We See Dead People

A waterfall of Guinness! Actually, just water.

We set the alarm for 8, and although both of us woke up several times before then we were both asleep when it went off. It took a bit for me to get moving – the amount of sleep was good, but the timing was still off. Our plan was to eat a fairly late breakfast and a late lunch. Our room comes with access to a local gym, so I was going to head over there but the front desk was very busy dealing with someone who was trying to check out with a credit card that didn’t work. It was ok, though, because before I left I’d worked with my physical therapist to modify the BodyFit exercises to be done with Therabands, so Dave and I worked out together. Then we went down for some breakfast. Oatmeal for me, granola for Dave.

Today was a sightseeing day, so we got tickets for the green hop on/hop off bus. First stop was Christ Church Cathedral, which was Dave’s favorite of the day. It was a pretty standard cathedral, as far as those things go. The crypt was open and it was interesting to see the arches underneath and think about how it was built. And, as always, I was struck by the contrast between the Church and the message of Christ. Also I liked that there was a café in the crypt, and also they had an organ player upstairs playing the organ which was a nice touch. At breakfast Dave had been wondering about 110 vs. 240 volts and which came first, and in the cathedral we say an outlet on the wall, so 240 clearly came first. Also we saw the bishop’s special chair, called a cathedra, which is where the word cathedral came from. Who knew?

Next stop was Dublinia, a museum of Viking and Medieval Dublin. It was mostly just ok – it was supposed to be family friendly, but they’d sort of just overlaid some things to touch on top of a traditional museum. Although it did have an animatronic Viking sitting in an outhouse, farting and then saying “ahhh”, which was the most memorable part of the museum, at least for me. Especially since you could hear him even in the next room.  They also had an interesting section on the black plague, with the etymology of the word “coroner”. The best thing about the museum is that it’s connected to the cathedral by a walkway that goes over the road, which I’d really wanted to walk through but figured it was not open to the public, but it was, and we did.

She made a shamrock in my foam! 

Back on the bus, and off to Dublin’s most popular tourist attraction (and did you know, by the way, that today is international tourist day?) – The Guinness Storehouse. Until 1988, this building was where they actually made the stuff, but it doesn’t have room for the 3 million pints they make each day, some of which makes its way to the US. It’s a great place, very well designed to move huge numbers of people through, and also very interesting even if you’re not a big fan of beer. You get a free pint with your paid admission and we drank ours in the bar on the 7^th floor, which is easily the highest point in Dublin and completely walled in glass for great views in ever direction. Actually I had half of mine and Dave had his and mine, because I still prefer Murphy’s. But drinking Murphy’s in Dublin would be like drinking Pepsi in Atlanta – you can’t find it, and if you ask for it things get ugly in a hurry.

Back on the bus. We were able to get seats on the top level, which is open air. It’s been partly to mostly sunny since we got here, with temps in the mid 60s, but somehow it’s seemed warmer. We’d planned on riding the bus to the archeology museum, but the traffic was absolutely terrible – the all-Ireland hurling championship was here today (Kilkenny vs. Tiperrary) and there are even more people in Dublin than usual. This meant the bus ride took much longer than usual, so after a short nap I suggested that we might want to get off the bus and walk – Dublin is just not that big. So we did, and it was good to get moving.

It was a 10 minute or so walk to the museum, which I enjoyed much more than I thought I would – we were there for an hour and I only got a little sleepy. Lots of Viking and medieval era stuff, plus people who had been preserved in peat bogs, which seems to dissolve the bones and leave the skin intact but very prettily colored. Also they have a room full of Egyptian mummies, which seems sort of odd, given that the rest of the museum is all about Ireland. I would have read about it but at that point the museum was closing and they were very intent on chasing us out as fast as they possibly could.

At that point we were starving, because our late lunch had turned into an early dinner. We decided to eat at Carluccio’s, an Italian restaurant fairly close to our hotel which is always busy. It has the most wonderful looking meringues, and also many other wonderful looking desserts and cheeses. The food was pretty good, and it was fun watching the waitstaff bustle around. For some reason they all wear these black caps, and many of them looked a lot alike. We did not have anything that came even close to Dave’s boar belly at Farm Restaurant – that is clearly the dish to beat.

After dinner we had a short time back in the hotel before it was time for the next event. Since we have very limited data plans on our phones, we’ve both turned off mobile data, so we have to come back to the hotel or be somewhere (like the Guinness storehouse) that has wifi if we want to use our phones as boxes of information. It’s hard to get used to. For example, today on the bus when the driver was telling us about the hurling match, our first impulse was to google it, but then we couldn’t. So it is always nice to get back to the hotel to see what’s going on in the rest of the world. But then again because of the time difference what’s usually going on is that everyone we know is asleep. But I digress.

The next adventure was the musical pub crawl, where two guys with a guitar and a fiddle escort a large group of foreigners from pub to pub and play traditional Irish music for them when they get there. Don’t worry, though, it was actually really fun. Mostly because they took us to pubs that tourists don’t usually go to, and played music that tourists don’t usually get to hear. And they got the Swedes and the Ukrainians in the group to sing traditional songs from their countries. And they told a story about the folks from Cork, where Murphy’s is made, and how they say that “If you’re not with us, you’re a Guinness”, a joke that you need to say out loud in your best Irish accent. Or maybe it’s only funny if you’ve been drinking Guinness all day.

We walked back down O’Connell Street, the widest street in Ireland, a little after 10:00 and the good times were in full swing. But as we’re still somewhat jet-lagged and I had some writing to do, it was time for us to head back to the Aphrodite Suite and call it a night – even though the bass line from the music in the bar downstairs will continue for several more hours. Perhaps we’ll get a second wind.