We came back from Dublin on Friday. Oh. Should I start at the beginning? Alright, well, we left for Dublin on Saturday the 11th. We woke up early, caught a train to Rome, and caught 2 metros and a bus to get to the airport. We were exhausted. Before I travel, I rarely sleep well, and this time, I probably had about 3 or 4 hours of sleep before our alarm startled us. When we finally got to Dublin, we walked the way we had mapped out, and found 81 Gardiner Street, 83 Gardiner Street, but not 82 Gardiner street—the address of our hostel. So we kept walking. Down to Lower Gardiner, up through Upper Gardiner, we twisted and turned until we finally got frustrated enough to go into a building to ask if they knew where we were supposed to be. It turns out, we were in the right place. Oh, the luck we have! Anyway, we roomed with two Spaniards. Now, I hate to be the one to cast the first stereotype, but Spanish guys creep me out. I don’t know what it is about them, honestly, but I have yet to meet one that I have felt comfortable talking to. Anyway, our roommates were sleeping at 2 in the afternoon and told us that it was because they were partying too hard the night before. This, to me, sent up a warning signal. There were not any lockers in the rooms, but there were some near the lobby that you could rent for a euro a day. Instead of doing that, we left our clothing at the hostel and carried everything else. When I say “we” what I mean is “Kevin.” Always the gentleman.
We went to a cafeteria called Kylemoore, and then walked around Trinity College, and saw the book of Kells. We got cold walking around and found a pub on campus where we watched a stirring game of Rugby. This is the most confusing game ever. I thought football was bad, honestly. I would have given my right arm to be watching football instead of Rugby. I was so confused. The guys would get tackled and then weasel the ball away from the guy on the ground and keep playing. I told Kevin that they were making up the rules as they went along. They seriously could have been and I would not have known the difference. To top it all off, there was a crazy Irish guy who kept yelling “go English” at us, because he thought we were English. The teams playing were England and Italy. Many of the Irish wanted the English to lose, so it was interesting. We found ourselves locked in at this point and walked around forever, and eventually found our way to a Burger King. How very American of us, eh? Well, the fish and chips would come later. We returned home to our Spanish roommates, who took about 30 minutes to style their hair, and changed their clothing more times in one night than I do in a week, before heading out for another night of partying. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or scared because the shorter one left his jumbo pack of Durex in his book bag in the hostel room. I did mention they were creeping me out, right?
On Sunday in Ireland, we walked to St. Stephen’s Green, and walked around the mall, mostly, rather than the green. Ireland was warmer than Italy had been when we left, but still cold. We got a cup of coffee, and then ate at another American institution: TGI Fridays. I can hear you moaning in the background, but you have to understand, we had not had “American” food in 5 weeks. We then went Gallery hopping. We stumbled upon a Gallery of Modern art, and saw some cool video installments, abstracts, and photograuves (writing and pictures on top of each other) upstairs. Downstairs there were some pictures that looked like paintings. I wanted to grab this really big one, fold it up and whisk it away in my jacket. It was a black and white of trees. In this other room there were some paintings for sale, and most of them were rather sexually charged, some of which had rabbits in them. Just weird, honestly. I don’t understand who would buy those for 300-900 Euros and display them in their homes. What décor would that accompany? I have no clue. We also went to the National Gallery of Art. We walked around a long time looking for the Caravaggio room, only to find that it was a room dedicated to the followers of Caravaggio’s style, a bit disappointing really. There was a concert going on downstairs with really weird music bouncing off the walls in the gallery. It felt eerie, and made the experience more ominous than enjoyable. Eventually we found a cafeteria in the gallery and paid far too much for a simple bottle of water, and sat down on a bench where a man who looked like a someone in my brother’s scout troupe when I was little sat down to wait for his wife to come out of the gift shop (Vince, for those who know who I am talking about). We went back towards the hostel, and stopped at a little grocery store to pick up bread, peanut butter, and fruit to make dinner. We had those little sandwiches and water for dinner several nights that we stayed in Dublin. That night, we had a Polish girl for a roomate, whose name was hard to say, so I called her Nadia, and a guy we called “Chicago” because that was where he was from. Eventually his named evolved into “Creepy McCreepson” because he was just that. He came into the room completely wasted, asking us questions and telling us he was three sheets to the wind. Very strange. He also forgot to tell us his name. The people you come across in foreign countries in hostels. We were not at a youth hostel, but just a hostel. So, there were people who were in their 40’s chaperoning kids, and there were 30 year old drifters. Then there were people like Nadia. She came to Ireland to have interviews. Ireland is one of the few countries in the EU that is advertising for employees. It seems they are in need of workers because big companies have moved in, but do not have the manpower to stay up and running if they only offer work to Irish citizens. So we stayed another night in Dublin.
Eventually on Monday we went to Dublin Castle, had our mandatory helping of fish and chips, and took the tour that our asst. director recommended. It was really beautiful inside this castle-turned-government building. I took a picture of a portrait of the man that gave Earl Grey Tea its name, and we saw the oldest parts of the castle and the place where the river Poddle gathered in dark pools around the walls, which gave Dublin it’s name (Dubh= black, Linn=pool). When we were finished at the castle, we tried to find St. Patrick’s Cathedral, but wound up at the Guinness Storehouse, just typical of Ireland: either church or beer, yeah? In the building, there were exhibits that became less and less interesting as you made your way up. For instance, on the first floor, they had an old-reel-film that showed how the old barrels were made to age the beer, and the process of how the beer was actually made. You could even start the next batch of beer by signing up to push a button. On the last floor there was a description of the building and how the grounds grew and expanded from the late 18th Century until the 1990s…how exciting, yeah? (oh, by the way, “yeah” in Ireland is like the Canadian “eh” at the ends of sentences, haha). At the top, there was a 360 degree bar that gave you a free pint of Guinness. We actually went through most of the exhibits, so we got to the top when it was dark. The city was beautiful, and we took some great pictures. We were rushed through our pints because things were closing. I primarily went to the storehouse because it was on the list of “things to see” in Dublin, and because Kevin wanted to go. I don’t even like beer, but it was actually pretty good. I was surprised. I actually made my way through most of my pint before I got too sick of the taste to drink anymore. I was proud of myself, ha ha. It really is difficult for me to drink beer, but this was free, and they say the farther away you get from St. James Gate, the poorer the quality of Guinness. So here we were standing hundreds of feet above the gate, and the man at the bar hands me a free pint. I figure, if this is the only Guinness I would have, and it was the best quality of one of the finest made beers around, I might as well attempt it. At least we weren’t at the Jameson distillery, ha ha. I would not have been able to even take a sip of whiskey! After we rode the elevator to the bottom floor, we wound our way back through Dublin to our hostel, and stopped at a fast food joint to use the facilities and eat salad. We were starting to miss our nightly salads, and even though the old advertisements said “Guinness is Good for You,” I highly doubted that this “pork chop in a can” would give me the kind of nourishment my body was craving. We went back to the hostel, and kept trying to get online, but for some reason, Kevin’s adapter was not working with the wireless system anymore. We went to bed, with the same two roommates in tow.
In the morning, it was Valentine’s day, but it really did not feel like it at all. Throughout the day, I counted the number of people carrying flowers, and we got to 41. We went and walked around St. Stephen’s Green… this time we really walked around the green. The mall had the cleanest bathrooms around, so we stopped in, but we really just got coffee, took pictures of the green, and sat and talked about our plans for the future and things we would like to do with our lives. We had discovered an Indian restaurant in our wanderings the previous day and decided to eat there. We had some really great food, and talked for a long time, before making our way to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It was large, but not as impressive as I expected after having seen Christ Church the day before. We wandered some more, and we went to the hostel to make sandwiches and change to go to a play. We had tickets for the play, called “Homeland” and thought it would be a good Valentine’s day date. We didn’t understand the half of it, because it was all a commentary on Ireland, so we were out of the loop, but the actors were good. We had a new roommate, Alex from Mexico. He was looking for a job as well, and we found out later that night that he snored… a lot. It was really hard for me to sleep.
On Wednesday, we slept in until 11am, and it was heavenly, especially after trying to sleep with Alex in the room. He was a great roommate, but wow. We sat around and took some cute pics and took a nap and ate. We wandered around the St. Stephen’s Green Area, and tried to find “Kevin St.” which we saw on a map in our hostel. We never did find it, but we discovered a sign for a restaurant called “Dorene,” ha ha. We wandered around the mall, tried to find a movie, and eventually bought pins for Kevin’s satchel. It was a nice slow day, and Alex didn’t snore too much that night, so all was well.
On Thursday, we went on a bus tour. It was our most expensive tour of the trip, since most everything we did was free or less than 5 euro each on the student rate. We woke up early and walked down the street to our pick-up point. Our driver called himself “Young Dave” and looked a little like Jack Nicholson. It was a fun tour. He enlightened us about the economic plight of the Irish and some history of the area, all while joking around. We stopped for coffee and scones (but Kevin and I had a cookie instead, haha) and we saw James Joyce’s tower (where he wrote Ulysses), as well as the beach nearby where people jump in the sea to acknowledge James’s (tub-less house and) sea-bathe in the mornings…brrr! Our drive through the mountains took us past Enya’s house, and several other famous Irish abodes. We walked through a town that was built by St. Kevin in the 600’s. The people there lived until they were in their 90’s and 100’s, and no one really knows why. We saw some lochs, and took some lovely pictures, while talking about whether or not we would ever move to Ireland, haha. Near the lake was the cave where St. Kevin spent his last 6 years in solitude, and where the love scene from Braveheart was filmed. We ate Guinness stew and drank Guinness at an Irish Pub that had been built in the 1700s. Young Dave commended me on my ability to look so Irish just by eating the appropriate foods, haha. Anyway, we drove through the Mountains more, and got out in the wind to see a lake that looked like a pint of Guinness. Our faces, ears, and eyes regretted our decision to leave the bus to get pictures of the valley, as the wind ripped around us, nearly knocking us down, and forcing stinging rain into our eyes. Later, we saw the “Camp David” of Ireland, where they negotiate treaties and such things, and where Prince Charles planted a tree for peace. We had some tea, and drove down the mountains back into Dublin. We agree that this tour was the best part of our trip to Ireland. When we got back to Dublin, we walked around the mall and the shopping area, and saw some overpriced boots. We went back to the hostel and got online on Alex’s computer. We met our creepy Hungarian roommate, and our new Spanish roommate and went to bed early to catch our plane.
Our trip back home was long, honestly. We caught a 9:15 bus to the airport, but were not able to sit together because it was packed so tight. We were lucky to get seats at all. Then at the airport, we could not check in when we arrived because we were there too early. We drank insanely hot tea, and tried to cool it in various ways. Through this boredom and tea experimentation, I learned that eyeballs do not like it when you giggle through your straw into hot peppermint tea, lol. We stood in an enormous line at the ticket counter, checked in, took another look at books that we could not convince ourselves were worth the 11 euros they were asking for them, and went through security, where Kevin went through without a hitch, and I got stuck behind a guy who kept walking through with a metal lighter in his pocket and beeping in the detector. Our concourse had a bar in it, and as we stood in line to embark (the airline has a first come first serve policy on seating that makes it hard to get a seat together) for two hours-ish, we saw a guy down 4 pints of Guinness (half a gallon for those of you who are mathematically challenged). Later, on the plane, he went to the lavatory a record number of times, haha. We were late landing in Rome, late getting to the bus, and then took forever to weave through rush hour traffic, making us miss the trains to Viterbo. We did make a train, but had to run through the station to catch it. We barely got seats on this train as well. We finally came to Viterbo, where we dropped our stuff and ran out to the Chinese restaurant across town to talk about how much we missed our Viterbese home.
So that was my really lame account of our trip to Dublin. If you are still reading, you must really be a masochist, because my writing and explanations in this entry are painful, haha. Mom, don’t forget to water my plants!
A Presto!
Doreen