Thanks to Steven Glasman for the write up on his le cool Dublin Experience:
'Normally when I start in a new city, I’ll either explore on my own at first or I’ll take a guided tour that gives me a good overview of a city. Hop-on/Hop-off bus tours are really good for this, because you can see a lot of major sites in one pass and decide easily what you want to spend your time on later.
Dublin was different though. About two months before my Dublin trip, I stumbled across the “Le Cool Dublin Experience” online. From their website: “Find out about DIY culture, street art, fashion, emerging music and literature, artists, hidden historical gems and the latest trends.”
In other words, you never know what you’re going to get when you sign up for a Le Cool Dublin walk. The route and stops are different each time. Only the date and time are announced in advance, so you get there and the rest of the walk is a surprise. “This continually evolving two-hour tour will reflect the now and engage with people behind initiatives which are reshaping Dublin city in vibrant and meaningful ways.”
My tour started with a Q&A session with Jean Butler, who was in preparations for her show, “Hurry.” I was unfamiliar with Jean Butler before this walk, even though I’m quite familiar with Riverdance, a show she helped to launch. If you’re curious, just go to Youtube and put ‘Jean Butler’ in the search box. She’s quite well known, just not to me before this tour.
The Le Cool tour moved on to this gentleman, a tailor who makes hand-made suits. Jude Hughes has been running a tailoring shop in the same location since the 1980s. (Interesting side note: I did some Google searches to find the best link to point to for Jude, and in every single picture I’ve seen of him, he’s wearing a green sweater. Possible the same green sweater in every photo. That’s a bold, Barney-Stinson move, don’t you think?)
Our tour also visited a pair of people who were rushing to open up a new restaurant with a grand opening less than two days later- they were still constructing the place, and had just put the walk-in refridgerator into the building. They spoke with us for a few minutes but couldn’t really stick around.
The final stop of our Le Cool tour was at the apartment of Kevin Powell and Robin Hoshino, the folks behind News Of The Curd, to talk about their suppers. They do a weekly two course supper for roughly a dozen people, using locally sourced and seasonal ingredients in the Temple Bar area.
The Le Cool Experience walking tour was a very interesting introduction to the city, before I got on with the more typical touristy tours I had on my plate for the trip.
You can read the rest of this post and more from Steven's blog here.
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