This post will most certainly be out of order chronologically, but I must write it now as I am drunk and bursting with love for Dublin. I have found the Motherland! A kind race, the Irish, so ready not only to laugh richly, but to belt out song. They sing as they walk by on the streets and they definitely all, every last one in the crowded bar, not just the bartenders, sing ballads and popular songs alike as the guitarist makes merry the crowd. I have a list of bars on my phone entered by new friends who tell me the Irish comes out at eleven pm and oh, man, wait until you’re in a place with a fiddler and accordion-player.
I am staying at a dear hostel, La Troupe Jacob’s Inn in an eight person (mixed male and female) room. We each have our own pod and locker. Here is mine. It’s got a curtain for privacy, a charger for the phone and two different lights for reading if you please. The bathroom is shared, but my roommates have thus far been clean and respectful and there’s another common one right down the hall. The staff is sweet. Breakfast was generous and the free welcome half-pint of Guinness was thoughtful. The location is great. If you’ve never been in a hostel, here is a snapshot of my pod.
My flight got in at five in the morning, meaning that I lost a night of sleep. I had a cappuccino and took the local bus, number 16 I think, down to the Liffey River. It jumped off where it looked pretty and like it might be downtown. It was a good choice. A good starting point for a lovely exploration of the city, an interesting stroll past a bronze statue of two women on a bench with their handbags sitting next to them. You could download an app and listen to them and realize the next day that you had used up your 3 GB allowance on your eSIM by doing just that and trying to download the music background from the faded QR code on the sign at St. Stephens’s Green. It’s a beautifully manicured and spacious park with loads of flowers, immaculately maintained, and with grand old trees providing shade over lawns of soft grass, perfect for a nap. The deep jet lag kind.
Too, the statuary was there is cool, dedicated to poets and game-changers for the good of society. I was feeling blessed as I drifted off to birdsong. I’d watched two movies on the plane from my sardine-can space: A Complete Unknown and the one about the Bobby Riggs and Billy Jean King tennis competition over the equality of women in 1973. Customs at the Dublin airport, a straightforward and pleasant affair. The other side of the trip had been maddening. An Amtrak delay in Philly set me up for a race to JFK, where I faced a stalled very long snaking queue for inspections. But that was in the past.
This park exists, as does much laughter citywide, compliments of Lord Guinness.
This memorial to Dublin is a gift from Germany for taking care of their children during the War. The park pavilions served as hospitals during the 1916 Easter rising. Women played a large role in this history and the openness of the Irish to female participation on all fores helped the women’s equality movement gain traction.
This is Oscar Wilde and I outside Kennedy’s Tavern, where he once worked and ostensibly Yeats also hung out.
If he looks a bit bronzed it is because I poured a pint of Guinness over him when he became cheeky. True to form, he did not even drip but instead instantly absorbed it, transforming as only a happy sinner or a lucky saint can.
I saw a cool W.B Yeats exhibit here at the National Library. I was immediately drawn in by a comforting voice reading a familiar poem, When You are Old. It took me back to a time long ago when a young man read this poem to me:
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
Old and grey now and in a country where my heart had already been softened by love, by the emotional effusion swirling about me, so characteristic of my Irish papa, I was close to sobbing at the first exhibit. I’m not certain what the emotion was. Partially gratitude for having once known someone who felt that way about me I guess. Suffused with a sadness that I do not feel that comforting love now.
The exhibit took some unexpected turns. Who knew about his several apparently deep romances or that Yeats was seriously into the occult? Or that his brother was an accomplished artist? Probably Yeats’ scholars, but I was delighted to take in the curious tidbits. What makes up a person after all?
Those lovely lampposts are everywhere and the city is clean. I spoke with a city employee picking up trash and the cleanliness is evidently a source of pride as it should be.
Random shots of Dublin:
Along the River Liffey.
Who would have thought a Thursday night out would be so filled with merriment? Sitting at the end of the bar where folks order drinks turned out to be a good move. I did not meet one Dubliner reluctant to embrace a new friendship with gusto. Each person was more welcoming and loving than the last, if that is possible. I have lists on my phone of the liveliest pubs with the best traditional music. This is huge here. Along with the singing, there is robust clapping and if there’s room and that means even just barely enough room, folks will dance. It quickly turns into some variation of an Irish jig. The happy drunkards will pull anyone in to join them who looks even remotely like they might be game. or not paying attention. it doesn’t matter. It all becomes ridiculously fun. The first few chords of each new song sends up a delighted hurrah in the room, quickly followed by a swell of voices.
I have other notes entered on my iPhone too. Of sports I must watch. I’d never heard of Gaelic football. At the Irish Emigration Museum, Epic, I learned that the sport is popular in different places around the world. The museum illuminated how far and wide the Irish influence is. Nor had I heard of hurling. In American vernacular, frankly that sounds like a horrible sport, but at the Epic museum (serious name dropping here I know, I know), I saw a sport locker that a hurling athlete would have. It is of pre-medieval origin and involves an sliotar, (a small ball) a hurley (an ash wood stick) and a helmet. I got a bit of a better understanding. If there had been a broom, I might have thought Quidditch. It’s called Camogie when women play it. I’ll let you look it up and watch a game to get a better feel for it and see if it becomes your next passion. Unfortuately, I had to breeze on as I tend to get immersed and linger and I still had Irish contributions to human and civil rights, literature, science and music to cover before catching a bus to Belfast.
This is as usual slightly out of order, and I don’t know the name of the Thursday night pub. I’ll look at a map and try to piece it together when I have time. It was somewhere between Trinity College and St. Stephen’s Green I think. Doheny & Nesbitt. It was a building of pubs and I chose the liveliest on the top floor, four stories up where I also ordered dinner, which was pretty much a mountain of potatoes with a side of potatoes. Quite filling along with the Guinness. Not sure how many I had, but I do recall clearly the gentleman sitting next to me, who looked dashing, having just come from a job interview with the Fire Brigade (was he real?). He looked so classically brigadier with a beautiful fire brigadier moustache, serious eyes and a slow grin that I was sure he got the job. We toasted to that. He was seriously Catholic, which the drunker I got seemed funnier and funnier to me. Beautiful, enchanting, and mysterious too. He told me his 94 year old grandma was spared dementia by praying her entire life to be spared. Of course I said that was a great idea and I’d throw that plea in my regular prayers and hopefully it wasn’t too late. His young face became etched with deep concern. He shook his head and pressed his lips together. “I hope it’s not too late,” he said. Of course I just burst out laughing.
When I walked out of the front door of the pub, I discovered that the streets were empty. It didn’t feel dangerous to me, but I had been warned earlier in the day of ne’er-do-wells about. I have a theory about what people feel in different places. I do believe that history can linger in a place. And I do believe that we each have our own set of vulnerabilities which can attract what we fear. I didn’t especially feel a negative or scary vibe, but there was a young man walking just ahead of me, so I hastened to catch up to walk closer to him. As I picked up my pace, so did he. I walked faster to stay close and he walked even faster. Then he began running. So I started running too. Finally, he dared to cast a look back. I smiled and said, “I’m just a little old woman.” He replied, “But your shadow is long.”
A portals to another world! Have you ever seen one of these? The sunlight would not let me capture the street scene within the portal clearly. But basically, this one is on a busy pedestrian walk in Dublin and opens up to three other cities around the world: Vilnius, Lithuania, Lublin, Poland and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
Right around the corner from here, I found a “chipper,” an establishment that makes fish and chips. It reminded me that my brigadier friend, whose father was a chipper, said the very best flavor in the world was a Mars bar deep fried in a chipper’s oil. And so went back to a little store I’d passed and bought one. The chipper, however, was not keen to do this, telling me that there was hamburger meat in the oil. I didn’t see burgers on the menu, but I rather think I’d have to go to a family-owned chipper which adores deep-fried Mars bars to make this happen. I’ll keep trying.
Don’t let me forget to tell you about my wonderful new friends the next night at The Celt. The front room was the coziest and the liveliest. A lot of pubs have bar after bar if you keep exploring, each with its own ambience. And they can get hot. It’s mid to late August and cool out at night, but don’t dress too warmly and forget a coat because you’ll probably forget it at the end of the night. If you don’t keep buying drinks for yourself, someone will do it for you.
How could I resist an afternoon Guinness at a cafe table outside this iconic establishment?
Writing this from Belfast, I might note a trend to advertise a bar as one of the finest or one of the oldest, if not the very fines, most renowned or very oldest bar in the city. And so one must have a beer in every one in order to claim an authentic experience.
