“How, exactly, do you consider yourself a teetotaler?”

This from the head of the Irish production company over dinner. Two days earlier I had excused myself for nursing my Guinness and failing to pound down the booze with the big kids using this lame, but generally accurate descriptive term. Now I was drunk, and there was no denying it. I’d been outpacing much of the table, greedily guzzling quality wine that had been ordered in bulk. Someone kept filling my glass, and I hate to be rude by letting a fine vintage I know nothing about go to waste.

By day three we had settled into a routine of a room full of producers, broadcasters and writers bickering with each other about a bunch of fictional characters and their imaginary tomfoolery. It’s silly that grown men and women do this sort of thing at all, let alone do this sort of thing for a living with huge wads of cash on the line. If we had all been rolling a bunch of ten and twenty-sided dice, it would have been eerily like my last role playing session in college – the one that made me quit because I much preferred getting on with the story as opposed to arguing over who made what saving throw versus sudden death. Well, turns out writing in the big leagues isn’t all that different. Now they just pay me for being a geek.

The only thing that kept day two of work from being a virtual carbon copy of day one was our lunchtime excursion for some authentic U.K. cuisine – namely fish & chips. The smoked cod came highly recommended, and I must say it was something of a relief to eat a meal that didn’t require me to keep track of the correct fork for the correct course. It’s fun to play snob every once in a while, but when it comes to stuffing my face, I enjoy myself more when the only point of etiquette to keep is mind is to not vomit directly onto someone else’s plate. You can call me low-class if you must.

The day ended early enough for me to get in some good urban hiking before the next social engagement. I’d failed to walk all the way along the River Liffey my first day out, and this time I was determined to get a look at the sea. Mapping my rather lengthy route out to a marked green space north of the docks, I began an excursion that took me through some of the rather less scenic sections of town. The highlight of this trip was my epic journey along Wall Road. Aptly named, Wall Road consists of two imposing walls on either side of the road and a lot of trucks rumbling up and down it, kicking all sorts of dust and grit into the air that helps mask the rotten fish smell. After cutting through this industrial wasteland and marching another mile up a road that was one massive construction site for another one of Dublin’s ill-conceived infrastructure plans (this one a tunnel too small to fit the trucks it’s suppose to service), I finally arrived at my goal. The shoreline.

The blandest, most uninteresting stretch of shoreline I’d ever laid my eyes on. I took a picture so I could remember it forever.

At this point I was navigating with a much better map than the one I’d downloaded and printed out. Dublin Castle had offered me a very functional free tourist map. I had now, however, walked right off the edge of it.

My original intention had been to take the train back downtown. I spent far too long trying to find the station, and longer still trying to find the cleverly hidden entrance to the station grounds. They tried to fool me by disguising it as a hedge, but I clued into their deceit after some twenty solid minutes of hunting. The train, however, proved to be off limits to the casual commuter, with an elaborate pricing system and an exact change rule. Thoroughly intimidated, I decided it would be much easier to walk my ass back to the hotel through the rather less-nice north end of town. I can offer no pictures of this leg of the journey since I assumed that the sight of a camera might label me a readily muggable tourist even more than my infrequent but necessary map consultations.

Arriving at my hotel in once piece, I had exactly enough time to change and rendezvous for the next grand feast. More great food and a perfectly drinkable wine aside, the most interesting wrinkle on the evening for me was the arrival of another member of the Irish film industry. Not directly associated with our own production, he nevertheless proved to be an interesting conversationalist with a genuine appreciation for Irish history, medieval to ancient. I suppose it helped that he lived on a particularly historic stretch of land popular with the pagans who descended on the property once a year during some equinox-type event to eat huge quantities of magic mushrooms. Mind you, every stretch of property in Ireland is historic in some way. In fact, he explained, metal detectors are highly restricted in the country and you need a special government permit to operate one. Why? Because you WILL find stuff. In North America you’ll likely come up with a lot of bottle caps and, if you’re very lucky, pocket change. In Ireland you could well stumble across a national heirloom. So the government wants to know there are reputable archaeologists snooping around out there, not some beachcomber in a floppy sunhat and a Hawaiian t-shirt who’ll take a priceless artifact to the pawn shop for beer money. They already have their hands full trying to keep farmers from ploughing over priceless dig sites in the name of good grazing or a higher potato crop yield.

As I downed yet another glass of wine which, peculiarly, increased the decibel level of my conversation with each mouthful, our Irish historian also had some words of wisdom for us. If it’s not an actual Irish proverb, it seems to sum up a common sentiment.

“Don’t trust a friend who won’t get drunk with you.”

As I walked home, making a conscious effort to keep from staggering around on my uncoordinated feet, I felt I’d successfully earned that trust.

An ode to the potato famine, this charming statue looks as though it might have been designed by George Romero. The hungry peasants, wasting away from the legendary 19th century blight, look like they would gladly take a bite out of you in an effort to put some meat back on their ribs. I particularly like the starving dog in the back. He makes for a nice final touch of horror to the landmark I vote “Most likely to traumatize children for life.”

The warning against vandalizing public property is likely directed at the Vikings in the longboat parked across the river. A thousand years later and those Scandinavian bastards still don’t know when to stop pillaging.

Less than an hour in the country and what was the hot topic of discussion? Booze. Guinness specifically – Guinness predictably. Our cabbie was explaining to us that should the tap at the pub ever run dry of Guinness, the only acceptable substitute is Budweiser. Not Kilkenny as one might assume.

“Budweiser?” I asked incredulously. I’m not beer drinker, but I’d still been raised with a healthy disdain for all American beer, which seems to be shared the world over. Or at least everywhere that’s not America.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” he explained, “Budweiser is horse piss. But it’s better than Kilkenny.”

I suspect this is a regional argument, centred around Dublin, home of Guinness (which also makes Kilkenny despite it being named for another town). Much as you don’t come to Montreal extolling the virtues of the Toronto Maple Leafs, you don’t come to Dublin and talk about Kilkenny unless you want to be sipping your Kilkenny through broken teeth. If you have any doubt about the local loyalty to the dark ale in question, just hang around the baggage carousel at the airport for a few minutes and you’ll get the picture. I spent a good deal of time there waiting for the verdict on my travel companions’ lost luggage that had failed to make the Philadelphia switch. In that time I was subjected to the same ad over and over again on a television monitor that was supposed to be offering useful flight information, but was instead telling me, “No trip to Dublin is complete without a visit to the Guinness brewery.”

Seriously. Dublin has buildings that are A THOUSAND YEARS OLD. They’re just sitting there waiting for you to come and explore them. There’s so much history on a block-by-block basis, it can make your head explode. And they want me to run and see where they make the fucking beer?

It was Tuesday morning. Once we were safely checked into our luxury hotel and had a good greasy Irish breakfast in our bellies, it was time to get some rest. This was set aside as a day of relaxation and reorientation to shrug off the jet lag and catch up on our sleep.

I was having none of that.

Fuelled by a fresh pot of strong coffee, and armed with a printout of a wildly inaccurate city map I found on the web, I took to the streets. If I was going to be stuck in a conference room for the next three days arguing the minutiae of a TV show that didn’t even exist yet, I was going to seize my one big chance to take in the sights.

Dublin is a very walkable city. You can cover a lot of ground and see a lot of landmarks in a short period of time because the layout hasn’t changed much in centuries. As other cities might have a clothing district or jewelers district, Dublin has things like a Viking district, because those were the guys who got to shape that end of town over 1200 years ago. Recent buildings date back to the mid 1800’s. Brand new buildings are scarce and you actually have to search for them. This is what a European city looks like when the Germans don’t get a chance to bomb it flat.

The fact that Dubliners seem to care much more passionately about their beer than their history is easily explained once you’ve walked around for a few hours. Beer is an immediate experience. It’s here, it’s now, it’s on demand, and it’s always fresh. The history, however, is tremendously old and all-encompassing. It’s bloody everywhere, and it’s overwhelming. You walk on it, you breathe it, and if you don’t look out, you’ll bump your head on it. There’s simply too much to take in, so you become blasé about it as a defense mechanism. By mid-afternoon I was turning my nose up at two or three hundred year old architecture.

“Two or three hundred years? Bah! Show me something OLD. If it doesn’t predate the discovery of the New World, I’m not interested.”

And there’s more than enough of that stuff to go around, too. Understand, I was born and raised in Canada and live in a house that was built a mere forty-four years ago. If we, as Canadians, see something that’s been around for a century, we think it’s old. We have no concept of ancient whatsoever. There are trees in this country, alive and well today, that pre-date the arrival of our earliest European settlers. Dublin, on the other hand, has books lying around that were written before anyone knew my home continent even existed. So when I walk through the crypt beneath Christchurch Cathedral, or spelunk my way into the remains of Dublin Castle’s original northeast tower (the one where they had to remove all the rotted heads before they could parade the tourists through the area), or walk along the city wall gates that were erected to keep the Vikings from returning to set up shop again…well, it’s hard for my little Canuck mind to grasp the sheer longevity of it all.

By early evening, I’d seen an insane number of landmarks without ever having to hail a cab or hop a bus. I returned to the hotel to shower, change, and hook up with everyone involved with both ends of the proposed production in time to hit the pubs.

I’d been warned there would be drinking involved. This was, after all, Ireland. My ancestors had vacated the premises and hopped over to England generations ago, but judging from some of my relations, the fondness for drink went with them. It’s not something I inherited, however, so I’d been wracked with performance anxiety for weeks. As I struggled through my obligatory pint of Guinness, I was already on my way to drinking myself under the table. It wasn’t drunkenness, it was exhaustion. At this point I’d been up for a good thirty-two hours straight, and there was no way I was going to survive a night of socializing and shots. I wasn’t just nodding off, I was about ready to hit the floor dead to the world.

Excusing myself on the grounds that I wanted to be fresh for the next day when work would actually begin, I returned to the hotel, made a quick supper of the complimentary fruit and chocolates that had been brought up to my room, and then lapsed into a coma.

Exiting Dublin Airport, the first landmark of note is the flying pig statue opposite the taxi pickup lane. The implied message at this bustling airport: You’ll get a cab into town when pigs fly.

The entrance to the grounds of Trinity College where Oscar Wilde (and I suppose a few others) studied. The cobble stones are worn away to a fine polish by centuries of footsteps. The mortar between them has suffered even more wear and tear, making the height difference between it and the stones it binds together painful to walk across. This is, doubtless, an intentional feature to discourage the legions of tourists who come to see the Book of Kells. Although I was not turned back by the uncomfortable courtyard surface, I was driven off by the discouragingly long line of people there to see the day’s four page display.

Dublin Castle, now headless. Note the varying styles of architecture typical of buildings this old. You can tell on a century-by-century basis which parts burned down and when they were rebuilt. The turret is the one remaining tower of the original castle. The cathedral is a much later addition, the interior of which is mostly wood that only looks like marble. The cathedral had to be made very lightweight so as not to collapse into the old moat that still runs beneath it and the adjoining parking lot.

Get famous enough in Ireland and you too might be interred in one of its famous cathedrals. The centuries will just fly by as addle-minded tourists of all faiths rub their grubby little hands over your monument and wear away the finer details of the masonry. The fellow up front has only been around for a century and a half, so his sarcophagus is still in good shape. Not so the chap in the background who, as one of Christchurch’s oldest fixtures, has been worn down to an indistinct nub.

No room in your local cathedral? Well, you can still hope for a statue if you’re a big shot, or a bust if you’re a murdered crusading reporter. Okay, a bust isn’t as cool as a whole statue, but not many of those statue guys get a feature film tossed into the deal.

Once they kicked the Vikings out, it was time to build a city wall to make sure they never came back. This used to be the front door of the city back in 1240.

But don’t go thinking all of Dublin’s monuments and landmarks are ancient. The Spire, erected way back in 2003 and pictured left, is the tallest structure in the city. Surrounded by so many old buildings, its gleaming smooth metal surface makes it look completely unreal from a distance, like a bad cgi effect dropped into a low budget science fiction movie to make an otherwise normal cityscape look all futuristic and Jetsonsesque. Ultimately, it’s just a spike. And it lights up at night. “Yes, but what’s it for?” we asked our cab driver as we passed by. “It’s for wasting our money,” he told us flatly. Four million Euros to be exact.