A short digression about our hotel. We’re on the third
floor, and it has no lift, so we are getting plenty of exercise. It has a
restaurant downstairs, which has a bar which plays music that goes like this –
thumpa, thumpa, thumpa, thumpa – until 3 am. On the other hand, our room is big
enough that we can do a whole Nia class together without feeling like we’re
going to run into the furniture, and it is perfectly located. But our windows
have no view, and the staff don’t seem to be terribly service oriented, and the
tub is disappointing. It bills itself as a luxury hotel, so we’re trying to
figure out if it’s just that our American view of luxury is different from
theirs, or if it’s not really a luxury hotel. I think for me it’s all about the
tub. Also a word about Dublin, which is much more cosmopolitan than I expected,
and full to the brim with tourists. I have to wonder how many tourists stay in
Dublin, or if most of them use it as a jumping off point for Irish touring. Later
on in the day we would be crossing the river on the O’Connell bridge in a huge
crowd and only hear 2 people with Irish accents.
As I mentioned, though, our room is big enough to hold a two
person Nia class, so that’s what we did when we got up this morning. We did “Feeling”,
the routine I’m going to be teaching on the ship, and as always it was super
helpful to have Dave as a Nia-phyte to help me improve my cueing, and he also
had some helpful suggestions for words I can use to make my directions more
clear. After the Nia we showered and headed down to breakfast, where we had the
same as we had yesterday. Dave says he’ll have the “full Irish” tomorrow. Stay
tuned.
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| Notice arches and escalator, I mean stairs. |
We were done with breakfast and on our way to the green bus by 10 (I
have to stop here and tell you that while I’m typing I always hear the words in
my head, and oddly they are now about 75% with an Irish accent. Too much Guinness
for sure). Our first stop today was the Kilmainham Gaol, whose history is closely
tied to the history of Irish rebellions between 1798 and 1916. It was an hour
long tour of great intensity and fascination; I could have gone another hour
easily. It made me think of Acts 5:33-39, where Gamaliel advices against
harming Peter and the other apostles, because it would just stir things up –
the same argument was made unsuccessfully in 1916, and led to much trouble.
Also the man who lead the tour compared the physical layout of the newest part
of the jail to both a cathedral and a mall in a way that will never let me look
at either the same way. The jail was completely restored by volunteers between
1960 and 1989, and the visit there will stay with me a long time.
When we got to Kilmainham the wait for a tour was about 10
minutes; when we left it was an hour. It would have been worth the wait but we
were glad not to have done it. Back on the bus and off to the old Jameson
distillery – they moved their operations to County Cork in 1971, but like Guinness
they still offer a tour and a drink at the old place. We’ll talk more about
that after a quick and enjoyable lunch at the 3rd Still Restaurant,
upstairs in the old distillery building. Most enjoyable thing: Dave’s mashed
peas with mint. Anyway, we did the tour, and it was interesting but completely
unsatisfying, kind of like a Disneyland version, with half-size replicas of
everything and soap bubbles standing in for fermenting wort. Also, at the
beginning they choose 8 people in the group to try the 12 year old whiskey;
everybody else just gets the 5 year old. And even though the Guinness tour
probably processes two or even three times more people every day, this tour
felt completely impersonal. I don’t think we’d recommend it.
Back on the bus, and off to Grafton Street for some
shopping. First stop was the Superdry Japan store, which is HUGE here. Every 4th
person has a superdry shirt or jacket. We liked their stuff, but not enough to
buy any. But I was on a mission. Faithful readers will recall that I forgot to
bring a bathing suit, so I figured we’d try Marks & Spenser as they seemed
most likely to have something. I had shopped at their stores in England when I
was there for school and had high hopes that they’d come through. The store now
goes by “M+S”, presumably to sound more hip, but I now call it “Miracles and
Swimsuits” because they had only 1 swimsuit left and it was my size and on sale
for about $18. Uh Huh. Cue music for dance of joy.
We did a little more wandering in the shopping district but
our hearts weren’t really in it. We decided to head back to Dawson Street,
because we wanted to check out the bookstore & whiskey store (voted best in
the known universe). The book store was terrific, but we didn’t get to spend as
much time there as we wanted because we were afraid the whiskey store would
close. So we went to it, and it was certainly impressive, but also completely
overwhelming as we know very little about whiskey. So we left. Our plan was to go
back to the hotel, but my cathedral mania was kicking in, so we decided to walk
to St Patrick’s, which is just outside the old city wall.
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| Hmm, arches again. |
It is a beautiful cathedral whose restoration was paid for
by Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, grandson of the Arthur who started the brewery.
Under Benjamin’s hand the brewery became the largest in the world, and he
decided to use his personal money from that to restore the Cathedral. Strong
work, Ben! While we were there they were singing in the small chapel at the
East end. It was a small group, but the acoustics made it sound amazing. I want
to build a chapel to sing in. The rest of the trappings – the ornate place for
the reader to stand, the special seats for people with power and money – I could
do without. But I want a place with acoustics like that.
What I’ve not mentioned is that the hop on, hop off bus
makes a big loop, and that loop only goes in one direction. So while it took
about 15 minutes to walk from our hotel to St Patricks (I wish you could hear
the broad ‘A’ that the Dublin accent puts in Paatrick), it takes about 45
minutes to get back riding the bus. But we decided to ride it anyway, and by
the time we got back to South Inner City (our area of Dublin) is was almost
7:00 and time for dinner. We’d decided to go back to Gogarty’s, the place where
we started the pub crawl last night, and eat at their 3rd floor
restaurant (they’d call it the second floor) which won the award for gastropub
of the year in 2013.
We knew right away that we’d made the right choice, because
the napkins were folded in my
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| Also Gogarty's had Nia speak |
After dinner we went down to what we in America would call
the 2nd floor where they had a guitar player with 2 fiddle players
playing mostly traditional Irish music. They were good and fun. Dave had some
Guinness and we enjoyed keeping the beat during the jigs (rashers and sausages,
rashers and sausages), reels, slides, and other songs. When we were leaving the
guitar player, who was the only one with a microphone, had said they were going
to play a traditional German song, but then all the Germans started singing and
he couldn’t get them to stop. It was very funny.
But by then we were ready to head back to the hotel, so we
walked through the streets broad and narrow, not calling cockles and mussels
alive, alive-o as we went, even though they’d had to play it at Gogarty’s. One
thing about Temple Bar is that I can’t fit it correctly into the map in my head
of Dublin, so I’m always surprised when we are suddenly back in the other parts
of Dublin. It makes Dave laugh a lot.
And that’s pretty much it for Dublin; we’re off to London
tomorrow morning. Slainte!
End note: Dave’s boar belly at Farm is the best food we had
in Dublin, followed (for me) by my sticky toffee pudding at the same place.
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