Joyceans bloom in baking sun

THE tall young man surveyed the sweep of city streets before him as he stood on O’Connell Bridge considering his next step in the footprints of Leopold Bloom.

At his side his young lady companion waited expectantly for direction and raised her eyes to meet her guide’s as he began to speak thoughtfully. “We’ll skip the brothels,” he said.

Bloomsday’s 100th birthday left the capital awash with couples squinting at maps of James Joyce’s Dublin and trying to work out where the landmarks immortalised in Ulysses were in a cityscape with a century of evolution under its belt.