DUBLIN Your Pleasure...

Dublin: the last stop on my journey. Can you believe it?

I arrived by bus and, instead of lugging my heavy and cumbersome duffel bag all over the city like I did in Cork and Clonakilty (the only other time I had the duffel), I immediately hailed a taxi to take me to the hostel. Probably the best €6 I’ve spent during this entire vacation. The driver was Irish (something that I’d been told not to expect in the big city) and we had a lively conversation on the way. He even refused my tip, assuring me that I needed it more than him. Man, nice people here. Had an uneventful evening, which would be followed by four full days to tour Dublin. This would turn out to be approximately one day longer than I really needed to see the stuff I was particularly interested in, so I am damn glad that I didn’t spend nine days there as originally planned.

Day One.

I left the hostel and traveled down O’Connell street, which is one of the main drags of the city. Along the way I passed the big post office, which was the site of the proclamation of independence that started the Easter Rising in 1916. There are still bullet dents from the ensuing five-day firefight in the big pillars along the front, but they’re pretty hard to notice. However, down the street is the O’Connell monument, which has much more visible battle-damage. As the statues are hollow metal, the bullets punched straight through, making very dramatic holes on the angelic figures. Crossing the river shortly led me to Trinity College. Trinity is apparently one of the most respected colleges in Europe, and is particularly known for the arts. The campus is pretty nice, in that it has some cool architecture and absolutely the most neatly-manicured lawns I have ever seen. (Though I prefer U of M, to be honest.)

However, the big draw for me (and, I suppose, most tourists) was the Book of Kells. This is an 8^th-century “illuminated Bible” – an incredibly lavishly illustrated copy of the New Testament. It was hand-scribed and -painted on vellum (de-furred and stretched animal hide) using natural pigments bound with egg white. I’m not sure what the proportion of each is, but the pages are divided into two categories: pages that are text-based, with occasional important words and letters enlarged and visually embellished; and pages that are entirely composed of unbelievably detailed illustrations of – for example – the crucifixion, saints, scribes, saints’ symbols, Celtic knotwork, and just…indescribable stuff. Before you reach the Book itself, you go through an exhibit talking about the history of the Book and others like it, the processes of scribing and illustrating and bookbinding, the meanings of certain illustrations, etc. Interesting enough in its own right. The Book of Kells is kept under glass in two “pieces.” Since the original binding has been lost, there is no problem with dividing the pages for easier viewing. However, in the interest (I assume) of prolonging the artifact’s life, only four pages are exposed at a time, and they are “turned” to show a new set of pages once every three months. At all times, I believe, there are two pages of illustrations, two pages of text. It’s unbelievable to see what these scribes and illustrators did without the aid of magnifying tools – or, indeed, archival-quality art supplies. It looks like it was painted yesterday! The paint is still glossy! It’s a very cool thing to see.

After this, you are led to the Old Library of Trinity College, which is a very long and beautifully-built room that houses thousands upon thousands of manuscripts from the past few centuries. Apparently, the Library has the legal right to claim one free copy of each new book published in Ireland or the United Kingdom for its collection. Weird! At one point, you can glance over a velvet rope into a room where people are cleaning and restoring some of the more deteriorated books. The Library also contains one of a few remaining printed copies of the proclamation made at the start of the Easter Rising. Oh, and the Brian Boru Harp! It’s the oldest Celtic-style harp in Ireland, dating to the 14^th century if I remember right, and it’s the one that the design on all Irish money was modeled on.

Anyway, despite the length of this description, it was only a little after lunchtime at this point! Later, I wandered around St. Stephen’s Green – Dublin’s answer to Central Park – and enjoyed the sun, as did many many others. Then I wandered the labyrinthine National Gallery for a few hours. It had a very large collection of Christian works, including the only Cubist crucifixion scene I’ve ever laid eyes on. Also, apparently W.B. Yeats had a brother named Jack who was a pretty prolific painter. And I guess his father painted too? And his other brothers did some stuff? I had never heard of any Yeats except for William Butler before.

Day Two.

On this day, I had a tough decision to make. I knew the National Museum of History and Archaeology was open, and I also really wanted to tour the Old Jameson Distillery. My final decision was that, since museums always close early (5 PM!), I would check out the Jameson tour early, get lunch, then spend the afternoon in the museum.

…Do you see my mistake yet? You will.

The Old Jameson Distillery is so called because Jameson is no longer made there; production has been moved to somewhere in County Cork, I believe. Today, the Distillery has been turned into a museum housing a gift shop, a couple of bars, and a small-scale replica of what the distillery was like back in the day. I arrived at roughly 10:15 AM, ten minutes before the next tour. Perfect! First thing, the tour group was led into a mini-amphitheater where we were exposed to a shockingly cheesy bit of filmmaking discussing the history of John Jameson and Son and their products. However, I DID learn a few things from it: before making whiskey, the Jamesons were known for defending ships from pirates; and Irish monks originally developed whiskey-making and shared it with the Scots. The latter bit smacks of competition-fueled tall-tale boasting, so take it with a grain of salt. Afterward, our guide dryly informed us that he “usually sees a standing ovation for that film,” and that it had “won two Oscars, if such a thing’s possible.” Then we moved on to the tour. We saw, as I mentioned, scaled-down versions of the grain storehouse, malting floor, wort-mixing vat, fermentation vat, pot stills (these ones may actually have been to scale), aging warehouses, and blending vat. Then we got to the free drinks!

You’ve almost got it figured out, don’t you?

Everyone gets a free drink at the end of the tour. However, in my case, it turns out that at the beginning of the tour I’d volunteered for the whiskey-tasting experience! How could I refuse such a tantalizing possibility? After everyone but us eight volunteers had gotten their drinks, we were seated at a long table in front of all the non-volunteers. Each of us had a tray in front of us with three half-shots mixed with water (to release the flavors, of course): one Jameson, one unidentified Scotch whisky, and one unidentified American whiskey. As the rest of the tour watched, the guide led us through the process of smelling the “nose” of each whiskey, then sipping them, describing the scents and flavors we should be noticing for each one and the reasoning behind it. Quite interesting, as well as tasty! We were later informed that the Scotch was Johnnie Walker 12-year-old Black Label (not too shabby) and the American whiskey was, of course, Jack Daniels. Each of us volunteers got a silly little diploma declaring us “official Irish whiskey tasters”.

Then we got our promised free drinks. Yes, in addition to the ones we’d sampled. Bringing me to a total of roughly 2.5 shots of whiskey/whisky in a period of fifteen or twenty minutes. This is how I came to be, at roughly 11:45 AM, walking the streets of Dublin in a state of drunkenness that I usually reserve for after midnight in the comfort of my own (or a friend’s) home. Yay Ireland!

After I’d had lunch and sobered up a bit, I headed out to the Museum of Archaeology. I…hm. I enjoyed it, certainly, but somehow I don’t really have much to say about it. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that photography wasn’t allowed, so I don’t have a little compendium of all of my favorite bits. There was a lot about prehistoric Ireland, with stone knives and whatnot, but I’ve seen plenty of that by now. There was a section about Vikings, which would have been cool if it wasn’t so poorly-curated. Though they did have a working replica Viking boat, which was neat! They also had an exhibit – a pretty small portion of a larger collection, but the most interesting part for me – where you could hear some poetry read in Middle Irish, Norman French, and Middle English. That was pretty neat. Middle English is mostly understandable!

The “treasury” room had an awful lot of penannular brooches, which has successfully landed them on my list of things to make or purchase. I think it’d go great with a kilt, you see. Basically how they work is this: The brooch is a ring with a small open space, and opposite the open space is a pin that can move freely along the ring. You stick the pin through your cloak or whatever, then you slide the exposed tip of the pin through the open space on the ring, and twist it so that the pin is resting on the ring. At this point the fabric of your cloak can’t slip out. God, I explained that terribly, didn’t I? Here, this will help you understand:

http://www.runesmith.co.uk/runepens/runepens.htm

Thanks, Google!

Ah heck, let’s just post this now since I’ve got it written. So, one more Dublin entry soon to come, covering days Three and Four!

The internet here at the hostel is pretty slow, so you won’t get photos of Dublin ‘til after I get home, but before the final, retrospective-style entry, y’know.