Handel's Festival Dublin, April 13th

As I have said in many posts, Temple Bar is a great area for hosting free events. Coming up on Tuesday, 13th April is 'In Handel's Day' which is a one day event run by Temple Bar Cultural Trust. The famous Handel's Messiah was first performed in Temple Bar (on Fishamble Street) on April 13th, 1742 and on April 13th this year there will be lots of free activities from 10am to midnight to commemorate it. Some of the events include:

Let's Walk & Talk: Handel's Dublin - Then & Now (11am)
This is a historical walking tour with Pat Liddy. It is free and no booking is required.

Messiah on the Street (1pm)
A unique choral performance of excerpts from Handel's Messiah on the original site on Fishamble Street, Temple Bar where Messiah received its world premiere in 1742. Again this is free and no booking is required.

Fishamble Street is a 5 minute walk from Temple Bar Hotel.
Check out www.templebar.ie for a full programme of events.

Free Travel for Tourists!

Are you a tourist visiting Ireland? Are you aged 66 or over?

If you said yes to both questions you are entitled to a free Golden Trekker ticket!

Golden Trekker tickets entitle you to free rail travel when in Ireland. The scheme which launched today provides free rail travel to all tourists to Ireland aged 66 and over. There is no restriction on nationality or country of residence.

You can access your tickets on www.discoverireland.com. The tickets will take the form of a four day Trekker ticket or a sequence of four day tracker tickets depending on the length of stay, providing visitors with unrestricted rail travel for a set period. Each four day ticket is worth €100.

Irish senior citizens can currently avail of free travel and every time my mother who lives at home in West Cork comes to visit myself and my two sisters in Dublin she likes to remind us that she used her free travel pass. I witnessed her producing her pass to the train inspector recently and the look of apprehension on her face expressed the fear that he would demand she pay up! But the scheme is genuine and hopefully our Golden Trekkers will help strengthen Irish tourism by encouraging visitors to move around our beautiful countryside and cities. Check out routes and times on www.irishrail.ie. Unfortunately I have to wait another 36 years to avail of free travel!!

Dublin Convention Centre

I am just back from a site visit of the Dublin Convention Centre and I am very impressed! The Convention Centre is due to open on 1st September and it will bring a lot of business for Dublin hotels. Myself and my colleague walked there this morning from Temple Bar Hotel and it took us just over fiftheen minutes. The other option is to walk five minutes to the Luas stop and it would be just another five minutes on the Luas.

What I loved about the Convention Centre it is the glass fronted atrium. The idea being that when you are moving around the centre itself you can actually see panoramic views Dublin City! The taxi fare from the Dublin Convention Centre back to Temple Bar Hotel was €7.30 which is very good! I think a lot of visitors will want to stay city centre and especially in the Temple Bar area where they can really relax and experience Dublin after a long day in a meeting. There are so many bars, restaurants and cafes in the area that visitors will be spoilt for choice.

Festival of Russian Culture

Dublin continues to amaze me! The amount of festivals and events in this city is just fantastic. Well I do come from rural West Cork where the only event was the annual Festival with the 'Rag' as the main event!! I've just found out about the Festival of Russian Culture started on February 15th and continues until February 21st. There will be a collection of informative films on Russia screened in Meeting House Square, Temple Bar this evening and tomorrow evening. If I hadn't made plans already I'd love to go along to the Pepper Canister Church to see the musical 'To Russia with Love'. Click here for a full list of events for the festival.
Most of the festival events are walking distance from Temple Bar Hotel.

St. Patrick's Day Grandstand tickets to giveaway!

St. Patrick's Day is something special and spending the day in Dublin is on most people's to do list. The Dublin Parade is always a spectacular event and this year the theme is 'Extraordinary world'. Scenes from the Dublin parade are broadcast throughout the world and thousands come to the city to see for themselves how the Irish celebrate being Irish!



The biggest problem on the day is trying to find the best vantage point to view the parade. That's where we help out! We have two pairs of VIP Grandstand tickets to give away to the first two people who book into Temple Bar Hotel for March 16th and 17th. Just email me on sales@tbh.ie or call me (01) 612 9286 to book your room (€80 per person per night) and claim the tickets! The tickets are worth €60 each! For more information on the hotel see http://www.templebarhotel.com/.

We also have 10 tens of tickets for the City at Play fun fairs for the 10 best comments that describe their best St. Patrick's Day in 30 words or less!

Jameson International Film Festival Dublin

The Jameson Film Festival which takes place from February 18th to 28th is one of those festivals which is going from strength to strength. There will be over 120 film and documentary works screened over the 10 days. The popularity of the festival is due mainly to the fact that it offers in a lot of cases the only chance for people to see the film and many of them are Irish premieres. This year there are a few films that have caught my attention including Ondine which was shot in my home County of Cork and stars the handsome Mr. Colin Farrell. It also happens to be the Opening Gala film. There is also a chance to see a number of classics, most notably La Dolce Vita. For more information see www.jdiff.com. All the venues are within walking distance of Temple Bar Hotel.

Picturing New York @ the Irish Museum of Modern Art

I was very excited to see that the Irish Museum of Modern Art is displaying a photo exhibit called Picturing New York. I just returned from New York City on Thursday morning so with the energy of the city still pulsing through my veins I immediately summoned my fellow New York loving friends to an afternoon of indulgence! It’s one of those cities that I can never get enough of and the queue of people (or the line as the Americans like to call to it!) was testament to the fact that I am not alone in my love of the Big Apple.

The Picturing New York photo exhibition in the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) features a collection of 145 black and white photographs from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. The photos capture everything that symbolises the diversity of New York from its architecture to its people but all portraying the vibrancy and velocity of the city. There were moments when I was captivated by an image of an iconic building and moments where I smiled at simple human interactions captured by the camera lens.

Admission is €5 so it won’t break the bank and the collection can be viewed in about 40 minutes so there’s not enough time for museum fatigue to set it. Like the city itself, it leaves you wanting more. It runs until 7th February.

From Temple Bar Hotel, take the Luas (Red line) to Heuston Station, 5 mintues walk from here to entrance on Military road.