Sights and Sounds of Dublin

Dear Blog Reader,

I am sorry to say that this entry will probably have to be quite short. It makes me sad because not only do I like to write about pretty much anything, I particularly enjoy writing about fun and memorable experiences. But I have been working pretty much non-stop since we got back Sunday night (including studying on the plane and train). I had two exams and a paper due today, and the paper and the exam in France Contemporain both counted for 50% of my grade in those respective classes. Add a cahier for Dr. Barbour and a very difficult translation for Giles (one of my CIEF professors) and I have been swamped. And tomorrow morning we leave for Prague! Ah! The train leaves at 6h32 (that would be 6:32am in the 12-hour format). You can probably guess that I haven't packed yet. I am embarassed to say I haven't really even consulted the guidebook yet. But Carolyn, Jenn, Carleigh, Peter, Wright, Miles, and I are all headed to the airport first thing in the morning. Now - Dublin!!
We arrived at the airport on Thursday night without a hitch. Actually, the entire weekend couldn't have gone smoother. Kara, Carolyn, Jenn, and I all flew together and Kara stayed with her friend Florrie while the rest of us stayed at the Litton Lane Hostel (would recommend it but not too zealously, it was inexpensive and had great location and excellent security, but other than that wasn't anything special). The next morning Elliott met us in the hostel lobby. For those of you who don't know him, Elliott is one of my best friends from Wake. He is also a junior and plays on the guys' Ultimate team. He lived in the same dorm freshman year as my friends Hope and Kennedy (I met him through them and Ultimate). He is an econ major and has been studying abroad in Dublin this fall, taking econ and philosophy classes at University College Dublin (UCD). I had a preview of Elliott's excellent tour guide skills this summer when I went to Chicago to get my visa for France. He lives an hour north of the city and he showed me around for the weekend. Friday was all about seeing the touristy spots in Dublin city, because Carolyn, Jenn, and Kara knew they were going to go on a tour of the Irish countryside for most of the day on Saturday. So in the morning we saw:

• Trinity College and the Book of Kells (an illuminated manuscript from 800 AD)
• Christchurch Cathedral (see the photo of Elliott and I below)
  
• Dublin Castle (we missed the tour but we walked around the outside)

Of course we had to stop for a post-lunch treat at Queen of Tarts, a tea/pastry shop that Jenn's host father recommended to us. We weren't dissapointed. After that we went back to the hostel to pick up Paley. Again, for those of you who don't know her (which is probably mostly those who didn't know Elliott), Lauren Paley is one of my oldest friends from Cincinnati. She goes to Colorado College and is studying abroad in Barcelona this semester. All of us headed to the Guinness Storehouse, which was originally the place where they kept all of the beer while it was fermenting, but now it is a giant museum/tourist trap for all things Guinness. While I thought the hyperbole was a bit overbearing at times (it really is just beer), it was cool to see how the beer is made. There was a free pint included with the tour, and we learned how to pull our own pint (Carolyn is standing next to our glasses, which are settling before we top them off). That evening we had dinner at a pub called O'Neill's. We all had some variation on Irish stew and Bulmer's cider, which is quite tasty. The whole evening was laid back and very enjoyable. We went to bed early after a long day of walking around.

The next day the other girls went on their day-long tour and Paley, Elliott and I did some more exploring. In the morning we went to the zoo (Elliott's choice) and we were pleasantly surprised at how active the animals were. We saw Bengal tiger cubs frolicking with each other and their mother and an astoundingly ugly gorilla, only inches away from us behind the glass. We walked around Phoenix Park and saw the Wellington Monument (dedicated to the guy who defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo). That afternoon we went to St. Stephen's Green and Merrion Square (which has a statue of Oscar Wilde in it, since he lived across from the square for a good part of his life). We stopped for some hot chocolate at a place called Insomnia Coffee (Elliott's suggestion, aptly named). That evening all of us met up for the highly-acclaimed musical pub crawl. We paid 10 euros and the group (there were probably 40 or so people total) went to a total of three pubs and had a private concert of Irish music. We started at a pub called The Oliver St. John Gogarty Bar (see the picture on the right). I've posted a video below. I'll warn you the sound quality on my digital camera isn't quite top notch (this is probably the third video I've ever taken with it). I absolutely loved the Irish music. The catchy jigs and reels were absolutely infectious - I could not get enough. We went back to the first pub again after the pub crawl officially ended around 10:30pm because we wanted to hear more.

Here are a couple of other things we saw:

• The General Post Office (site of the 1916 Easter Uprising)
• "The Spire"/Monument of Light
• Statue of Molly Malone
• The Georgian architecture/brightly colored doors
• Temple Bar area
  

Unfortunately this is all the time I have to write. Hopefully I can add more later, but I'm sure I will want to talk all about Prague too. This will have to suffice. Oh, one more thing: below is a picture of a plaque - it has a James Joyce quotation on it. They're laid in the sidewalks around the city and they correspond with the location of the plaque. I thought it was a pretty cool idea.