Tips on Traveling to Ireland

When doing talks about Web 2.0, blogging, having the conversation and all that bullocks, I sometimes refer to ‘corporate dark matter’. This is all the useful information that gets sent to customers from a company over email, but never gets re-used. Maybe a sales engineer describes a particular feature in more depth (or better) than it’s rendered anywhere else. Maybe a product manager addresses a particular point of pain that’s not a popular use case, but applies to a minority of customers.

I always suggest that a company put some of this stuff on its blog. After all, it’s going to be useful and compelling to a subset of their customers, and it’s probably written in the authentic voice of an individual.

On a parallel, personal vein, an old friend is going to Dublin with her husband and children for a week in April, and ask me for some advice. I wrote her back with a quick list of stuff that I thought I’d include here: [more]

• It’s an exceptionally safe city. Though everyone seems a bit paranoid (with their alarms and barbed wire on some roofs), it’s just the effect of new money. We’ve never felt safer than when we were in Dublin.
• It’s very walkable. You’re extremely wise to not rent a car in the city. This is probably a tip for London (as you’re headed there first), but take an extra second at the curb before crossing the street. I cheated death for weeks while looking the wrong way for traffic.
• Definitely bring rain gear. Dublin has two kinds of rain–a fine, irritating mist and a surprisingly tropical downpour.
• You shouldn’t have trouble with your 14-year-old in pubs during the day, but I don’t think they’re permitted after 6 PM.
• By the way, do not eat in the pubs. Most of the Dublin pubs don’t serve food, and if they do, you’ll regret ordering it.
• And speaking of Irish cuisine, aside from the Irish stew and the Guinness, there isn’t much to it. My favourite cheapish place to eat in Dublin was a tres modern Asian noodle house called Wagamama’s. Try the cha han.

I subsequently referenced this post about my favourite places in Dublin, and recommend three more restaurants:

• Salamanca – a tapas bar in the centre of town
• Milano’s – cheap and cheerful pizza
• Cafe Boulevard – near the Dail, pseudo-French cafe