Dublin!

Hello readers,

Let's talk about Dublin.

Unfortunately, though I remembered my camera, I forgot to bring the camera battery with me to Dublin, so, alas, there are no pictures. I thought that I'd put the battery back in the camera after charging it, but upon returning home I found that it was on the kitchen table in the charger.

We were driven to Athboy to get the bus to Dublin. It arrived on time and we got on, bought our tickets and took our seats without any complications. Amazing!

The bus ride was only about an hour and a half, and it was a very pleasant ride. We were in the very front on the upper floor, so we had a huge windshield in front of us through which to view the countryside as the bus swayed and bumped along the little roads. At one point we got stuck behind a tractor going about five miles and hour for a few minutes. This is a normal experience here I think.

There are tons of round-abouts in this country. Coming from San Diego, round-abouts call to my mind: a) the tiny, circular, flower-filled medians in Leucadia, and b) a very long and annoying section of the drivers handbook that I found incredibly boring and irrelevant. Here, round-abouts are far from decorative; they actually help the flow of traffic. I've seen them used mostly in the intersections of multiple highways. The driver exits the highway, eases into the flow of traffic in the round-about, and without even needing to stop or slow very much, is off on their way on another highway. It's brilliant. There are also some sections of road near highway entrances where you'll see multiple cars randomly parked. Yep, parked right on the side of a busy road. Emma had pointed this out to us and said that it was like a non-official park and ride. People would pick a spot and leave their cars their in order to carpool, and eventually the city would notice and make an actually car park (parking lot) for them.

Our first view of Dublin seemed nice, mainly because it was a city. We got off the bus and found our hostel without complications either, first getting some Thai curry at this little noodle bar we found. The weather was cool and it was sprinkling lightly. The hostel was large and nice, with many floors and long hallways. It was fairly inexpensive too. The dining room was in what was formerly a Catholic church. It even had a broken confession booth and stained glass windows, though the scene of travelers on the big window was probably something more religious previously. Though confession is intriguing to me, it's mostly in a humorous way. I mean what, you get to talk about your problems, say a few "Hail Marys" and you're good to go, sin free?

We took our things up to our dorm which we shared with several other people. After making a list of things to do in the city, we headed off to Temple Bar, an area of the city, to walk around. We noticed--you couldn't miss it really--this huge, tapering pointed metal object sticking out of the ground. It looked like a giant, shining needle coming out of the pavement, and it gave me the impression that all of the people in the city were each the size of a grain of sand. It was a cool art piece I guess, and it was a helpful landmark as well, right in the middle of the main street by a large shopping area. We never found out anything about it while in the city, but we tried to guess how tall it was, maybe 300 feet? It turns out that it is called the Spire of Dublin and that it is 398 feet tall. I just glanced at it's history, and it's mostly just an interesting architectural piece I think.

Temple bar was a really nice area, taking its name from the Temple family and a bar, which is a walkway along a river. It had cobblestone streets, which one eventually notices are good for neither walking nor driving on, and are really purely for decoration. Many of the buildings had webbed lighting of yellow or red, which reminded us forcibly that Christmastime was drawing near. We went to an adorable little coffee shop with mismatched hanging lights, and talked about Christmas and a number of other things that stemmed from that topic.

We went and got some food after that. Then we went to a pub. It was so crowded you could hardly make your way inside, and there was a duo on a small stage by the door playing Irish music, much to appreciation of the crowd. The people in the pub were of all different ages, which was interesting. There were some older ladies dancing to the music in one corner. and people not too much older than ourselves mixed in with the middle-aged folks. The interior of the pub looked just like every other pub we'd been to in England, dimly lit, dark walled, and generally having a quality reminiscent of an antique piece of furniture. Liesl got a pint of Guinness. She doesn't like beer, but she decided that she had to at least try a Guinness in Ireland, its place of origin. She drank it, but wasn't a huge fan, and still doesn't really like beer. We didn't see a single person in that pub that was drinking anything other than beer.

We hung out outside in the town square sort of area, and watched other people. There were some young people out, and it was incredible just to be in the same vicinity as other people, particularly some who were close to our own age. This particular area was really cool because cars generally weren't allowed down there, save police cars, so you could walk freely through the streets, without having to look one way for cars, then remember that they drive on the other side of the road here, then forget which side that actually is and whether it's the way you'd looked already, and frantically turn your head back and forth trying to cross the street without getting hit. This happened a lot during the earlier parts of our trip.Some of the crosswalks actually have "look left," or "look right" painted on the road, though unfortunately I didn't notice this when I needed it. Both of us are actually pretty used to cars driving on the left now, and the steering wheel being on the right side of the car. The walk signals in Dublin take forever to change, and people generally take the liberty of crossing the street at their leisure rather than when the signal has changed. A few times I saw and heard a car honk at a pedestrian that was over-exercising their right of way privilege by crossing right in front of approaching traffic.

We were watching an American TV show at home recently that showed some cars on a road, and it was actually strange to see cars driving on the right side. We're assimilating! There are some words that we're really used to like "crisps," which are chips, and "chips," which are french fries. But there are other words that still seem really odd, such as "trousers" being pants, and "pants" being underwear. Also, they say "toilets" instead of "bathroom" or "restroom," here and in England. I just can't get used to that one. It seems awkward and childish asking someone where the toilets are. It makes me feel as if I sound like someone that doesn't have a very strong grasp of English. Also, the letter "z" is pronounced "zed." Weird, huh? Though I suppose in the case of most of these things the US is the strange one, because naturally these other countries existed long before us.

 We liked Dublin pretty much right away. Liesl had gotten a map at the front desk, and soon was able to guide us through the city without needing to consult it. I just relied on her for directions, so unfortunately I am not as familiar with getting around Dublin as she is. But we never really got lost. It was so weird. Almost everything about our trip to Dublin went smoothly.

It was a nice city, with lots of people walking around, and it was happily devoid of the air of extreme stress that is the atmosphere of some large cities. The residential buildings, and some of the shops, were two story buildings made of red brick. There were many old, grey, stone churches on street corners. A few of the buildings were large, and Roman looking, white, with large pillars. Houses out in the countryside of Ireland are more often than not, surprising un-cute. They tend to be very plain, similar in structure to the typical, modern San Diego home, with dark-colored, sloping roofs. But I don't think that houses in California are ugly, yet somehow the houses here are. It's something about the walls I think. They're bright, pastel colored, yellow, or orange maybe, and are covered with either stucco or something like plaster. No matter what they're made of though, they come off looking very "wannabe" cute: severely smooth-walled, with meticulously placed windows and doors and nothing to add any life to them, save the occasional garden. They're a lot like the houses in Edward Scissor Hands, though less attractive and not in that kind of neighborhood layout.

We did a number of fun things in Dublin, which included eating some good food. I had my first burrito in two and a half months. It was good, but  sadly, definitely not up to the San Diego standard. We also went to a vegetarian restaurant, and a milkshake place with vegan milkshakes, which was very exciting. Additionally, we went to the Thai place twice a day more of less. Probably more.

We went to a photography exhibit which was really cool, and a science museum which wasn't that cool. Even Liesl didn't really like it, and she's the science one. It's great though, nearly all museums here and in England are free. We also went to see Dublin castle, which isn't your typical castle. It was clearly a mixture of many different architecture styles, and had a jagged wall near the top, a large tower, and a church-like part. It's difficult to describe how exactly this clashed, but I think it was something about the variation of austerity among the parts of the structure, some Medieval and severe and others maybe more Renaissance-style and elegant. At the left side the castle seemed to become a flat and colorful, not dissimilar to Irish houses. "Legoland" we heard a tour guide call it as he went on explaining the different architecture styles present in the building, confirming my thinking.

We spent a lot of our time just walking around. There's a river that goes through the city, which is cool. I'm becoming accustomed to seeing rivers now. We went to a few book stores, which always make me happy, and one record store where we purchased some CDs, that we didn't have any way to listen to. We then went in search of a walkman, and eventually found one in a tiny thrift shop. It was actually the owner's I think, but he sold it to Liesl anyway, and she is very excited to have such an awesome, vintage music-playing device.

The city was getting dressed up for Christmas. There were lights saying things in Irish above the main shopping roads, and Christmas displays in the clothing store windows. We went into a department store and it was so Christmas-y inside. The whole time we were there we felt the joy of the Christmas season, and we got so excited for Christmas, which we'll be spending in London with Liesl's family.

Liesl met two girls in our hostel that were from California and we went to a pub with them on Sunday night. I don't drink, so I went up to the counter and ordered a cranberry juice. The bartender looked at me dubiously, like maybe he hadn't heard me right. "Just cranberry juice? You don't want anything else?" I shook my head and said no, that's it. He shrugged genially, though like I was obviously an oddball, and gave me my juice.

There was a reggae/ska band playing that were really good, and we watched them for a while. Liesl got into a long conversation at the bar with a guy from New York.

We noticed when crossing the large intersection by the Spire that there were a lot of political protest sort of things going on. I think a couple of them were just cultural/religious festivities, but there was also a big deal going on with the war over abortion. We passed some guy with a megaphone talking loudly about killing babies. I hadn't really realized that other countries made as big of a deal over abortion as the US does. I guess it's obvious, I guess I just thought that the extremists with signs depicting bloody dead babies fit in very well with the general extremism in the States.

We passed an area on a different street where the was a sort of convention going on in favor of legalizing abortion. We hadn't known whether or not it was legal here. It's not. There was  a situation in which a woman died because she was not allowed to get an abortion here when she was having a miscarriage, and not allowed to leave the country to get one elsewhere. We talked briefly with a lady there that explained this to us, and said that the reason that country gives for making abortion illegal is that Ireland is a Catholic country. It's interesting, because the same argument about abortion goes on in California, and in other states I'm sure, but I think religion is one thing that the state can't use to argue, since we have a "separation" of church and state.

Many times throughout our trip in Dublin one of us would turn to the other and say that we didn't want to go back home, we just wanted to stay in Dublin. It was just so wonderful to get out. But eventually the trip did end, and we boarded the bus back to Athboy. We had some things to look forward to though: Thanksgiving, followed by a trip to Belfast. And being back here actually isn't bad, particularly knowing that we'll be going on a trip soon.

I'm sure that I've forgotten some interesting and important things in this post. I really should start taking notes when we go on trips to avoid this situation.

Next up: Thanksgiving!

Cheers,

Stephanie