A travel blog of Ireland, Europe, and New Zealand

Each weekend we try to see a new part of Dublin or revisit somewhere we have been before but want to see again. So this post shows what we have done on the previous two Saturdays – nothing dramatic, but as you will see, we are still enjoying the novelty of Dublin.

Saturday in Portobello

Last Saturday we went somewhere new – the Portobello area of South Dublin, through which runs the Royal Canal. This canal is about 200 years old but had become silted up and unnavigable until its restoration as recently as 2010 and boats can now travel half way across Ireland to the River Shannon. We went there specifically for the Canalphonics festival, an event for live music alongside a vintage clothing and jewellery market. A tour of the market and then a walk along the canal bank, past quaint little cottages (possibly for bargemen of times past) was followed by chicken curry at the Portobello pub. There wasn’t a lot of music but we did stop for a while after lunch and listen to a barbershop close harmony group.  A block or so over is a house marked as the birthplace of George Bernard Shaw and there are a lot of local references to the Great Man including a very alternative-looking pub which you see below.

Then today we went back to Howth.

Saturday in Howth

This is a fishing village about an hour on the train from our place. It still has a fishing fleet with attendant masses of seagulls and a string of restaurants along the pier include some of the best seafood places in Dublin. Today we went to a restaurant called Deep which is probably not quite as good as our favourite place on the pier, Octopussy, but still very good. We had a shared seafood platter and although, as you can see, there was a preponderance of squid rings, the salmon with capers and the crabcakes were excellent and I would say that the fish was only a few hours out of the water – beautifully fresh and flaky with a tempura-style batter, it just melted in the mouth. I can still taste it…