Dublin and Fallon & Byrne

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In the afternoon of Day 2 in Ireland, after visiting County Wicklow, our guide Robbie gave us the option to see the Book of Kells or tour Dublin with him, his Dublin. I could not pass up a tour with Robbie.

Very Good tour guides are rare. Excellent tour guides are even rarer. Robbie was exceptional. He received his Masters in Anthropology or Archaeology from Trinity College in Dublin and loved educating us on Ireland, the land and its people.

Day 1 in Dublin, before the Guinness tour, a group of us walked with Robbie to the National Museum of Ireland, where we got our own in depth tour of many artifacts from Egyptian style chokers to the influence of the Norse on Celtic art. We also saw a person mummified by the peat. I found this fascinating. A mummified person looks like leather, not gross, but wow.

Day 2 in Dublin focused on a downtown walking tour starting at Trinity College where several people in our group left the tour to wait in line to see the Book of Kells. The rest of us walked the streets of Dublin, visited Dublin Castle, and got the ins and outs of several pubs and restaurants worth visiting.

At the end of Robbie’s Day 2 Dublin Tour, Alan and I made it to Fallon & Byrne, one of Robbie’s recommended locations for grabbing a snack and a bottle or two of wine for the road. Then, we had a beer in a pub near where the tour bus driver had intended to pick us up and drop us off at the hotel. We ran into a Scotsman in the bar and talked with him for a while about how Scotland was in the process of voting for independence from England.

During our chat with the Scotsman, Robbie called us to tell us that the group was on its own for dinner that night. We asked Robbie for a downtown recommendation for dinner and he once again recommended Fallon & Byrne for its restaurant.

I highly recommend Fallon & Byrne for its variety and quality. The wine bar is in the basement, the grocery store is on the first floor and the restaurant is on the second floor.

The food was delicious. I had an out of this world goat cheese pasta dish with a cream sauce and pesto. I knew Ireland had good food from all that I had read about it or seen on cooking shows. As Robbie put it, “Corned beef and cabbage is what people’s grandmothers brought over [to the United States].” The boiled food of yesterday has evolved into food paired with sauces modeled after French cooking. In fact, Ireland has a top notch cooking school that I had read about years ago and would love to attend someday. It is called Ballymaloe Cookery School. A woman can dream!