Dublin

Slake your thirst for good ale and even better stories on the Dublin Literary Pub Crawl, led by two of fiction’s most famous vagabonds. The jocular, bowler-hat-wearing characters from Waiting for Godot (penned by local lad Samuel Beckett) guide visitors around the city’s best historic bars and invite participants to drink deeply of some rich cultural heritage.

The tour starts at The Duke Pub. In a room lined with framed writings and faded author photos, the energetic actors/guides kick things off with a rousing drinking song, followed by an entertaining introduction to homegrown literary luminaries Wilde, Joyce, and Shaw. Winding through lamp-lit Georgian streets, the stroll lasts about two hours and includes visits to four old-school bars and the cobbled courtyard of Trinity College. Among the highlights is O’Neill’s, a labyrinthine corner pub crowded with locals. Beckett used to brood at this stop regularly over a dark Guinness or two.

The guides are brimming with lip-smacking readings and frothy anecdotes (you’ll learn that firebrand Dublin playwright Brendan Behan called himself “a drinker with a writing problem”), and they cheerily join in for some beers along the route. In fact, by the time you stumble into Davy Byrnes — Joyce’s favorite pub and a location mentioned in Ulysses — you’re sure to be the best of drinking buddies.

To find out more, log on to dublinpubcrawl.com.

If the bookworm in you still isn’t satisfied, visit the National Library of Ireland, located on Kildare Street. The library houses the world’s most comprehensive collection of Irish publications. On exhibit through next spring, Yeats: The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats has been called “one of the most important literary exhibitions yet staged internationally.”

Learn more at nli.ie.

Photo Jupiter Images

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