A CITY OF TWO HALVES

Step count: 24,751 for today. That's a lot of steps. According to my phone it's about 15.5km of walking. It feels like it too; I'm happily exhausted after a day exploring Dublin.

I started it, questioning whether I really count as a morning person. I blame the noisy hotel breakfast. I had squeezed in behind a wobbly table and a Romanian girl in an apron, already rushed off her feet, placed a shiny teapot and a cup in front of me. My head was spinning while I poured it. Sure, at 9pm there's something to be said for that lively buzz of restaurant chatter - it adds energy and life and fun. It is altogether the wrong atmosphere for breakfast though, isn't it? I got up to get some toast and accidentally knocked the wobbly table, sending my teacup sloshing weak tea into the saucer. I concluded that I get grumpy a lot easier, earlier.

Nothing that can't be overcome by history, culture, art and wonder though! So with high hopes, I got ready, left my room key at reception and climbed onto the top deck of an open top bus.

This is now my established routine. See everything first, get a feel for the city, then decide what to explore in more detail. For 19 euros, I was driven everywhere: from the Guiness Storehouse, to the pub where James Joyce met Nora Barnacle; from the Ha'penny Bridge to Trinity College, and back again. I saw Oscar Wilde, lounging in a park, I learned about the triple-distillation of whiskey, I found out that the Duke of Wellington was Irish and I saw the bullet holes in the O'Connell monument, still there from the Easter Rising of 1916.

There's no doubt at all that this is a proud city, fiercely Irish and free. It's hard to imagine that it has only been independent for a century, as it feels like it carries a thousand years more history with it. There's a quiet nobility about that, in spite of the fact that all of Ireland was part of the UK until 1922.

My jaw dropped open as the bus pulled past St Patrick's Cathedral. The tour guide mentioned that it's been there in one form or another since the year 450. Everything runs deep in Dublin, and you can feel it in the stones.

In fact, I really did feel it in the stones by Kilmainham Gaol. A chill ran down my spine at one particular point, shortly before I found out that we were at Gallows Hill, the place where executions were carried out.

I visited the National Gallery of Ireland after the trip around the city. This is another great part of the routine - getting a flavour of a place through its collection of fine art. I didn't plan it this way - it's just turned out to be a tradition. Plus these places tend to be free, and that, you'll admit, is never unappealing.

Joseph was always talking about carpentry, it seemed.

The National Gallery is remarkable, not only for a couple of Picassos and a Rembrandt, but also because of the exquisite decor. One room, a vast expanse of portraits and busts was clearly a ball room on any other day. Two grand sweeping staircases swept past a covered piano, and four glittering chandeliers hung above the parquet floor. I actually felt like dancing, and for me, that is a rarity. Nonetheless, a kind of Straussian waltz was in my head as I imagined a small ensemble of finely-dressed Dubliners gracefully spinning in elegant 3/4 time.

"You're not going to believe it. That guy over
 there is actually wearing clothes."

There is the art of course. As you might expect, there are portraits of famous Irish people through the years, including the likes of Eamon De Valera, Gay Byrne and Graham Norton. There's also a fascinating window into Irish history and personality. There were the pictures that the Brits suppressed when it suited them - Donnybrook Fayre and simple Irish scenes of wartime normality. There were landscapes and allegorical pictures, and wonderfully drawn faces from the past looking straight out of the canvas and right at me. There is something so personal about a painting.

Plus of course, there was the usual collection of improbable Biblical scenes - Joseph looking stern while Benjamin opens a sack with a gold cup in it... in the woods, you know, the woods that Egypt is famous for... the white baby Jesus blessing some shepherds from his mother's lap... and of course, the fishermen hauling in the nets on what looked to me suspiciously like the Antrim coast. That kind of thing.

"Now boys, you'll need to remember
that secret handshake when you're older."

When I emerged from the National Gallery, it was raining. Again. It seems the rain in Dublin, and maybe the entirety of this verdant isle, falls straight down. There's no sideways about it - it just tumbles out of the sky as though by design.

"Ah no bother," I said to myself in a faux Irish accent. Now I'm a seasoned traveller of course and I came to Ireland well-prepared for the rain. I unzipped my rucksack and pulled out my mac-in-a-bag. It's a rain-mac that fits nicely into a small waterproof bag. It's perfect for hiking and journeying. I pulled it open, feeling smug.

The smugness was short-lived though: it turned out to be a pair of waterproof trousers. There's not a lot of point keeping the bottom half of you dry and toasty, when the top half of you is still wearing a t-shirt. I had clearly packed the wrong thing, leaving my mac-in-a-bag back in the UK.

I don't want to bore you with my attempts to solve that particular problem. Let's just say that for the third time in three weeks I bought a cheap umbrella, that in camping shops, macs-in-a-bag are 35 euros, and that for the rest of the day I've been walking around under a tartan monstrosity with an orange handle.

Dublin to me, feels like a city of two halves. Like London I suppose, it is divided into North and South by the river that runs through it. Today I ended up using the river as a bit of a benchmark to find my way around - when in the South, I followed the compass North (to get back to my hotel for example) and then when in the North, I headed South across the Liffey, for Trinity College, Temple Bar and the museums. There is definitely a lot more going on in the South. In a way, this makes Dublin feel like Edinburgh - although of course Edinburgh has no river, just that gorgeous glacial valley of park and trees. A series of exquisitely different bridges connect Dubliners from one side to the other. And that in itself, has the added advantage of making Dublin shimmer at night, whichever way you look at it - the reflections and the illuminated buildings make this city quite beautiful.

Another part of the city-break routine is definitely about being more adventurous with food. After getting back to the hotel and drying off, I had a sleep and then headed out for dinner. I was heading for Kathmandu Kitchen, a Nepalese restaurant of high renown. Of course, so was everyone else and so Kathmandu Kitchen, along with Monty's Nepalese Palace round the corner was already fully booked and steaming with hungry diners.

There are moments on these city breaks when I wonder how well I'd get on, if I were with another person in this situation. Hunger is singularly good at warping moods, and as I wheeled from restaurant to restaurant, looking for something suitable, it did start occurring to me that this process would be horribly frustrating for a companion. I nipped into a place called 'Crackbird'. The din was worse than the hotel breakfast. I hopped across the road to Iskanders - it had all the atmosphere of a chicken shed. I have no idea how I would explain why that won't do to a very hungry travelling companion. Thankfully, on this occasion, I didn't have to. It is worth thinking about though.

Eventually, I found myself in Kostas Greek and Mediterranean Restaurant, which I thought was suspiciously empty. I don't know why. I cautiously ordered a dish I'd never heard of, and moments later, the waiter brought out a square plate with a large bundle of aluminium foil on it. At first I wondered whether I'd accidentally ordered a bonfire-baked-potato. But I guessed that that's not classically Mediterranean.

 "Enjoy!" he said, smiling at the present in front of me. I unwrapped it and was greeted by lamb kleftico, an awesome stew of flavoured lamb and garlic and potato and wonder. A glass of Pinot Grigio, a chocolate cake and a final cup of tea and I was content enough to slip into my jacket, pop open my 4-euro tartan umbrella and stride back, across the river, through the shiny streets of Dublin to the hotel.

And somehow, all that took 24,751 steps. All good ones though.