Dublin

Okay I did say I was going to tell you something about Dublin in the hope that everyone else will send me something to put up on this page.

Well Derrick and I have been living in Dublin now for over 5 years, Derrick arrived a month before me and had the task of finding somewhere for us to live. I don't know who got the raw end of the deal, me packing up in SA or him finding somewhere in Dublin.

I must say I was very impressed he found an apartment block on the South Side of Dublin (which is supposed to be the better side), the apartment overlooked the Dodder river and was just cosy enough for the 2 of us. It only had 2 bedrooms, small kitchen, lounge and that was it. Once Emily came along it became too small, but luckily we found another apartment in the same complex double the size of the last one for practically the same amount of rent.

Dublin is a quaint town, it has so much history - it is over 1000 years old and I think what I love about Dublin the most is the culture. Trinity college is world renown for turning out so many famous writers and poets.

Irish people in general are very friendly and they have a wonderful accent almost as nice as the Scottish but still not as nice. We live about a 10 minute drive from the nearest beach, however you wouldn't really want to swim there, the nicest beaches are either an hour South or North of Dublin. However the water is pretty cold, although not quite as cold as it is on the west coast.

Another great thing about living in Dublin is its close proximity to the rest of the world bar of course the Southern Hemisphere. Dublin is a small town and probably a 10th of the size of London, it reminds me of Jo'burg in the early Eighties.

I am not a statistician but I think the whole of Southern Ireland has a population of about 4.5 million people, and at least 1.5 million of those live in and around Dublin. Dublin is becoming more and more cosmopolitan especially with all the new EU countries. There are also over 100,000 Polish people living here, and can you believe it about 45,000 ex South Africans. Not to mention the Lithuanians, checks etc.