Ireland, or, The Luck of the Tourists

Well, it's been a long-ass time since I've posted, and as a result, I've done many many things since the last time. I've been to Ireland, Belgium, Spain, and all over England.

I'll start with Ireland. For our first long weekend, we ventured to Dublin and then to a small coastal town in Ireland called Howth. Everyone really seems to love Ireland, but I think that when they think of Ireland, they picture rolling green hills and seaside, like the Ring of Kerry. We stuck to Dublin.

When we arrived in Dublin, it was 11:00 pm, and we couldn't find our hostel. Dublin's not as big a city as London, but we were wandering around in the not-so-great north side of town (to put this into perspective, our tour guide the next day said we "might not want to leave the south side," so that was comforting). In the dark, in a strange city and a strange country, the threat of getting our skin cut off seemed imminent, and I couldn't help but think, "WE GON' DIE!" Every barking dog, every innocuous pedestrian seemed to target us for pickpocketing, leering, and/or dramatic capoeira dance battles, at least in my imagination anyway.

Thankfully, though, we found our hostel without incident. And the next morning, Dublin was nowhere near as scary as it had seemed. Things were looking up, but rain and an hour-long trudge trying to find the Guinness plant kind of put a damper on things. We returned to the hostel wet, hungry, tired, and (at least in my case) bummed that Dublin Castle wasn't actually a castle. I did get to visit a statue of James Joyce in St. Stephen's Green, though, so the day wasn't a total bust.

Dublin Castle. Definitely NOT a castle.

I was about ready to give up on Dublin when the city redeemed itself. The day dawned clear (first good omen), and we visited the Yeats exhibit in the National Library (Can we pause for a second and talk about how brilliant WB was???) and, what was easily the highlight of my trip, the Chester Beatty Library. Chester Beatty had a shit-ton of money, for whatever reason, and he spent it collecting the most impressive artifacts he could get his hands on. Like, it's not even funny how rare this stuff was. I saw a copy of the Qur'an where all the Arabic characters were cut out individually and pasted on the page. I saw an excerpt from the Book of John that dated back to the 3rd century. THAT'S ALMOST AS OLD AS JESUS!!!

(At this point, just imagine a REALLY FRACKING AWESOME picture. No cameras allowed in CB.)

And then to top off a good day, we ate dinner at Boojum, aka Irish Chipotle. And it made me so happy and homesick all at the same time. Seriously, why don't we have it in England??

We were feeling pretty good about the day, until we met our roommates. Hansel, Dylan, and Doug. They were three German bros who really, really liked to party. Doug and Hansel were over six feet tall, blonde, and had chiseled jaw lines. So, basically, really, really, really stereotypically German. That night, our sleeping was interrupted by a drunk-off-his ass Dylan, who couldn't even get into bed he was so wasted, and almost started a fight in our hostel room. But hey, cheap lodging.

Day three, probably the highlight of the trip, we ventured to a small fishing-town suburb of Dublin, Howth. Howth was everything I wanted from Ireland: dramatic crags, vast ocean, and the best fish chowder I've ever eaten. Plus, there was SUN. It was lovely.

And the whole time I was alternating between happy tourist/grumpy tourist, I was constantly being reminded that Dublin is a city full of ACTUAL people and is a place with ACTUAL problems. Ireland the landmass is thousands of years old, but Ireland the country is less than a hundred. There are political ads in Dublin that still advocate for independence today. Only a hundred years ago (not long in the scope of history as I've come to learn) Irish Catholics were protesting for the right to get weekends off, and the only employer who would listen to them was Guinness. They have a spire in the middle of the town that cost 2 million euros, but they don't have a monument to one of the most influential female journalists ever. It's important to remember that. Because, *CHEESEBALL ALERT* more than entertainment and souvenirs, the most important takeaway we can get from visiting any country is learning how the people there live and what matters to them. And, surprisingly, they're not always the same thing.

Commemorating the Dublin Lockout of 1913