisted abstract figures cascade across an exploding landscape in agony and confusion, is the West’s most famous anti-war statement, and its story encapsulates the tragic history of Spain’s bloody civil war, which raged in the late 1930s and still resonates today.

Picasso, who had been born in Andalucia, was living as an expatriate in Paris in 1937 when the Republican government asked him to create a painting for the Spanish Pavilion in the World’s Fair.  He had been working on a quite different artistic project when he read a newspaper report of the bombing of Guernica in the Basque Country.  This town was considered a stronghold of left-wing Republican sympathy by the right-wing Nationalist forces led by General Francisco Franco, who was supported militarily by the German Nazi Government.

On April 26, the German air force swept down on the town, raining bombs upon its civilians indiscriminately.  Guernica’s male inhabitants were fighting on the front lines, so the attack caught mostly women, children and the elderly; planes strafed refugees mercilessly with machine gun fire.  Picasso was deeply affected by the account; he abandoned his earlier project and threw himself into painting Guernica.  The 25-foot-long, 11-foot-high piece captured all the barbarity of the attack and it became an instant icon.  After the Parisian exposition, the painting toured the world, finally reaching South America and the United States.

By 1939, Europe was engulfed in the Second World War, so Picasso asked that the painting remain safely at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and not be returned to Spain until Franco had been removed from power.  This change took far longer than anyone could have guessed.  The sinister dictator not only won the Civil War, he controlled the country until his death 36 years later, in 1975.  But democracy was finally restored in Spain the following year, and with great fanfare, Guernica traveled home to Madrid in 1981.

After taking a look back at our favorite blog posts of 2009 we are ready to begin traveling again.  Rejuvenate your sense of adventure, the  Spanish capital of Madrid is waiting.  Madrid, Spain is a strikingly modern city, the showcase of a country resolutely turned towards the future.

Over the course of our 2-week vacation series we will peruse Madrid’s Prado Museum, dine on mouth-watering Spanish tapas, sip on Sangria , relax in El Retiro Park and wander through Plaza Mayor.

If you are interested in culture or nightlife, history or food, a vacation in Madrid is certain to leave you with unforgettable travel memories.