Good Kids: catching up with old friends in Dublin

The weekend after Chris and Karen left in October we were travelling again, this time to Dublin. We got an early morning flight from Leipzig on a Saturday morning, and arranged to meet up with Steve, an old friend from Victoria, in Leipzig that Friday afternoon. Steve was travelling around a bit to meet up with some other friends in Germany and France, and asked if we'd be in town around that time, and we were lucky to find a way to hang out for one afternoon/evening of exploring the pubs of Leipzig. Unfortunately, we didn't actually take any pictures while there, which is strange. I was sure we'd taken at least one picture in a whiskey bar, but it seems to have completely disappeared. You'll just have to take my word for it that it was a fun evening, though the morning came much to early at 5:00. Our flight was also packed with soccer fans, complete with cheers throughout the flight, as the national football teams of Germany and Ireland were playing that afternoon in Dublin. But back to why we were going to Dublin in the first place.

Through the magic of Facebook I not only managed to get back in touch with a bunch of friends from high school, but I also arranged to meet a couple of them during a vacation to Dublin where they'd be staying with a third friend who was there doing medical school. The first two, Pam and Jen, I did actually see in Belleville about a year and a half ago, but Mary, who was going to be hosting the madness, I hadn't seen in over 10 years. Mary lives in a house with three other girls from Canada who are studying medicine in Dublin, and there was yet another Canadian on the trip, Crystal, who went to college with Jen in Belleville. So not only was it the first time that I'd been in an English-speaking country since January, practically everyone I was talking to was from Canada. And just to make sure we got our fair dose of Canadiana, the first night we all went on a bus trip to see a hockey game.

Now hockey isn't exactly popular in Ireland, so much so that there's only one arena, and it's only a couple of years old. (Also, like most of Europe, they call it ice hockey, as the term hockey is reserved for what we'd call field hockey.) We were going because Mary knew a few of the players, who of course were Canadian. It also gave us a nice bus trip about an hour and a half outside of Dublin, with pleasant views of the countryside, seen below.

We were drinking on the bus, naturally, and after a couple of pints the three girls from Belleville really couldn't go any further without a bathroom break. The driver accommodated, pulling over to the side of the road, much to the delight of the (sober) hockey players. Luckily Jeremi and I were able to hold it until the arena, but only barely. Here's Pam going back to her seat, amidst much applause. (We, unlike some of the hockey players, decided not to photograph the actual act.)

The game was okay, but our team (the Dublin Rams) were slaughtered. The only thing that kept the score close at the beginning was their goalie, who Pam and Jen randomly knew from when he played on the Belleville Bulls a few years back. Most of the players were Canadian, with some Czechs, a few Latvians, and even a couple Irish guys mixed in. At the intermission they had kids from minor league play a bit, and they were really cute to watch, as ever. A definite favourite in the group shown below was the little guy in the Mats Sundin jersey at the right.

After the game we hung out at the bar at the arena for a while, and then headed back into town, drinking all the while. Upon getting downtown around 1:30, Jeremi and I decided that, after our early-morning flight, we were done for, and started heading back to Mary's. The girls stayed out for a while longer, going to a party at the house of one of the hockey players, who lived above Temple Bar, on one of the busiest pub/club streets in Dublin. Getting home was plenty of adventure for us though, especially as it proved impossible to find a cab on a busy Saturday night. Instead we decided to walk back, but it was about a 40 minute walk, and we didn't really know where it was. After asking a few people for directions (without much luck), we got a tourist map from a hotel and used that to guide us in roughly the right direction.

One of the streets we passed on the trip home was called Irishtown Road. Jeremi spent the first few years of his life in Irishtown, New Brunswick, so we figured that it called for a picture.

Not far from here the map started to let us down a bit, as it was only a tourist map that showed the major streets, not every side street. We stopped to ask a large group of youngish men who were drinking in a parking lot for directions, and thus came into contact with knackers, or, more politely, Irish Travellers, for the first time. They have a pretty rough reputation, but were quite nice to us, though one particularly drunk man did hold the map we were looking at upside down while explaining to us that we were actually looking for Strand Road rather than Beach Road. Luckily his more comprehensible friend pointed us in the right direction.

The next day we headed downtown to explore a bit, checking out the shops along Grafton Street, among others.

Here's a view showing the striking Dublin Spire, which I thought was really cool. (It's the big spike in the middle of the picture, and is a polished stainless-steel spike coming out of the middle of one of the main roads. The bottom part is etched in these cool organic-looking patterns. I liked it as a modern structure in an old city, which didn't look too out of place.)

Afterward we headed to one of the places Mary had recommended for lunch and had our first food and drink at a traditional Irish pub, which was festooned with flags for the World Cup of Rugby. From left are Jen, Crystal, Pam, and me.

The bar was great, but the women's washroom was just plain weird, starting with this mosaic-covered cobra-headed idol-looking statue in an alcove.

Also, as I've seen before at McDonald's on St. Catherine Street in Montreal and now in several European cities, there was black light in the stalls, apparently to make it harder for drug users to shoot up in there as the veins are harder to see under this sort of lighting. What was different here was the intensity of the black light and the almost complete absence of light at other wavelengths. I've never seen the specks of dust glow so brightly before - even my fingernails and cuticles were glowing. And the toilet paper was unbelievable. Though you may not like to look at pictures of toilets, it really was pretty crazy. If only I could get a video of what it looked like while flushing...

The next day we decided to do like all good tourists, and go on the Guinness brewery tour. On the way there I stopped to be charmed by this old Basset Hound in Mary's neighbourhood.

Something funny around Dublin is the way they paint "look left" and "look right" on the pavement at many intersections. I'm figuring it's just for tourists, who are used to the cars coming from the other direction. While I can see it being useful, I found it a bit distracting. Maybe because sometimes I have to stop for a second to think about which way it's telling me to look...

Here we are checking out some of the propaganda-filled information panels...

...and here's Jeremi in the barelling exhibit.

The tour was fun, but it didn't quite leave me with the same successfully-brainwashed feeling as the Keith's tour in Halifax. (That may be because I went on that one three or four times though.) The highlight was claiming the pint included in the price of admission in the glass-walled Gravity Bar at the top of the old storehouse. Here are Jeremi, me, Pam, Jen, and Crystal, with sunny Dublin behind us.

The view from there was great, and we got there just before 6:00 so the sun was setting over the city, making everything look lovely, and a bit less like a dirty old town.

That night we met up with Mary and some of her friends for some nice French food, and some drinks afterward in a cool old market building. Again, no pictures from this one.

The next day the girls were heading to Amsterdam for a couple of days for a mid-week trip to get out of the hair of Mary and her roommates, but Jeremi and I weren't flying out until early (6:05) the next morning. We took the opportunity to head to the end of one of the commuter train lines into Dublin, to the fishing community of Howth, for some nice harbour views and some fresh fish and chips. Here I'm trying to figure out what the figures on this column are trying to communicate with their cryptic hand gestures.

Jeremi on the seawall...

...and Jeremi and I with the view out to sea. I've realized by looking at this and other pictures that when I squint, one eyebrow goes up and the other goes down. But I thought that symmetry was supposed to be more attractive...

By the pier there were a couple of seals competing with sea birds for the scraps thrown off one of the fishing boats.

A view from the bench where we ate our fish and chips in the sun...

On the way back to the train we came across this humourously-titled pub.

And also the shell of this old church, which had graves both surrounding it and inside it. There were bars on the door to the actual church part, though there was a helpful sign telling us that we could ask Mrs. O'Toole for the key (with her address). We chose to just look in from outside.

And finally, on the way back to Mary's place, we stopped at a pub where we'd tried to go another night, but had found it closed - The Baggot Inn. It was a new place, with the alluring gimmick that you could pour your own pints at the table. We had to try it out, not least because my brother had just been discussing this with us as his perfect plan for a bar to open in Canada. It seems to be working well in Dublin, so it might just be worth a try.

Here's Jeremi pouring his pint...