Ireland: Dancing in Dublin (and stuff)

Me arriving in Dublin. Bruce arrived too, but he was behind the camera. Note the Irish lass freezing in the wind beyond me. We commiserated. I offered her my coat, as I was wearing two. She thought my upper lip wasn't stiff enough.

Twenty five years.

Twenty five years of whining about going to Ireland all down the tubes. Why? Because I've just returned from the Emerald Isle, and now there's nothing to whine about.

Please forgive me. I am about to ruin the marriages of bazillions of people, because my husband of more decades than I thought possible gave me a life-long-dreamed-of trip to Ireland for our 25th wedding anniversary. I know! Crazy-pants! Even though we didn't have the money to go. Even though we don't have any rich relatives, or friends living in Ireland. Even though I wasn't willing to sell my body for it (which I could have done, although I don't know how far we would have gotten on the $1.75.) My lovely husband (which with an Irish accent is pronounced "loavely hoasband") wracked his brain for what to give me, and came up with this. The impossible dream. And although I would have loved him forever without it, now I'll love him twice as forever.

Without further ado, I'm going to take you with us on our little green adventure. Okay, there's a LITTLE ado: I have no idea why I have been so drawn to Ireland all of my life. I am about 1/4 Irish–from way waaaaaaaay back. Like, back to 1736. Which probably makes me a 1/4 of an eyedropper Irish. But I feel the Celt in me, dear people. I have had bodhráns and bannock bursting through my blood my entire existence, and there has been no remedy for it except to go to the land of my McGuire forebears and answer the call.

Plus, Bruce got sick of listening to me whine.

So here we go. We'll start with the landing of our Delta jet as it circled Dublin Bay to touch down at the Dublin Airport, in (you guessed it) Dublin. I've included a little mood music below, in case you tire of listening to the hushed murmur of plane engines and passengers. And also because it's a slightly long clip:

The face at the top of this post is a 14-hours-in-2-planes face. (Thank you airport bathroom, hairspray, and face powder). We tried to sleep, but constant head-lolling and cramped-leg-space-induced deep-vein-thrombosis complicates things. So we arrived bright-tailed and bushy-eyed, and feeling foreign even though the primary language in Ireland is English. It took me ten minutes to figure out that when the bus driver told us we'd be getting off at the "forst" stop, he meant the "first," not the "fourth."

But we lived. And our ears adjusted. And pretty soon we were speaking and understanding the language like pros.

Dublin, like most European cities I've visited, looks like someone took several time periods, threw them up in the air, and let them land how they would. And so you have the work-a-day neighborhood our hotel was in, next to an old unused black church called the "Black Church" (go figure,) just up from O'Connell Street, which houses the historic post office, and sits a few doors away from the FABulou Penney's discount store, a couple blocks from Trinity College, and short turn from the pub-packed Temple Bar, around the corner from Christchurch Cathedral, near the Muslim neighborhood just up from the Hertz car rental, adjacent to the Killmainham Gaol. It's a funky, lovely, cacophonous combination, and it looks like this:

That bit of Irish there above says "Thank you for bringing your wife, Bruce."

Our little place on Parnell Square. Nice, clean, tidy, and free internet. Ahhhh. (No, we were not sleeping in separate beds. That little twin bed was extra. I don't want to know what for.) (KIDS! That's it. *whew*)

Kingfisher – food of lusciousness. This server was cheerful all time. Well, yeah. She looks like THAT.

Demonstration for Lybia in front of the Dublin post office, with some Tai-Chi practitioners to the right there. Nice bit of irony, that.

The river Liffey. It would have been fun to tour Dublin in a boat, I think. We did that in Paris. Except we toured Paris in Paris in a boat, not Dublin.

Oh please. I could build that. (Gorgeous. I want one.)

Strange little study in contrasts. Or indecisive builders.

Entering Trinity College campus, located right smack downtown. Simply beautiful, and still in use. Notice the sky. The sun. Actual shadows. No, this really is Ireland. I got a sunburn there. For reals.

Look! We DID travel together! One of the few times Bruce allowed himself into a picture. Silly boy.

Bet you don't know what this is.  *gasp* How did you know?

Yeah, that angel is pointing at me. Problem? (Maybe it's the weird Flat-Stanely effect from the bold seams on my jeans.) (Incidentally, the Book of Kells was interesting in a boring sort of way. But when you went upstairs into the heretofore unknown about [by me] old Library–Dude! The 8 Euro entrance fee was totally worth it. There were two floors filled with 200,000 REALLY OLD texts. Balconies, secret doors leading into each section [probably not secret, but it’s more fun that way], spiral staircases, tables with medical journals of the time, as well as pictures, a rather horrifying account of a woman who endured a mastectomy with no anesthesia *shudder*, busts of philosophers and doctors, and best of all, hordes of giant Hogwarts-esque leather bound tomes, lining the laddered shelves. Which we could only look at and not even photograph.

*sigh*

Could have lived in there for awhile. It smelled wonderful. Eau de Reallye Olde Library.

Hello, Thomas Moore. And Double-Decker Bus. And perfectly placed trees. Think we'll get a shot.

You almost wonder: if I go down this street, will Dudley and the Dementors be there? Or Sweeny Todd? Or Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman? Eep! Dementors, please!

Yep, them are leggins with them thar shorty-shorts. This was dé regeur haute couture in Dublin. Everyone was wearing shorty-shorts or minis with leggings and funky shoes/boots/ballet flats.

I think you have to be of a certain age to pull this off (read: not mine.)

They were real, those Fish 'n Chips Vikings. They were. They terrorized the Irish coast with deep fryers and flaming pots of mashed peas.

Do you see what is all around me here? Foreground, background, and sideground? Yes. It's a book market – the farmer's market of book collectors. Can we all just take a moment to soak that in? 

Annnnnd to jar you back to reality, the VERY Last Supper. Wha? I don't understand this. Who are these people? They look famous. Probably. I like the dude in the dreds, and the guy in the red tie who looks like a baseball team manager. (This was down a random alley on our way from Temple Bar–where the book market and viking chips were–to our hotel at Parnell Square.) Someone help me. I don't understand.

Well, we had to do something to recover from that last disturbing image. And besides, it had made us hungry. So we bought these at La Parisian. Not all of them, sadly. Just the pistachio creme (to die for. Really. Die.), the Millefeuille (to die AND sprain your ankle for), and the lemon meringue pie. (To get sort of irritated for. I don't love L.M.Pie. As far as this goes, though, it was tart and tasty. But I was all about the green stuff: pistache.) (Why? How 'bout this: a blanc-mange top layer that's really a pistachio-mange, followed by a chocolate hazelnut layer, followed by a crispy-chocolate-caramel-nut crust. Make sense now? Good eating practices went out the window with this. And I'm not even mentioning that chocolate-drizzeled vanilla-iced millefeuille up there.)

And finally, what an amazing little balcony. No? Oh, you mean that little blue sign there. Can't read it, I'm afraid. Wait, that's not it either? Hmmm. Wait! I know. Like they really network playgrounds. Psh.

(I used to be able to move like that kid.) (No I didn't.)

Wait! Is that all the dancing? Nah. We'll catch it Wednesday. Unless it catches us. Plus we've got cathedrals and a castle. Stick around. Well, maybe you should go home and get some dinner and a bit of rest. Then you can come back and take a look.

Cheers!