By Ben Aitken

Copyright metro

‘A mini-Dublin with better Guinness’ (Picture: Getty Images)

In the latest instalment of Metro Travel Hot Takes, travel writer Ben Aitken writes about the redeeming features of an Irish city with a bad reputation.

The former Viking stronghold of Limerick, in the west of Ireland, is like a mini-Dublin with better Guinness and a bigger castle.

Having arrived at Limerick’s central railway station, I ordered an americano from a café called Siege.

Awaiting my beverage, I asked the barista if the café’s name recalled a historical episode.

‘Yep,’ she said, ‘a couple in fact. First it was your man Cromwell, and then it was William of Orange fifty years later. A pair of non-Catholic do-gooders, sticking their beaks in. Do you want milk with that?’

After a pleasant mooch around the vibrant Milk Market – which was buzzing with local producers – I proceeded to the aforementioned castle, which was put up in the 1200s at the behest of King John of England.

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I spent an hour wandering around the castle and its indoor exhibition – reading the boards, watching the vids, pressing the screens.

I must have downloaded 1000 megabytes, all things considered, and yet by the time I was out in the open and up on the keep, the only thing I could remember was that for a good chunk of the twentieth century, about thirty council houses were in situ within the castle walls, which struck me as social security gone mad.

After checking in at my hotel – an elegant Georgian establishment called No.1 Pery Square – I headed to an eatery called Canteen on Catherine Street.

Because one of Limerick’s nicknames is Pig Town (something to do with a once-thriving ham industry), I ordered the pork schnitzel, which arrived bearing a dribble of hollandaise and wearing a portion of matchstick chips.

It was decent grub, but I confess to being a touch troubled by the width of the chips. Matchstick fries bode ill, if you ask me, suggesting either a lack of potatoes (which is hardly an ideal note for a chip to hit around here) or rampaging shrinkflation.

Pig Town, Stab City, take your pick, but Limerick is more than its reputation (Picture: Ben Aitken)

Originally a tobacco and snuff factory, Cahill’s on Wickham Street is now one of the best places to buy loose-leaf tea in the country.

Its chief operating officer is Eleanor, who I found dressed in orange and safely into her sixties. My hour with Eleanor was a pleasant blur. I was told that Limerick is home to the nicest people in Ireland, and Eleanor was prepared to prove it with three nuggets of information.

That the actor Dominic West lives up the river at Glin Castle; that the pub isn’t a place to go in Ireland but a way of life, and that I ought to try a pint of that way of life at a place called Dolan’s on Dock Street.

I reached Dolan’s via the river, which was wide and lovely, and nicely lit. I paused to watch the water gliding darkly west, Atlantic-bound.

Channels of black were shooting out from shadow beneath the arches of an old stone bridge, giving the impression that the Shannon’s flow was being printed, that the bridge was a machine, issuing sheets of Guinness.

Eleanor, a true delight (Picture: Ben Aitken)

I couldn’t miss Dolan’s – green face, white windows, red neon trim.

I took a seat at the bar and ordered a Guinness. The pint. That’s what they call it. Note the definite article. It elevates the drink somehow. Puts it on a pedestal. Lends it status and clout. Not that the drink needs either of those things.

Guinness has an epic quality no matter the grammar: the master culture is kept under lock and key at -196°, for heaven’s sake, and then there’s the ceremony of having to wait for it to settle, as though it had the devil inside of it.

At this point, the musicians arrived. Two old boys, neither the spitting image of woke.

One had the stew, the other had the chowder. Both had the pint. And then they lifted their gear and made their music. An accordion and a guitar. A single stamping foot on old wooden boards. A strong spoken song. It did wonders for my mood.

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The next morning, I stepped out of the hotel and strolled the length of The Crescent, a gracious sweep that would be the envy of anywhere, before turning right on Upper Mallow Street, seeking a café called Rift.

They take their extraction seriously at Rift. My cup had no handle, which is always a warning sign, and was served on a small rectangle of marble, beside a vial of brown sugar and a teaspoon.

The coffee was flipping good, mind you. Went straight to my head. I sat in the window and spoke with a student of medicine. She reckons Limerick’s got bucket loads of je ne sais quoi, which must present challenges to the city’s marketing department.

With time to kill before my train to Dublin, I entered the gift shop of the International Rugby Experience, where I couldn’t resist a particular jumper.

It bore a list of cities: New York, Paris, Milan, London – the usual suspects. Amid the aspirational pack, however, was Limerick. A tongue-in-cheek inclusion, but not far off the mark.

Immortalised with the greats (Picture: Ben Aitken)

I asked the girl who’d flogged me the jumper what she would change about Limerick, given a wand and carte blanche.

‘The perception of the place,’ she said. ‘It’s all here. And it’s only going to get better. We just need people to know.’

Ben Aitken is the author of Shitty Breaks: A Celebration of Unsung Cities.

Come back next Monday for the latest instalment of B-List Britain.