I’m starting this bus from the fourth row far right window seat of yet another Bus Eirrann coach. Despite my best efforts, I am once again situated in front of two rambunctious children – one who is blowing raspberries with lip numbing regularity, and the other who is pleasantly passing the time by ramming her boots into my seat. The conversation is quite stimulating. I believe the youngest girl just asked her mother “Can I get a baby pumpkin to take to bed with me?”
I think they’re getting off at the next stop. My lower back shan’t miss them too fiercely.
My two days in Dublin has tested (and found lacking) my reprehensible sense of direction, inspired me as a writer, encouraged me in regards to my interview project, challenged my alcohol tolerance threshold, and left me thoroughly exhausted.
Kevin dropped off Cecilia and me a few km outside of Dublin city center so that I could browse the second-hand shops in search of boots. My merrell barefoot running shoes, as sublimely comfortable as they may be, aren’t going to measure up when I get to Maria’s horse farm on Tuesday. Metal horseshoes plus Aimee’s barefoot shoes should maintain a certain degree of separation, unless I masochistically decide I want to lose all my toenails. I’ve been borrowing the spare pair of wellingtons (there is always a spare pair of wellingtons in Ireland) on all the previous farms, but I was really hoping to be able to find a nice pair of sturdy leather boots to muck around in. Unfortunately, the only shoes to be found at the second-hand stores were jaded old stilettos whose excruciatingly uncomfortable factor had begun to outweigh the “but they’re sexy shoes!” factor. So after exhausting Dublin’s ample supply of second-hand shops, with a sigh of resignation and defeat, I redirected my search to TK Max and the many other cheap (relatively speaking) shoe shops in the city center. However, only men seem to wear sturdy leather boots in this country, and the smallest men’s size is many sizes too large for my square little feet. As I still remained bootless after a good two hours of ruthless rummaging, Cecilia and I decided that the whole city of Dublin had no shoes for me, and it would be best to count our losses and move on.
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| One of the many bootless second-hand shops |
We spent the next few hours wandering through a few free museums and the national library. After thoroughly sating our desires to gaze upon broken Celtic pottery, dugout canoes, bronze busts of Yeats, and various forms of ancient golden bling, we went off to find Oscar Wilde. It took us over half an hour to locate his lounging, languid figure, but the park he occupied made for a beautiful little stroll.
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| Looking for Oscar... |
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| Statues commemorating the potato famine. While looking for Oscar... |
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| Finding Oscar. I'm somewhat smitten... |
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| No entry into the ancient viking hovel? Shucks. |
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| Not Yeats. |
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| Yeats |
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| Part of the Yeats exhibit in the National Library |
We stopped for something to eat at a vegetarian Indian place (Cecilia is vegetarian) and for a cup of coffee at Queen of Tarts, and then continued on to the Museum of Modern Art. I was particularly excited about touring this museum as Google had told me they have a stellar Goya exhibit. Unfortunately, we arrived at 5:14 and the last entry was at 5:15. Even though we flew in the doors with an entire minute to spare, we were turned away with a blank stare from the museum staff guarding the stairs. Time is a funny thing in Ireland. Everyone expects everyone else to be at least half an hour late to any social function (so much that it might actually border on indecent to show up on time, as no one will be ready for you), but government run operations such as museums have zero tolerance for us nearly tardy tourists. Bah. I'll have to make sure to schedule in a good chunk of time for this museum when I return to Dublin for my flight home.
After being silently expulsed from the Museum of Modern Art, Cecilia and I tried to find our way back to the main road. As they'd prematurely locked all the doors that would have let us straight out, we had to take a twenty minute detour through the grounds.
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| Trapped outside the Museum of Modern Art |
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| The one piece of modern art we were able to see. Outside of the museum. |
Once we had found our way out of the museum's grounds, we called Kevin to ask for a ride back to his place. Due to traffic, Kevin asked us to walk over to James Street, and he would pick us up from there. At least, that's what we thought Kevin had asked us. After waiting at James Street for what seemed an absurdly long time, we contacted Kevin again, this time finding out that we were supposed to walk through the hospital grounds just past James Street and meet Kevin at the other side of the hospital. So we walked to the nearest hospital and timidly asked the front desk folks where we could find the back entrance of the hospital.
"I'm sorry, this is a psychiatric hospital and there is no back entrance," the front desk woman told us somewhat patronizingly, taking my bewildered, frantic expression completely in stride.
"Well, is there another hospital nearby?" Cecilia asked, undeterred by the woman's denial of a back entrance.
"Yes, Saint James' Hospital is right up the street."
Good god.
Exhausted and more confused than ever, Cecilia and I wandered back up to James Street. It was dark by then and the weather was far too cold for my liking. I was beginning to develop nasty blisters on both sides of my feet, as my extra thick Smartwool socks make my Merrells too small for me. But with these shoes it's either blisters or frostbite, so I take my chances with the red swollen pockets of puss. Feet throbbing and body shivering, I blindly led the way to Saint James' Hospital. After walking past four massive hospital buildings, we approached what we naively assumed was the back entrance.
Alas, it was not to be. A man emerged from the shadows of the furthest building and informed us that Saint James' had no back entrance, either.
At this point, Cecilia and I started to think Kevin might just be playing a joke on us. Needless to say, we were not amused; so we trudged back to James Street and sent Kevin a text message telling him exactly where we were and sat down to wait for him to come find us. After a few minutes of loitering in front of a gourmet spice shop, our exasperated host arrived on his bicycle to lead us back to his apartment. On the way, he patiently explained exactly what he had meant by meeting him behind the hospital, and it ended up being so obvious (of course) that I maintained a dolefully shamefaced and profusely apologetic attitude for the rest of the evening. Well... until dinner, at least. Kevin prepared a delicious curry for Cecilia, myself, and a few of his friends. During dinner, I managed to set up an interview with Kevin for the next morning (which I will try to blog about tomorrow) and drink far too many glasses of alcohol. At some point we got my camcorder out and I ended up having a tipsy yoga arm balancing competition with the other yoga teacher at Kevin's dinner party. I watched the video last night before I went to bed, and I'm pretty sure that we won. Until I saw this video, I was under the pleasant delusion that I was a happy, funny drunk. Now I am unhappily enlightened as to the true state of my drunken nature. True state being: quite happy, but belligerent and obnoxious and not funny at all.
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| Dinner at Kevin's |
Kevin took Cecilia and me out to a pub at about eleven o'clock. I put up a meagre protest about it being late and having to wake up early and get on a bus and yadda, yadda, yadda, but was quickly overruled by my two enthusiastic friends. As I decided that I was absolutely done drinking for the evening, I enjoyed some good Irish water to go along with the Irish music, and ended up having a really wonderful evening out.
We got back to Kevin's apartment at around three in the morning, made some recovery tea, and set up for the interview. The interview itself went swimmingly, and I happily stumbled into bed at five in the morning. Waking up at nine to make banana pancakes before I took my bus to Kilkenny was not such a happy occasion, however, as I began to feel the ramifications of the previous night's debauchery settling in.
Kevin dropped me off at the bus stop and I quickly found the coach heading for Kilkenny (which was actually leaving on time, miraculously enough). After over two hours of being kicked through the back of my seat (sadly, the girl has yet to get off the bus), I've just about arrived at the Ormonde Street stop.
The one that is not on Ormonde Street.
I'll be cooking dinner for nine people when I get to Sinead's. I'm planning pumpkin soup, lamb tagine, and pumpkin whoopie pies with almond flour. If I weren't so nauseated at the moment, I'd be looking forward to an afternoon in the kitchen a whole lot more.
Thus concludes my two day adventure in Dublin, Ireland.
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