10 Questions About…

We did the free walking tour of The Liberties. Pat Liddy gave the tour – his a tour guide of some note. There were more than 100 people on the tour – all Irish and all with blue hair. It was an interesting route. Well Patrick and I found it interesting. The girls not so much. And I think it was made less interesting with bad weather about every 15 minutes it would absolutely pour. One really nice thing was that the Viking Splash tour people saw us in the rain and gave out free rain ponchos for free. So that was really nice.

So here are snippets from the tour –

The Liberties are a series of areas in Dublin that in the 12 century were made regulation-free area. Or at least there were left to create their own regulation and structure and were absolved from regular Dublin regulation and taxes. Subsequently the areas and people from the areas are generally considered to be pretty independent, take care of it ourselves kind of people. The liberty we walked was West of St Patrick’s Cathedral – near Kevin St, Thomas St and Newmarket. It was an area of weavers. And has always had an industry focus.

We also stopped by The Coombe – former location of a big hospital. There is a memorial of sorts from the hospital – the old front stairs I think. The stairs now contain etched names of the characters from the day – such as Stab the Rasher, Bang Bang and others. Many people on the tour remembered the characters named.

Famous people from the area: Brenda Flicker and Imelda May. I think Patrick was very sad that we didn’t run into Imelda May on the tour.

We lived sort of near this area near Christchurch 20 years ago and have a couple of friends in the area. It is a very Dublin area.