14 Henrietta Street/Literary Pub Crawl

Two things on our agenda for today:

First, we went to 14 Henrietta Street for a very touching tour of the building. 14 Henrietta Street has over 300 years of people’s lives in its walls. We heard the personal stories of those who called 14 Henrietta Street home, starting with the rich in the 1700s who occupied it as a single family and then the horrible hardships of the poor who lived there when it housed 100 people. Almost 1000 people lived on the short Henrietta street in tenement housing, and the living conditions they endured were unimaginable. 😞

Tonight, we got to experience a Literary Pub Crawl where we enjoyed some Irish ballads, met some wonderful local young men and heard the words of Joyce, Wilde, Yeats, Shaw and many others acted out as we moved from pub to pub. The last pub was often frequented by James Joyce and it has a first edition copy of his book, Ulysses displayed, along with a photograph of Sylvia Beach who is known for her Paris bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, where she published James Joyce's book Ulysses in 1922…great evening!

Tomorrow, we’re taking a train to Kilkenny, where some of my ancestors were born. 🙂Read more