Before abandoning the blogosphere for a fortnight while taking a well-deserved holiday, I was musing on some great sporting venues - in particular, the Recreation Ground, city centre home of Bath Rugby Club.
While I've been away I've taken in another one, which certainly isn't as picturesque but whose history is just as fascinating and whose rebirth in recent years has brought it to the attention of millions of new admirers.
Croke Park in Dublin is to the Gaelic sports of hurling and Gaelic football what Wimbledon is to lawn tennis; what the Crucible is to snooker; what St Andrews is to golf.
Dating back to the 1870s when it was the City and Suburban Racecourse, it lies just 15 minutes walk from the centre of Dublin; yet it's the fourth-largest stadium in the European Union and now holds 82,500 people in a stadium that has been almost wholly rebuilt in the past decade.
Completed on time and on budget, the renovation has cost around 260 million euros (roughly £180 million), financed from Government grant aid, the sale of long-term tickets and corporate boxes and from the funds of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), custodians of the two sports and owners of Croke Park.
Yet its' story really only came to the notice of the wider sporting public last year when Lansdowne Road, on the other side of Dublin and traditional home of the Irish Republic's Association Football and Rugby Union teams, was closed for its own multi-million pound renovation.
That left the FA of Ireland and the Irish Rugby Football Union with nowhere to go and paved the way for one of those small, yet seismic, shifts in attitude which epitomise how much Ireland has changed over the past decade.
In most other countries, it would have been the work of a moment for the IRFU and FAI to agree a deal to use Croke Park which is, after all, the only other stadium on the island of Ireland which is remotely fit for their purpose.
Yet Gaelic football and hurling were, until recently, among the most politicised sports on earth.
The two have acted as symbols of Irish independence and defiance of Britain since before the 1916 rising. Hill 16, the old terrace on the Railway side of the ground, was erected using the rubble of buildings damaged during those years. The Hogan Stand at Croke Park commemorates Michael Hogan, a Gaelic footballer from Tipperary who was among 14 people killed when British forces opened fire on the crowd during a game at Croke Park on November 21 1920 (the original Bloody Sunday) in retaliation for the murder of 14 British agents by the IRA earlier that day.
Until 1971, members of the GAA were prohibited from playing 'foreign', mainly British, sports or even attending those events as spectators. The GAA's Rule 42 banned the playing of 'foreign' games on GAA grounds, including Croke Park.
So before the way could be cleared for the temporary use of the stadium, an agonised debate took place within Ireland and it was only on April 16 2005 that the GAA's congress voted to suspend its ban.
My wife and I learnt all this during the excellent guided tour of Croke Park, which was conducted by a man who clearly had to swallow very hard before accepting the change and who noted, with just the slightest hint of bitterness, that no-one had ever offered the GAA alternative facilities while Croke Park was being rebuilt.
Yet as you may have seen during the recent Six Nations rugby internationals played there, this is a ground worth seeing. Even when empty, the place has a resonance all its own. The sight lines are magnificent, the top tiers of the arena are as close to the action as those at ground level, from a distance the ground looks modern but not ugly.
The GAA museum, which is attached to the stadium, tells the colourful and political history of Gaelic sports with some fascinating mementoes and some classic old black-and-white archive footage of the old ground. The museum is well worth a visit in itself, as is the Hill 16 pub just down the road, which served the best pint of Guinness tasted during my time in Dublin.
After visiting, I now have the GAA website among the internet favourites on my computer. I'll be following the All-Ireland Championships this summer with a new fervour (I've bought a Dublin shirt, even though my wife's parents emigrated to Birmingham in the 1960s from Donegal and Leitrim).
And I would recommend a visit the next time you go across the sea to Ireland.
The GAA website is at www.gaa.ie. The Croke Park stadium website is at www.crokepark.ie, while the GAA museum website is at www.museum.gaa.ie. The National Hurling League and National Football League quarter-finals take place this weekend, with the finals on April 22 and 29. The All-Ireland Championships in both sports begin on May 13 with the finals at Croke Park on September 2 (Hurling) and September 16 (Football), both at Croke Park.