"God doesn't think he's Bono"
Trip Start
Mar 16, 2009
1
47
Trip End
Jul 22, 2009
Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Of course, our hotel was booked for that Saturday night completely, so I had no chance of getting us a room at a reduced or full rate. Actually, most of the hostels were booked, and so I had to find us one that was affordable at the last minute, which was also tough, because Dublin is so expensive. We finally settled on the Blessington Hostel, about a 20 minute walk from our hotel and unfortunately more expensive.
Really, anyone going to Dublin should go to visitdublin.com, because you can really get some amazing deals...
But at least we had a place to stay, so we moved our stuff. Kristen was getting very ancy. We'd come to Ireland for the week, but it looked like we'd be spending half of our time figuring stuff out rather than doing stuff. This is the drawback of travel on the fly. Of course, we've planned plenty of things months in advance that had had their own drawbacks as well...
But not to worry, it all worked out perfectly in the end.
The Blessington Hostel was pretty nice for a hostel and we had a good double room. It was actually the Czech and Slovak hostel of Dublin, complete with Czech Republic and Slovakian flags and also old Czechloslovakian flag in front. The people were very nice, but they weren't all that helpful in offering advice for where to go and what to see in Ireland or what tours/bus routes to take.
So we headed to the Dublin Tourist Information Centre right in the heart of Dublin, which had plenty of information on a number of budget tours that would allow us to see Ireland, if you will. We settled on a four day West and South Tour with Paddy Wagon Tours that was reasonably priced and included all accommadation and entrance fees. It ended up being on the whole the best run tour of our entire trip, and I really have to reccommend Paddy Wagon to those visiting Ireland.
After waking up exhausted at 8:00 and nervous about what the heck we'd do in Ireland we had a great plan by 12:30. The four-day tour also left us one extra day so that if we wanted to we could do another day tour out of Dublin. And we had everything sorted in time to make it to the "free" Dublin walking tour. Even better, on the way to the "tour" we saw a sign for stand up comedy night at The Bankers, a pub just across the street from Temple Bar, a fun place to go out in Dublin...and what do you know, we even had a night plan set!
The tour was "free" in that you paid nothing for the tour, but you were asked to tip the tour guide at the end. We had no problem doing so, it was a terrific three + hour tour.
Our guide Daniel was a student and aspiring stand up comic who had taken the job to keep him in front of people as much as possible for the summer. He was studying Media and Communications, but as a former history major I was very impressed by his Encylopedic knowledge of Irish history and his ability to tell stories and help us learn about the history in a fun and entertaining way. We started outside City Hall with a 20 minute action packed run down of virtually the whole span of Irish history. He apologized to the English. "I'm sorry guys if it sounds like you are the bad guys...but we did have to deal with 800 years of oppression," he explained.
He was also quite self-deprecating with respect to the Irish, often joking that their actions hadn't always been "the smartest in the history of the world."
Right next to City Hall is the Dublin Castle, site of the 1916 Easter Rising. The "Castle," which was the symbolic fortified headquarters of British rule, would be a great place to hold for the Irish revolutionaries. The Rising had been set for Easter Sunday, and then was called off...only to be rescheduled for Easter Monday, which complete surprised the British, who knew everything about the "Rising." Thus they left Dublin Castle almost completely unguarded, with just one guard, the first casualty of the Rising, making it surprisingly easy for it to be taken by the 19 Irish sent to take it, 10 men and 9 women... Yes, the Irish sent 19 to take the most important place in the city, "It was not the best planned rising in the history of the world..." The 19 could have taken Dublin Castle easily, but when they arrived in the courtyard unscathed, they became sure that they were about to be ambushed, so they retreated to City Hall...where they raised an Irish flag, alerting the British authorities. The British easily quelled the Rising, and executed many of its leaders. They did not, however, execute one of the female ring leaders. In the spirit of equality she demanded execution as well...gotta love Irish feminism.
After taking us through the courtyard of the "Castle" he took us outside to show us the only part that actually looks like a castle, which was part of the original castle. The Records Tower had walls 4 meters thick. It had only been escaped from once when it was used as a prison, by a guy who went through the floor and joined one of Dublin's many underground rivers.
Behind Dublin Castle was the "world's prettiest helicopter landing pad" which featured an old Celtic design. there was also a pretty old stable house that had been built before Queen Elizabeth I's visit over 400 years ago to hide Europe's worst slums...a clever trick. In that courtyard there is also the Chester Beatty Library, which surprisingly houses the world's second biggest collection of Korans...where's the biggest? Istanbul...we've been there too.
Our guide thought it was quite funny that the second biggest collection of Koran's was in the almost all Catholic Ireland. I think it's funny that it was donated by an American, though Beatty was adopted as an Irish citizen eventually. Kristen and I smiled when we heard Beatty made his money at the Cripple Creek mine, because one of our favorite songs is The Band's "Up on Cripple Creek." Beatty was actually the only private citizen to ever receive and Irish State Funeral. I slowly was noticing that America and Americans had a different place in Ireland than in many of the countries we've visited...but more on that later.
The tour continued with stories of Jonathan Swift, a visit to a representation of an old Viking settlement and a location where the Dublin City Council, in "not the smartest move in the history of the world," had decided that rather on work on excavating the area had simply decided to pave over it.
We were taken to Temple Bar, the "center of culture" filled with pubs and music venues. It's where U2 got their start. It's really fun at night, but even during the day there are plenty of markets and street performers. Bono and the Edge actually own a hotel in Temple Bar that is quite famous as well. They are playing in Dublin next week and the city is buzzing. Of course that Saturday night the Boss was playing in Dublin and the city was buzzing. Oh, and the Oxegen outdoor music festival was going on with many current big acts including the Kings of Leon, The Killers, Katy Perry, Lady Ga Ga, Lily Allen, etc. etc. etc. The Irish love their music.
Our guide was not the biggest fan of U2, and joked "What's the difference between Bono and God? God doesn't think he's Bono." He was scandalized that Bono had been at Obama's concert because he didn't want Bono representing Ireland anywhere.
Our guide was a funny guy, he kept asking us if we'd ever fallen asleep in Lincoln's arms in DC. I haven't...and I don't think I'll ever try it.
He took us across the River Liffy on the Ha'penny Bridge, a famous crossing in just about every Dublin post card. In a show of reconcilliation, the British had paid for the reconsturction and refurbishing of the bridge...the company they paid to do it? The same as the one that built the Titanic...oops.
The River Liffy seperates North Dublin and South Dublin and is also a big class seperator as well. Though we didn't venture too far from the city centre, North Dublin (which is actually where we stayed) is quite a bit poorer than South Dublin. This dates back almost a thousand years. One of the things that is so fun about visiting Europe for an American is probably that it seems like everything dates back so far, much farther than our country has even existed. The class divisions go all the way back to Viking times when the vanquished Vikings who decided to stay in Ireland were moved to the North part of the city. Near the same time, aristocrats and nobles decided to move to the South. The rest is history.
We visited Trinity College, where if you pass certain amazingly difficult tests in the subject you wish to study you can earn free tuition, room and board, which includes, and I'm not even kidding, a free pint of Guiness each day. The Irish love their alcohol.
Daniel, our guide, did sort of explain that one though... Really, he sort of did. He said you can't really blame the Irish completely. When Elizabeth I was in power, the penal laws made it illegal to practice Catholocism in Ireland. Catholics were persecuted and would face harsh penalties for practicing their faith. In the countryside, you could sometimes get away with it because there was enough space to congregate and not cause too much of a commotion. But in the city that was nearly impossible. So the pub actually became a front for the church, and one that featured a good after mass atmosphere. People would go to the pub to go to church...not to the pub to avoid church. Not to mention it was a very social and communal atmosphere.
In other words...basically British oppression helped the Irish alcohol culture...interesting and ironic...Holding onto religion and holding onto your beer went hand in hand I guess.
Daniel told us a lot about Irish humor, such as showing how some Trinity students had placed a plaque dedicated to a Pastor who had "died" crossing the River Liffy Bridge in 1918...well, that guy had never existed. Of course when the city council wished to remove the plaque the people resisted and held memorials to that poor pastor.
Daniel gave us a taste of Irish Rhyming humor, telling us that any monument in Dublin was sure to have a number of humourous Irish names, such as the "millenium spire," a tall spire constructed for the millenium and finished in 2003...near the river...in the middle of O'Connell street...earning it the nicknames "The Stiffy by the Liffy," and "The Erection in the Intersection."
One of our last stops on the tour was at a postal box. All of the postal boxes in Dublin date back to British rule. When Ireland was granted independence, rather than dismantle the postal boxes with their references to British rule, they just painted them green...Good enough for some I guess.
We ended in a nice park after passing a government building on which the American White House is modelled. In the park Daniel told us one last story of Irish folk lore. He also told us a little about the famine, as there was a statue dedicated to it in the park.
I think the stop at the "postal box" was really representative of the walking tour and of my general impression of Dublin. In terms of general and traditional "attractions," there isn't too much to "see" in Dublin. There's no Parthenon, no Hagia Sofia, no Pyramids. But it is a city with a rich history dating back over a thousand years to Viking times. The vikings actually founded the city...which makes sense when you think about guys with big red beards, Irish or Viking. And really to hear all of that from an amicable Irishmen only adds to the fun. Dublin has its charm, no big buildings, some cobblestone streets (in Temple Bar),old buildings and old Trinity College, etc., but it's really hearing about the history and stuff like that that makes it fun during the day...
Because as we were walking back we could see that one of the Irish girls we met in our first week in New Zealand had been seriously confused. At one of our first stops in New Zealand, Taupo, there had been a number of Irish Pubs, one of which was called "Mulligans." She had stated that she thought it was very funny that there are Irish Pubs everywhere because there are no Irish Pubs in Ireland.
On the way to our hotel the night before we had passed Madigan's. Walking back to our hostel we saw Fitzgerald's, Fitzsimmons', Cassidy's, O'Brien's, Finnegan's, O'Sullivan's, etc. etc. Their names were all spelled out in the same "Gaelic"-like English alphabet as you see on every "Irish Pub" in the States or around the world... I mean, no they weren't all called "Fitzgerald's Irish Pub," but they were clearly Irish Pubs, and later in Temple Bar I did see a place with "Irish" in the name.
But what I really found funny was that there were also a number of "American Bars." Right on O'Connell street was Grand Central, complete with American flags everywhere and a sign saying that it was voted one of Ireland's best bars in 2009. Actually, American flags are in a lot of places. There is Thunder Road in Temple Bar (clearly an ode to the Boss), and later that night one of the busiest places in Temple Bar had a long Irish name, but a huge American flag out front (above a number of other flags) and was filled with American parafanalia. It really just looked like a Boston bar to me, and Temple Bar kind of reminded me of the area around Fenway in Beantown.
There are really a lot of ties between America and Ireland, and we are generally held in a pretty good light in Ireland. I mean, it makes sense on the most fundemental level that "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," and boy did we whip those Brits back in the day, but really America was such a major palce for Irish immigrants to go. Other than Dublin and Belfast, it's likely there are more Irishmen in Boston than anywhere else in the world, especially when you consider that Limmerick, Galway, and Cork in the Republic all have populations under 120,000. And when Americans talk about the "Land of Opportunity," well it really was for the oppressed Irish. I mean sure, the Irish joke about Americans like everyone in the world jokes about Americans, but generally we're pretty well liked, and everyone has family somewhere in the States. The American Ambassador's residence is right near the Irish President's Residence, and it is nice and massive, as we'd see on the start of our Paddy Wagon tour the next day.
We stopped at a conveinence store/deli on the walk back where we were reminded that we'd finally made it back to the English speaking world... the guy at the deli was an immigrant from Bangladesh who didn't speak hardly any English and didn't understand that the menu said we got a salad with our sandwich...he gave me a dollup of egg salad... It's good to be back.
I was really excited for our comedy night, but as the Brits would say, I was "knackered," so I passed out for a while.
When it came time to go get some dinner and see the show it was absolutely pouring. It was about a 20 minute walk to The Bankers and I just couldn't take it. We got a cab. It was the first cab driver we've had in months that spoke perfect English. Our Irish cabbie was a good guy, he felt bad for the people at the Boss concert that night who'd all paid at least 80 Euro for a ticket.
He dropped us off near The Bankers and I was so happy that we'd had a real conversation that I tipped him though I don't think that's customary. He also let us off right in front of "Rick's" which claimed to serve "real hamburgers." Not "proper" hamburgers like the Brits, Irish, Kiwis, and Aussies would say, but "REAL" burgers. I was excited.
The burger was decent but a bit of a let down...it wasn't "real" in the sense I was looking for: it wasn't anywhere close to as good as those made in the US of A.
There 4 kids sitting next to us, three of which were clearly American and I struck up a conversation. They were all high school teachers in London, and believe it or not...they were in town to see Bruce...though they had tickets to the Sunday night show. One of the teachers had gone to Middlebury and played lacrosse. Another teacher had taught at NCS just down the street from where I went to high school.
Small world.
Wow, I just refered to the teachers as "kids" because they seemed like "kids my age," but they were all teachers, not kids, and all a bit older than me. Does that mean I'm not a kid anymore?
Nah...
The comedy show at The Bankers was fantastic.
I had my first "real" Guiness. I put that in quotes, but really it's like a totally different drink here in Ireland. Actually it's more than a drink, it's a religion, in which any Irishmen will tell you it takes 119.5 seconds of waiting after the primary pour for the Guiness to settle and then you top it up.
Of course after my first Guiness I was just happy to see a Coors Light on tap! American beers on tap! And they all say the world hates American beers. If American beers are good enough for the Irish they're good enough for everyone...well, maybe that's not perfect logic since the Irish just like to drink, but seriously, if they can sell Coors Light in the land of beer enthusiasts, then you know it's good...and it's good...and light beer, finally.
Then again, I developed a real taste for Guiness during my time here...it just won't be the same back home...
The show had 4 comedians and an MC in a room that held between 50 and 75. It was great, and somehow it all just made it funnier that they all had thick Irish accents. I was sitting at the front of the bar on a stool right at eye level with the comics wearing a bright nearly neon green polo shirt that I bought in Turkey. I am also American. I think every comic worked me into their bit, starting with the MC who made more than a few jokes about the brightness of my shirt.
The first act found out I was American and made a lot of jokes about the Iraq War. People were relatively warm, though some were a bit too political to elicit as good a response as they should have.
He did have two terrific war bits though.
The first was actually about Iceland, where we are heading next, and the fact that Iceland was a participant, albeit a small one, in the Iraq War. Actually, the Daily Show did a hilarious bit on this when Iceland pulled their one soldier out of Iraq. His joke was that Iceland hadn't been in a war since the Viking days.
"Can't you just imagine them rowing down to Iraq? Row Sigmund row! Faster, this war started three years ago! Hmm, maybe we shouldn't have stopped to rape and pillage along the way!"
The Irish are very proud of their Viking heritage, and actually that an Irish king was so strong that he basically said to the Vikings around 1000 AD you can either fight and be killed, or you can come live here in peace, and apparently a lot did, such that some Vikings became more Irish than the Irish.
The first comic also started talking about the evolution of war and what we might be headed for in terms of communication on the battle field. He theorized that in WWI, the average age of fighters had been 28, and in WWII it was 22. So were we headed towards WWIII fought by 16 year olds.
"Can't you just imagine them at the front lines, texting back and forth to their superiors? 'R U OK?' 'Getting shot, not LOL. TTYL.'" After the previous day's overheard conversation I was bawling during that bit.
The second comic was overweight, in his fifties, balding, and wore a plaid shirt. He was a master of self-deprecation, and just generally hilarious. He did a great bit on "Pimp my Ride," but I really liked his reaction to hearing that I was American.
"What's it like to have Denzel for president?"
He did a great explanation of Irish humor when he told us that in Ireland you could say anything and get away with it as long as you follow it up with a wink and a nod.
"You are a serial killer" he said to me, followed by the wink and a nod. We were cool after that.
The third comedian was good and again noticed my shirt.
The last comedian ended with a bit in which he took various supermarket pizza boxes and found the differences between the instructions on the packages. It was hilarious, and that was the mark of a good comedian: taking something ordinary and boring and making it funny, just plain funny. It was a good night.
We walked down to Temple Bar and it was jumping, the streets were packed with people and performers. We decided to check out a bar with live Irish music. When we went in they were singing good Irish songs to a nearly all Irish mid 40s-mid 50s very overweight mostly female crowd that knew all the words. It looked like a bachelorette party, only all the women were too old. It had a very sort of small town ladies night out feel, it was funny.
We walked down the street some more to the American bar/Boston-like bar that was absolutely packed, with Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" playing and WWF on the big screens. (I later saw advertisments for "American Wrestling" in another bar, so I guess some people here watch it, at least on pub nights.
We passed Thunder Roads and headed home, ready for an early start on the Paddy Wagon and our tour of the rest of Ireland the next day.
DISCLAIMER:
I am obviously a million years behind on my blog...we are actually done with Ireland and headed to Iceland tomorrow (July 17th), but I haven't had time to catch up...I probably won't be all caught up until I get home in a week, but I will catch up, I promise. Thanks for your patience, all 3 fans of mine.
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