Stephen Isserlis

An interesting day.

We thought Storm Éowyn might impact our plans for a day trip to Dublin.  And it did, though not exactly as we expected.

We had rung the National Concert Hall on Thursday, and been assured that, although they were cancelling the lunchtime concert, they were definitely planning to go ahead with the evening concert.

By midday today, the wind that had howled around overnight, and caused tremendous damage, mainly in the more western part of Ireland, but also locally (see extras for a friend's demolished greenhouse!) and in Dublin, had pretty much totally died away, and we had sunshine.  The weather warnings were all down to yellow, and we felt we would not be taking any risks to drive.

We ate a snack lunch, and set off to drive to Dublin.  The last few times we've been to a concert in Dublin as a day trip, we've parked at the Luas Park and Ride.  We arrived at Carrickmines P&R in sunshine and minimal (though very cold) wind, to find the Luas was still not running.

So we drove on into central Dublin - hardly any traffic!  Several other blippers have commented on a "lockdown feel" to the day.  We parked (at considerable expense) at a car park near St Stephen's Green.  We walked through amazingly empty streets (second extra, taken on Grafton Street), found a lovely Italian restaurant to have an early dinner, and then walked to the concert hall.  By the time we were walking to the concert hall, we noted that the Luas was now running, albeit with a reduced service.

We enjoyed the concert, but I think the works played would have come across better in a smaller auditorium, and W found Stephen Isserlis's OTT mannerisms somewhat annoying to watch.  

On the way home we decided that it's a long day, and although it wouldn't normally be as expensive as it was today, we should only book Dublin concerts if they are really special - though in my defence, I did expect "really special" from Stephen Isserlis.