Dublin Is Amsterdam Without The Ha’Penny
Dublin’s Ha’Penny Bridge (it’s officially named the Liffey Bridge yet no one calls it that) is definitely a notable part of the city’s skyline. The white cast iron bridge has been around for almost two hundred years and was originally built to replace seven ferries that crossed the river. From this, the Ha’penny name emerged as pedestrians were charged a penny until 1919 (there were turn-styles at the entrances of the bridge) to cross the bridge to make up for the charges that were previously imposed by the ferries. One last Ha’Penny fact for you: The bridge is heavily used by pedestrians every single day. In fact, in 2001, research found that 27,000 people use the bridge daily! The Ha’penny Bridge was subsequently updated to cope with heavy traffic and I can only imagine that the usage number is well over the 27,000 today.
The reason why I’m on a Ha’Penny kick today is because I read some interesting statistics from a recent poll completed by Hotels.com. Images of large cities were shown to travelers with their famous landmarks omitted. So, for example, an image of Dublin was shown to people without – you guessed it – the Ha’Penny Bridge and travelers were asked to identify the city. A whopping 32% of Irish people polled could not identify Dublin without the bridge (but of course 68% correctly identified Dublin). What city did most people believe the image Dublin to be without its iconic bridge? Most guessed Amsterdam! On a side note, the Irish travelers polled were quite good at recognizing other cities without their famous landmarks (think Paris without the Eiffel Tower).
I’d like to think I would have recognized Dublin without the Ha’Penny but perhaps I would have been fooled too.
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Now I now why a lot of Dutch people, including myself, feel so at home in Dublin and Ireland LOL!
thats interesting. i think of all the postcards i got in dublin and they all included the bridge. great picture by the way!
Well, even though it is historically asserted that Vikings founded Dublin, their influence was very minimal in almost every way, along with the Normans, Celts (from central europe), Romans, and to a degree, even the English, such that Dublin, which does have that international, almost multicultural European city feel, is quite different from the west of Ireland, and even the outskirts of Dublin (Co. Lamhcán for example). The west of Ireland, esp. places like Co. Chiarraí (Kerry) and Co. na Gaillimhe (Galway) have scenery and a feel that it more reminiscent of northern spain. The north of ireland is also different unto itself.
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