Got back from Dublin last week. Talk about cool. I had no idea that I would end up in Dublin when I started this trip but lo and behold, there I was. Pretty crazy. It was a long and tiring but overall fantastic!
We met at the school on Wednesday at about 11:30 and headed for the train station. Our flight was actually out of Bratislava, and so we needed to catch a bus/shuttle to there. We found the bus without and mishap and jumped on it. The bus left at about 1 and we got to Bratislava around 3ish. Our flight was at 5:45 so we had plenty of time to sit around the airport and discover some of the beautiful intricacies of discount European airlines. For instance: If you aren’t a EU citizen you cannot do online checkin and are therefore required to pay a 6 euro fee. Also, if you want to check luggage? 12 euro. A seat that reclines? 9 euro. Ok, the last one is a lie. They don’t have seats that recline. Honestly, everything worked surprisingly well, considering all the busses and shuttles and planes we were involved with over the week. The plane ride was about 3 hours. No significant barfing to report. Our attendants were a couple of funny guys from Ireland that made fun of each other over the intercom and generally spent the flight making jokes with the passengers, etc. When we started to descent into Ireland, things got crazy. It looked like there were fires all over the city! Honestly, I had no idea what was going on. Was it terrorism? Had a citywide fire broken out that they were trying to contain? And then we saw the explosions. Lots of them. All around the plane. I knew Northern and Southern Ireland fought with each other a lot but heavens, now I was right in the middle of it! Actually, it wasn’t terrorism or natural disaster.
I’ve been here in Europe long enough that I forget about American holidays like Labor Day or Thanksgiving, replacing them with things like All Saints’ Day. Well, I didn’t know that Halloween was NOT only an American institution. Dublin celebrates Halloween! We were flying right in the midst of all of the Halloween celebrating! There were fireworks all around the plane and huge bonfires all over the city. Very cool looking. Who would’ve thought that I’d spend Halloween in Dublin? Never in a million years. Now we were all excited to get off the plane and see what was going on down there.
We landed, got over the oddness of all the signs written in English and trekked across the airport. (When you use discount airlines your gate is usually waaaaaay out there.) On the way we walked through a long hallway with pictures of faraway exotic places on the wall. Paris, London, Budapest, Prague…it was about halfway down the hallway that I started to realize that I’ve been to them all. Crazy! Eiffel tower? Check. Sagrada Familia? Check. Charles Bridge? Czech. I’m like a freaking world traveler all of a sudden! The only place in the entire display that I hadn’t been was Johannesburg, South Africa. Maybe I’ll put that next on the list!
We hopped a bus into downtown Dublin, dumped our stuff at our hostel and headed out into town to take part in the festivities. Dublin strikes me as a very youngish town. I don’t know if it was just the weekend we were there or if it really is a vacation spot for lots of youth, but it seemed like a great deal more than half the city was under the age of 30. Bars, parties, puking in the streets, it was all on display that night. Everyone was dressed up (we saw at least four guys in mini-skirts. Ouch). One of our number had a tour guide that pointed out one of the best places in the city to get fish and chips and we decided to get off on the right foot by going there.
Once inside the fish and chips place, we started to order. There were two varieties left at this point in the day: fresh or smoked. Allyson, unsuspecting of the renowned Irish wit, asked “What’s the difference between fresh and smoked?”. The guy behind the counter looked at her a bit funny and without missing a beat leaned over and in his hilarious irish accent said “Well dear, one’s fresh and….one’s smoked.” We all died laughing. Apparently Allyson’s question hadn’t been answered because she followed with “Well, yeah, but what makes the smoked one different?” Again, the guy behind the counter saw his opportunity and countered with a dry “It’s smoked.” Hahahahahaha…we still laugh about this incident.
Bus seriously, the Irish are pretty funny folks. Many times we were just doing something, minding our own business and some random person walking by would say something funny, usually at our expense. As we sat and ate our grease-laden fish and chips, some random dude shouted out “They’re full of cholesterol, ladies!”. So random! The next day, as I stared at my map in frustration, I said, in exasperation “Where the heck ARE we?!?” to myself. A man in a business suit walking by said, without even looking in my direction or slowing down, “You’re lost” and continued on his way. Hahahahaha! I loved it!
After the fish and chips we all felt pretty gross, honestly. We found a grocery store and went in to get something, anything, healthy to eat. I was looking for fruit and then I saw it. The holy grail. They have this lovely fruit smoothie stuff in England called “Innocent”. It comes it rather expensive (tiny) bottles but is fantastic. Nothing but fruit, smashed and put in a bottle. I had completely forgotten about it, but there it stood, in a liter container on the shelves of a Dublin grocery store. Like a gift from heaven. I bought one as quickly as possible and guzzled it. I thought it might have been a mistake to buy it right before bed because I couldn’t finish it but that turned out to be a moot point. No problemo. We went to bed for the night, in my case in a dormish type room with 11 other guys. Snoring? Smelly? Oh yeah…
Thursday was our “see Dublin” day. We wanted to get out of the city on Friday so we decided to try and hit all the sights on Thurs. We made a plan and headed out for a long day of walking and sightseeing. First stop was Phoenix Park. It’s a big park in the west part of the city. Not a whole lot to it, just a big park.
I mean, it was cool and all, but what can you say about a park? Trees, grass, squirrels, the usual. The oddest part was probably the incredibly green grass. Even in November the grass was VERY green. “Emerald Island”, I suppose.
After the park we went to a part of the National Museum and saw exhibits of Irish applied arts. There were some dishes, some metalwork, some furniture and some clothing. Didn’t have a lot of time there but it was cool to see things made in the different art styles and particularly the “Celtic” style. Betcha didn’t know there was a celtic style, did you? Yup! There was also an old Viking longboat on display there. We took some pictures, pretended to pillage a few places and moved on. Toughest part of these short trips to cities is that you can’t linger at cool places with Viking longboats.
We walked south from the museum to visit the Guinness brewery.
They don’t allow people into the actual brewery part any more, but you can get a tour of the storehouse. We went in but decided to forego the tour. If it were the actual brewery and one was able to see the actual process I would have done it, but that wasn’t the case. Even the free pint of Guinness offered didn’t sway me to take the tour. It was cool to go inside for a minute or two, however. Guinness is a pretty big deal in Ireland. There are signs everywhere for it and there’s quite a bit of national pride behind the beer. I didn’t dare share with the locals that I had been in Prague (supposedly the best beer in the world is in Prague) for fear they’d beat me up. Some of those drunken Irish rugby players are rough-lookin’ dudes! I was really tempted to get a Guinness rugby shirt but they were a tad on the pricey side so I passed. 45-75 dollars is a lot of money for a shirt, no matter how cool the beer advertised. Plus, I didn’t know how our director would react to me returning from Ireland with a Guinness shirt. Oh well, maybe I’ll get one next time I’m in Dublin…right…
Now, of course, it was time to get a little lost. What’s a European city without getting lost? I’ll admit, I purposely take random paths to desired destinations secretly hoping to get hopelessly lost and spend the day wandering around the back streets of these places. It didn’t work out exactly like that in Dublin, but we did get to see lots of cool little townhouses and found a lovely bakery selling Irish goodies. I got a loaf of bread called “Barm Brack” (Spotted Bread). It was a light bread with chunks of fruit in it. Unbeknownst to me, it is also a tradition to bake a ring into the bread and whoever finds it is going to be married in the next year. Well, being the only one eating the loaf, I inevitably chomped down on something hard and, well, I guess I’ve got less than a year. Look out ladies!
We finally emerged from the land of the lost and took refuge in Christ Church in the center of town. Ireland’s Christians are predominantly Catholic, but oddly, all of the big churches in Dublin are Protestant. I dunno why. Christ Church was cool.
They have a mummified cat and a mummified mouse that were found in the organ when work was done on it. I’ll tell you one thing, going to all these famous cathedrals and churches in Europe I’ve really wanted to play one of their organs. Sadly, they don’t let visitors (even good looking organ players from Montana) play them. Sad, eh?
After this we went to St. Stephen’s Green (great park) and walked up some famous road of which its name escapes me currently. Starts with a G, I think. Or a Q. Something like that. Lots of expensive-looking shops. The street led to Trinity college.
We checked out the college. I think it would be very weird to go to school at a tourist attraction. Maybe that’s just me. Trinity is home to a very cool exhibit called the Book of Kells, basically a really old Irish book made by Monks and such.
After Trinity College, we attended a evening choral service in St. Patrick’s cathedral. It also happened to be All Saints’ Day and they were having a special service for the holiday.
It reminded me of the service we attended in Westminster Abbey back when we in London. Beautiful cathedral, amazing singing, good service. A few of the girls in our group went up and took communion. I really enjoy going to services in these cathedrals much better than just walking through them like a tourist. It’s nice because they kick all the crazy tourists out for the services so the cathedral is peaceful and you get to see what it is really for instead of fighting your way through mobs to read pamphlets and eavesdrop on tour guides. We needed somewhere to eat after the cathedral so we stopped a place called “delish”, where we ate meat pies. They weren’t exactly authentic, as I realized that it was basically Irish fast food, but they were tasty and they got the job done. I think that was it for the night - back to my room with all the other gentlemen and off to sleep.
Friday was “leave Dublin” day. First, however, we wanted to do a little shopping. Everyone was looking to get something from Ireland. I wanted a rugby shirt and a Irish cookbook. As we travel Europe I’ve tried to pick up a cookbook from everywhere we’ve gone so I can cook the fun things we’ve eaten back in the states. We found a great bookstore where I was able to buy a cookbook and an English philosophy book (Hallelujah! They’re impossible to find for less than 40 euro in Austria). I never did find a rugby shirt for a reasonable price and so I came home empty-handed in that department.
After the shopping we hopped a train to take us to a little village north of Dublin called “Howth”. The train ride wasn’t long and it dumped us on the coast, looking at ocean, a harbor and a beautiful little village.
We hiked up the hill through the village to find a vantage point on top of the hill.
We never found it. Walked around for hours and never saw a bit of ocean from any hilltops. Just as we were in a suburb and about to give up, one of the ladies suggested that we turn right and continue and no more than 3 minutes later we arrived on huge cliffs overlooking the ocean on three sides. It was breathtaking!
We walked around on the cliffs until we found a place to climb down and went to the beach.
We spent some time dinking around, playing on the rocks and wading in the water. We hadn’t thought to bring swimsuits to swim in the Irish sea (silly us) and so I contented myself with a cozy spot in the rocks to read Bentham while the girls went ahead and went swimming.
We climbed back up the hill and watched the sunset over the ocean from the top. As it got dark we thought we should get going. I suggested an alternate route back to the train station, which everyone foolishly agreed upon and we got quite lost. Several miles later we found the train station two stops down from where we started and headed back to Dublin. Hahahahaha…
That night dinner was in a good old-fashioned Irish pub. Our waiter was flabbergasted when he asked what drinks we wanted and the whole table was a selection of fruit juices and sodas. We all tried to choose Irish foods (All except Sharolee. Lasagna. Really? Lasagna? In Ireland?) I was quite pleased to be able to order Bangers ‘n’ Mash. Anything called Bangers ‘n’ Mash has to be good in my book. It’s right up there with Toad-In-The-Hole! I was not disappointed in my expectations. A pile of mashed potatoes replete with sausages, smothered in gravy! Oh, good ol’ gravy. The English/Scottish/Irish do love their gravy. In fact, on all the tables there are ketchup packets, mustard packets and gravy packets. Just in case you happen to order the one item that isn’t already floating in gravy. After dinner that I night I was given the special treat of staying in a mixed dorm. Not only 12 people, but some were women! That was a first. Actually, it was rather anti-climactic. I got in when everyone was still out and left in the morning while everyone was still sleeping. Apparently I have a different sleeping schedule than others vacationing in Ireland. Imagine that!
Saturday we hit the streets early to get our fill of the markets and bakeries. Ate a few pastries for breakfast and visited the very small markets in Dublin. We were particularly excited to visit the “Book Market” we had seen listed. It was supposed to start at 10 but apparently that means that people start to set up around 10:30 and who knows when it actually begins. Anyway, we had a plane to catch and had to abandon our designs on the book market. We made it to the airport without any mishap and armed with our quickly-growing reservoir of knowledge on European travel made it home safely and much earlier than anticipated.
Honestly, after weeks of travel I was pretty exhausted. I don’t have any trips planned for a while, possibly a month, and I’m actually looking forward to a slightly less hectic schedule and being able to see some of the amazing things here in Vienna that I haven’t been able to see.
