BLOOMSDAY IN Dublin. Elegant ladies, all bustles and bonnets, glide along Grafton Street to the bemusement of tourists. The sun may be shining but in a large room with a lovely view at 15 St Stephens Green, the headquarters of the City of A Thousand Welcomes initiative, a fire has been lit.
The home fire is burning in honour of the first tourist to take part in an endeavour aimed to introduce visitors from all over the world to the more than 2,000 volunteers who have signed up to be “ambassadors” for Dublin.
Trevor White, writer and former publisher of The Dublinermagazine launched "thousand welcomes" last March, when this reporter became a volunteer.
White hopes to reinvigorate Irish hospitality, encouraging civic pride at a time when Irish identity “has taken a bit of a bashing”.
Yesterday, he asked me to be the first local to greet the first tourist to step through their grand Georgian door. I waited nervously, hoping the tourist in question didn’t expect encyclopedic knowledge of Viking Dublin and would be content with good pub/park recommendations.
My first impression of communications graduate Diana Morris (22), a New Yorker in Dublin as part of Boston College’s Ireland Internship Programme, was that she didn’t appear to be a high-maintenance tourist, which was something of a relief.
“I am just so happy to be the first person to take part in the programme. I think it’s a wonderful idea,” she said.
White and Simon O’Connor, project co-ordinator, did the introductions and told Morris how “thousand welcomes” works.
The initial meeting between tourist and ambassador takes place on these premises which later in the summer will be opened as The Little Museum of Dublin. The collection is still being curated, but already there are eye-catching historical artefacts dotted around the room. One 1940s political poster, hanging above Alex Findlater’s famous messenger bicycle, is particularly diverting: “Fianna Fáil is on your side, always was and always will be.”
After the introductions, the tourist is given a choice of three Dublin hostelries where they can go for a cup of coffee or tea, or a pint. These are the Merrion Hotel, Bewley’s and the Porterhouse pub, the initiative’s three “hospitality partners” who foot the bill for the drinks.
Morris chose Bewley's. We were given a voucher which entitled us to spend €10 in the cafe. It could have be awkward but I quickly went into proud Dubliner mode pointing towards Sheridan's Cheese Shop and the statue of Phil Lynott. "He sang The Boys Are Back in Town," I explained. "Oh , I love that song," replied Morris.
In Bewley’s we handed over our voucher, ordered coffee and croissants and I started listing all the things I thought are brilliant about Dublin: the Iveagh Gardens, Farmleigh, the Casino on the Marino to name but a few. I recommended the Saturday food market in Temple Bar for picnic provisions and told her about good-value restaurants, including Ukiyo on Exchequer Street which also houses private Karaoke booths.
My delighted companion said she had been “looking for a karaoke place since I got here.”
She told me she had been to Cork where she went to Blarney but declined to kiss the stone. “It’s not hygienic, I just couldn’t get past that fact.”
She will visit Galway this weekend and planned, after our chat, to sample a toasted sandwich in Grogan’s pub.
After an hour of chat, I asked her what she thinks of City of a Thousand Welcomes.
“It’s great to be given insider knowledge, which means you’ll get more from the visit. What’s also great is that now I know somebody from Dublin, it’s given me more of a connection to the city.”
We hugged goodbye near the Molly Malone statue. I’d a warm feeling all over. It was either the sunshine or a serious case of civic pride.
CITY SLICKERS: LOCAL COMMITMENT:
City of a Thousand Welcomes is a not-for-profit initiative set up to introduce tourists to locals eager to promote their city.
Tourists can sign up at cityofathousandwelcomes.com to meet with the Dublin ambassadors, who include Rosanna Davison, Bill Cullen and Victoria Smurfit.
About 2,500 people from all walks of life and all ages have already signed up. The sponsors of the service include Fáilte Ireland, Dublin City Council and Dublin Regional Authority.
The headquarters are in the Little Museum of Dublin on St Stephen’s Green, a new museum that will open later in the summer.
In the long term, organisers want to prove that the “thousand welcomes” model works and then roll it out globally where they hope it will become known as “that Irish thing”.
