After my brush with Bram on Thursday last, I decided to head to Dublin City Council’s Walk and Talk session centred around Dracula’s Dublin.
Arriving at 6pm at the Wolfe Tone statue outside the gates of St. Stephen’s Green, a huge crowd had already gathered-much larger than I had anticipated in fact, and I wondered how we would all be able to hear just one person above the din of the buses and other traffic rushing by. I mused to my friends that maybe we’d have been better off meeting behind the large stone wall to the back of Mr. Tone but they had chosen that exact site for a reason…it was the site of the Dublin gibbet, where those sentenced to death by hanging met their grisly end on a gallows on St. Stephen’s Green. Great place to start!
Image from antiquemapsandprints.com
Eventually the guide had arrived - with microphone! - and we, the hundred or so people who had turned up, with our free copies of the book and free ponchos for the rain -were away. First thing to take a look at was the Huguenot cemetery on Merrion Row. Having spent many years using the bus stop right beside it, I left the pushing and shoving at the gates to the tourists and on we went to visit Mr. Oscar Wilde in Merrion Square.
Photo from www.erasmuspc.com
Photo from www.animalpicturesarchive.com
A short reading from ‘Dorian Grey’, some stories of Mr. Wilde and we were off to the Merrion Square home of Le Fanu, another writer with Stoker associations. Another reading, this time more grisly and preceded by a story about the ‘real-life’ vampires of South America-blood licking bats!!
Our next stop took us to the square next to the Department of Agriculture on Kildare Street - also next to the home where Bram Stoker grew up and finally to the front of the Mansion House for a reading from Dracula itself! I’ve yet to start reading it but I’m looking forward to getting my teeth into it…mwahahahahahaha!!
The evening was rounded up with a free showing of Dracula in Meeting House Square but since there were hungry mouths waiting for me to go eat with them elsewhere, I decided to leave the film for another day 
Dublin City Council run these Walk & Talk sessions quite frequently on various subjects, for more walks have a look here.
Sounds mega
I just started reading it over the weekend. I just thought it would be nice to read the actual book despite already knowing the story. So far I am enjoying it, even if I am only a couple of chapters in.
As for the events, some of them look quite interesting (especially the ones on the comic adaptation and on Vampires in cinema), but I am usually far too lazy to get up and come into town on a Saturday morning.
@Rick - it was ! Well apart from the cold and the stampeding tourists
@Mark -shake yourself out of that bed and go to the event that most takes your fancy. Once you see how worthwhile they are it’ll be easier to get out the next time