Hopping off the bus from Blanchardstown yesaterday I scurried from Manor Street to Bolton Street, reminded of the glories of Dublin’s architecture.

On North Brunswick Street I snapped a photo of the red brick Victorian-era building formerly housing the Richmond Surgical Hospital. I iMessaged the photo over to a Fulbright Scholar who recently arrived in Ireland, who teaches and conducts research at a medical school. The former hospital is being renovated into an educational center. It retains the ward layout common in the 1800s
as well as elegant outdoor porches for patients to recuperate in fresh air.

I darted across Church Street and up Constitution Hill, bumping into a class of DIT students learning to conduct geologic surveys as I criss-crossed the park at the Kings Inn Law School. The male carotids (the sculptures supporting the beam above with their heads) at the Deeds Office seemed frozen in action on this very cold day.

I ducked through its arcaded courtyard and continued down Henrietta Street, which is bound by regal Georgian town homes.

Passing by the historical front of DIT’s Bolton Street building, I slipped in the side entry, through the courtyard, up the stairs to the lofty top floor, and past the “crit pit” to an informal meeting with the new Assistant Head of DIT’s School of Multi-Dsiciplinary Technologies. He’s using the office space I enjoyed during the autumn — with a sweeping view across the city and toward the Wicklow mountains.