There is a Dracula museum near the DART station in Clontarf, which just happens to be built over the house where Stoker grew up. (For those who care, the museum is on the second floor of the largest fitness center in Europe)
The first part of the museum deals with Stoker's life, which is itself very interesting.
Until he started school at the age of seven — when he made a complete, astounding recovery — Stoker was an invalid. After his recovery, he became a normal young man even excelling as an athlete at Trinity College, Dublin (1864-70), from where he graduated with honors in mathematics.
Bram Stoker was born in Dublin in 1847 at the height of the Great Famine. This was one of the most catastrophic events in Irish history, with hundreds of thousands of people dying from starvation and disease or emigrating in 'coffin ships' to America.
The famine may have inspired the visual characteristics of Count Dracula and also his infamous obsession with bloodsucking. His mother would tell him often gruesome stories of her childhood, particularly those concerning the great cholera epidemic of 1832, when humans drank the blood of cows as a source of nutrition.
There was a suicide burial plot in Clontarf, Dublin, where Stoker lived. As a boy the author used to spend hours playing in that graveyard and St. Michan's Church, where the Stoker family had a burial vault.
Dracula comes from the Irish word "Droch Ola", which means "bad blood". Stoker's mother was from the West of Ireland and she told Bram about a cholera epidemic in 1832 when she witness large graves and people being pushed into them with wooden poles while they were still alive.
The second part of the museum was basically a well done haunted house, full of Dracula scenes, that scared Sierra to pieces.
