Hidden City – Adventures and Explorations in Dublin by Karl Whitney

Hidden City – Adventures and Explorations in Dublin by Bus, Train and Tram: In the Sewers and Underground Rivers; Along the edges and behind the hoardings

Karl Whitney
Penguin Books

No this makes for an interesting tale or two. Dublin behind the scenes. Karl has put together a tourist book with a twist, Dublin beyond it’s cathedrals and parks.

As someone born on the northside of Dublin to parents both born on the same northside of children from that northside I feel a strong affinity to the Capital City. My Dublin however is not St Stephens Green or open bus tours, it’s St Annes Park and the grey streets of Donnycarney where I grew up. My first real venture to the Southside of the City was as a teenager with my first paid employment, cleaning a garden of a rich person that knew someone who knew someone. The far side of the River Liffey was alien to me, a world apart.

Hidden City takes us to places many tour guides don’t. Places like the grey streets of tallaght or walkinstown and the underground tunnels in the liberties or sewage pipes underground. Read between the lines here and your mind can conjure up so many images of Dublin, or so many books that could make good stories.

If you are at all interested in this Nation’s Capital then make this your tour guide. For me, as a native, there is something missing – maybe it’s just because I live in this hidden world that it doesn’t seem all that interesting.

niallhope