What to do on a ‘tweettrip’ to Dublin?

I caught up with travel writer Michelle Brister from TheTravelEditor to discuss her recent whirlwind visit to Dublin where she gathered recommendations from people on twitter turning it into a terrific ‘tweettrip’ .

Tell me a bit about your background and how you ended up writing for The Travel Editor?

Well basically, I finished uni, went off travelling for a while, toyed with a lot of job ideas and when I was in Israel I decided when I came home I wanted to do something a bit different so I moved to Paris and started travel writing. I started with The Travel Editor by editing the Paris and Dublin pages and then it kind of grew from there, I’ve been on press trips, travelling around and writing, its kind of been a bit of a whirlwind that started at the end of January this year.

Was it your first time to Dublin?

No, but I have to say I discovered a completely new side to Dublin. There were various things I had been wanting to do for a while and which I managed to do like Dublin Zoo it seems a bit childish but actually loads of people said ‘yeah you have to go’ so I was really happy about that, and loads of things I never thought we would end up doing like having cocktail making lessons at Buskers, wewent along and though, this is a bit bizarre… Dublin… cocktails? But it was really great fun,  a completely different experience, the barman was lovely and we stumbled out 3 or 4 hours later.

You used peoples tweets as recommendations for your trip to Dublin, how did that come about?

Kevin one of the founders of Thetraveleditor had just been to Jersey doing a tweettrip so we  thought, why not do one on Dublin sounds like a good idea and visitdublin were really enthusiastic and it just kind of grew from there.

What else did you do and see?

We went to Kilmainham Jail and the Leprechaun Museum – that was really fun. The Museum  opened  recently and was a really different take, it wasn’t at all like a museum, the concept was thought up by a designer so you experience the world of the leprechauns .. it was kind of like a story telling experience instead. We ate at The Winding Stair, that was amazing, it’s something I’ve wanted to do for ages and someone said it was great, we received a really, really friendly welcome there, we also went to the Ritz Carlton at Powerscourt where I had a wonderful spa treatment for 2 hours where I fell asleep which is unknown for me as  I am one of those strange people who go for a massage and just get really tense, but I noticed myself snoring and woke up. Wonderful staff there aswell. What else did we do, it was such a crazy trip,oh we also went to the Gate Theatre to see ‘Krapps Last Take’ by Samuel Beckett and Michael Gambon was in it.

What was the real highlight of your trip?

Well on the food side was the Winding Stair, I don’t know why just the baked beans and cheese stays in my head… I would definitely go back there. We also stayed in the Merrion Hotel on the last morning ,we were so exhausted, we had breakfast in the room and it was just the most perfect thing and such wonderful staff there also.

Image courtesy of Michelle Brister – The Travel Editor