Design Diary: Dublin
On what it means to come back, with money
Welcome to Design Diaries – a series that paints immersive portraits of destinations through their visual culture. Each entry explores the creative traditions – art, design, architecture, interiors, fashion, and beyond – that define a sense of place.
There’s something magical about visiting and revisiting the same city at different stages in your own life. Dublin is one of those cities for me: part time capsule that immediately takes me back to my early 20s, part reflecting pool showing me just how much I’ve changed. But it’s also funny to realize just how many of my interests haven’t changed at all: even as a broke college student, I was still drawn to grand museums, rich period interiors, and unique souvenirs.
I’ve been lucky enough to visit Dublin 3 times. On my first visit, I was a 20-year-old student traveling with my bestie; my catchphrase was “I can’t wait to come back, but with money.” My next visit came as a 23-year-old, when I escaped my entry level corporate job for a week away with my parents and sister. Most recently, I returned to Dublin as a 33-year-old traveling for business (and of course, tacking on a few days of solo sightseeing too).
These days, all it takes are the opening bars of The Parting Glass, the scratchy texture of my favorite wool blanket or a sip of a creamy Guinness to take me back. Consider this Dublin design diary my love letter to all the past versions of myself that I’ve been in Ireland’s lively capital.
On seeing Dublin as a 20-year-old student
When I first visited Dublin I was 20 years old, traveling with my best friend on a weekend holiday from our study abroad program in Spain. This was our first foray back into the English-speaking world in months. Upon arrival and before we’d even left the Dublin airport we picked up a pile of English magazines – a serious splurge on our student budgets. We read and reread a single copy of Glamour UK for months on end after we returned to Spain.
We stayed in a grimy hostel that can’t have cost more than €10 or €11 a night. We’d split a bottle of wine before bed to help us sleep through the inevitable snoring and muffled sounds of hanky panky happening a few bunks down. We ate more grocery store snacks than proper meals and had serious debates about whether we could spare the €9 entry fee to see the Book of Kells and the Old Library at Trinity College. I opted in – even on a shoestring budget, I couldn’t resist a bookish attraction – while my friend opted out.
Lucky for us, though, our tight budgets stretched farther in Dublin than in other European capitals. We spent a blustery day walking along the coastal cliffs in Howth and popped into every free museum we could find (Hugh Lane Gallery and the National Gallery of Ireland are both favorites). We even lucked into a complimentary guided tour of the National Museum of Ireland’s archaeology outpost, when a kind-hearted security guard informed us as we walked in that the museum would be closing in 15 minutes and insisted on personally whisking us around to see the top exhibits – ancient bog bodies and Celtic metalwork – in that time.
I left Dublin with more memories than souvenirs. I returned home with a few postcards depicting Georgian doorways and Temple Bar facades, a box of Guinness-branded golf balls as a gift for my sweet grandfather and yes, that well-loved copy of Glamour UK.
On seeing Dublin as a 23-year old, with my family in tow
At just 23, fresh out of college and climbing the corporate ladder at my first “real” job, I felt like the consummate grown up when I met my parents and 20-year-old sister at O’Hare International Airport to catch our flight to Dublin. I’d brought my luggage with me to my office in downtown Chicago, packed with outfits that I’d meticulously planned, then caught the Blue Line (IYKYK) to the airport after work.
In my mind, this was peak adulthood glamour, what it meant to return to Europe “but with money”: putting in a full work day, then hopping a transatlantic flight in the evening, still wearing the same dress and blazer that I’d worn at the office.
Reality was decidedly less glamorous: we landed early in the morning, bleary-eyed and jet-lagged, and were shuttled to a stuffy hotel that was overflowing with fellow travelers waiting to check in to their rooms. My mom – ever the energizer bunny – and I ventured out in search of coffee, while my dad and sister snoozed fitfully on the sofas in the lobby.
The funny thing about traveling with my family is that I hardly remember what we did; I couldn’t tell you the name of our hotel or a single place we ate or drank in Dublin. But I vividly remember the inside jokes (like the puppy postcard my parents insisted we schlep all across Ireland, mocking our incessant pleas for them to get a dog) and the sisterly spats (like my burning resentment that my sister got to have an impromptu photo shoot with a stunning Irish thoroughbred while I was off getting coffee). Dublin and its environs weren’t the main attraction; they were simply the backdrop for what my dad lovingly describes as “Forced Family Fun.”
My recollections of this trip may be hazy, but I did manage to come home with a few treasures that help jog my memory (another perk of the “come back, but with money” strategy). I picked up a lovely porcelain teapot decorated with cheerful pink roses (still on display in my china cabinet more than a decade later), a plaid wool throw blanket, and a copy of A History of Ireland in 100 Objects, a fascinating exploration of the objects and artifacts that tell the story of more than 7,000 years of Irish history.
On seeing Dublin as a 33-year old business traveler
For years, I’d not-so-secretly envied friends and colleagues who were sent abroad on work assignments, so when I finally got the invitation to attend a team offsite in Dublin at 33, I was thrilled. Was this the “come back, but with money” dream come true?
The work-sponsored part of the trip was not particularly luxurious – my dreams of flying business class were dashed by a terse email from finance, and we’d spend most of the week holed up in the Dublin office – but I was determined to make the most of a most-expenses paid trip to Europe. I built a few days of self-funded solo exploration into my schedule and set to work planning a bespoke itinerary for myself.
Because I’d been to Dublin twice before, I knew that I wanted to explore a different side of the city on this visit. I wanted to look beyond the hubbub and good cheer of Temple Bar and Guinness-mania and see the city through a more art- and design-centric lens. In the days leading up to my trip I fell down a veritable Reddit rabbit hole, scouring the internet for recommendations for where to see the city’s best interiors, art collections and antique shops.
My research served me well when I arrived. My weekend itinerary took me to an 800-year-old castle with period interiors and beautifully manicured grounds, a painstaking recreation of painter Francis Bacon’s London studio, and a thought-provoking tour of a Georgian mansion-turned-tenement. And my home base at The Wilder Townhouse – a charming Victorian townhome turned residents-only boutique hotel – was a welcome vibe shift from the dreary mega-hotel that my company put me up at.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but this trip to Dublin gave me an early glimpse of what Armchair Traveler would become. My art- and design-filled itinerary left me feeling energized and inspired, and it showed – so much so that several colleagues even requested copies of my itinerary. Though it would be many months before I began building Armchair Traveler in earnest, I’ll always look fondly on Dublin as the place where that early idea started to take shape (and of course, I’ve documented all of my design-forward recs in this Dublin city guide for design lovers).
I have fond memories of our trip to Ireland. Thanks for walking me down memory lane.
And I’d do the horse photo shoot again and again 😆