Actually managed to get into one of the building's on Henrietta St the other day - on a work related matter. There isn't much I can say about it but they're in a lot better condition than I thought. 7's weathertight, has power and water and is used by a few artists as a studio. It's aso the cheapest bit of real estate going in Dublin at the moment onm a €/m2 basis. It'll just take around and about 1.5 million or so to restore it 'properly'.
But it's a lot more habitable than I thought.
The walls are maybe a meter thick so of brick and stone - despite being a *bit* draughty - once the windows are properly sealed up it's got so much mass in it it's basically like a cave inside. Especially down in the cellars. Once these old buildings are properly heated up and sealed - they stay hot and dry out. They get cold and damp when they're allowed sit idle - but keeping the heat in it keeps the building alive an inhabited.
Also, damp is an Irish meme. Everything is damp here. Damp, dank and mouldy. If Japan is hot and humid - Ireland is cold and humid. It rarely snows, but it's always wet and cold. Air conditioner coils freeze in winter - we buy Japanese aircon units because they work so much better in higher RH environments. It means it doesn't matter what you wear - the cold still gets through. Even temperatures that wouldn't phase Canada are somehow colder here because everything is just that little bit damper and wet clothes are awful.
Making it comfortable is just a matter of keeping the fires lit and getting water boiled.
There's also a place around the corner that does amazing - and cheap - Breakfast Rolls called Declans Deli - worth portalling in for if you don't mind gaining a few stone. They make their own pudding and everything. And Dublin City Comics which is the best 'nerd' shop in Ireland becauise it's run by real fans.
Out the back windows you can see an old stone priory - and the Rotunda hospital. Just down the road is The Spire - a giant needle to serve as a monument to the city's main industry - heroin.
At the end of Henrietta St is The King's Inns - the home of Ireland's Barristers-at-law - an arcane society that feels at times more like a college of wizards in its closed and secretive nature where the testaments of Law and Precedent are shared between Barristers and their devils over grand society dinners while watched over by paintings of the greatest legal minds of the last six centuries. It's motto, Nolumus Mutari, should give an idea of how 'traditional' it is.
Across the river, there's the Dead Zoo. Cabinets and galleries house the carefully cruated species of Ireland and the World. It's almost a museum of a museum - it hasn't changed much since it was built in 1856. It backs on to the parliament of Ireland - where another collection of fossils go about their business.
But it's a lot more habitable than I thought.
The walls are maybe a meter thick so of brick and stone - despite being a *bit* draughty - once the windows are properly sealed up it's got so much mass in it it's basically like a cave inside. Especially down in the cellars. Once these old buildings are properly heated up and sealed - they stay hot and dry out. They get cold and damp when they're allowed sit idle - but keeping the heat in it keeps the building alive an inhabited.
Also, damp is an Irish meme. Everything is damp here. Damp, dank and mouldy. If Japan is hot and humid - Ireland is cold and humid. It rarely snows, but it's always wet and cold. Air conditioner coils freeze in winter - we buy Japanese aircon units because they work so much better in higher RH environments. It means it doesn't matter what you wear - the cold still gets through. Even temperatures that wouldn't phase Canada are somehow colder here because everything is just that little bit damper and wet clothes are awful.
Making it comfortable is just a matter of keeping the fires lit and getting water boiled.
There's also a place around the corner that does amazing - and cheap - Breakfast Rolls called Declans Deli - worth portalling in for if you don't mind gaining a few stone. They make their own pudding and everything. And Dublin City Comics which is the best 'nerd' shop in Ireland becauise it's run by real fans.
Out the back windows you can see an old stone priory - and the Rotunda hospital. Just down the road is The Spire - a giant needle to serve as a monument to the city's main industry - heroin.
At the end of Henrietta St is The King's Inns - the home of Ireland's Barristers-at-law - an arcane society that feels at times more like a college of wizards in its closed and secretive nature where the testaments of Law and Precedent are shared between Barristers and their devils over grand society dinners while watched over by paintings of the greatest legal minds of the last six centuries. It's motto, Nolumus Mutari, should give an idea of how 'traditional' it is.
Across the river, there's the Dead Zoo. Cabinets and galleries house the carefully cruated species of Ireland and the World. It's almost a museum of a museum - it hasn't changed much since it was built in 1856. It backs on to the parliament of Ireland - where another collection of fossils go about their business.
I love the smell of rotaries in the morning. You know one time, I got to work early, before the rush hour. I walked through the empty carpark, I didn't see one bloody Prius or Golf. And that smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole carpark, smelled like.... ....speed.
One day they're going to ban them.