The Dublin Customs House at night, from across the river.
Warning: This blog post is of epic length (but also fully illustrated with photographs).
The last several days have been some of the busiest that I have had for the entirety of my trip and also some of the most fun and rewarding. We were constantly on the move. It was awesome.
Thursday evening we went to see a play at the Almeida Theatre called In A Dark Dark House by American playwright Neil LaBute. It was pretty good. I enjoyed it, although at times I thought that it dragged on and on. It was divided into three parts and the second part was the only one that held my attention for its entirety. The play was about two brothers who had been molested by a family friend and are now having to deal with the consequences as adults. I really liked the set, which was a grassy yard that transformed from a mental hospital park, mini-golf hole, and posh backyard. There were only three actors, but they all did well. Their accents were not good though. They were trying to pull off American accents and they were terribly inconsistent. It actually took several of us a while to figure out that they were supposed to be American accents. It was the first preview night, so it was the first time that it had been performed for a paying audience. There weren’t any major problems. One light blew in the back and there were a couple of line flubs, but they recovered so well that it seemed natural, like the character was just flustered and having trouble getting out what he wanted to say. We have to buy the script for the plays that we go see every week. When you buy a play script of a modern play it normally will tell you something along the lines of This play was first performed at the —– Theatre on ——– and then gives you the cast list. It was neat that this play says “In A Dark Dark Housewas first performed in Europe at the Almeida Theatre, London, on 20 November 2008.” And we saw it at the Almeida Theatre, London, on 20 November 2008. Then it was head home and get to bed because there would be an early day in the morning.
Only my roommate was being loud and I couldn’t get to sleep until sometime after 1 am. Normally not a big deal, but when you’ve gone to bed at 1 in the morning 3.45 am comes quickly. So when my alarm went off I had to hit the snooze button once and so at 3.51 I popped out of bed and hopped in the shower and then got dressed for a long day. I met the gang downstairs at 4.30. We went to Ireland as a rather large group actually. There was Me (Craig), Ryan, Stephanie, and then the “K” girls- Kristen, Katelyn, Kaitlen, Kinsey, and Kyle. Someone was running a bit late so we missed the 4.32 bus to Victoria Station and had to stand out in the cold until the 5.02 bus came. We hopped on it and rode to the station and made a frantic dash through London Victoria to catch the 5.15 Gatwick Express to Gatwick Airport. We got there and checked in with Easy Jet and went through security. Security wasn’t as crazy as it is in the States, but it was still pretty intense. I did get randomally picked to have my shoes scanned for bombs and of course I was wearing big bulky Timberlands that are a pain to lace up and tie, so the group had to wait on me. But we got on the plane and everything was fine. We actually took off at 7.00 which was on time, so hooray. I slept most of the flight over to Belfast International Airport.
When we got to Belfast the first thing that I did while we were waiting on people to collect their checked bags was to listen to the Elton John song “Belfast” from his Made in England album. It is all about “The Troubles” and was a perfect listen for what we did next. We had decided to try to see a little of Belfast before we headed down to Dublin for the rest of the weekend. Someone had had heard about a cab tour of Belfast, so we decided to do that. It was actually really neat. Two cabs came and picked us up and showed us all around Belfast, concentrating on what would have been the most dangerous parts of the city during “The Troubles” although our guide told us that since the ceasefire had been reached that Belfast has actually become the safest city in Europe.
The General Post Office in Dublin, one of the most important sites for the 1916 Easter Rising.
Ok, a little bit of background on “The Troubles” and this is by no means exhaustive nor does it really get into the nuances of the problems. Plus I can’t really understand it, I think you have to be someone who has lived in Ireland for many many years to understand that kind of hatred. So as you know many hundreds of years ago the British colonised Ireland, a heavily Roman Catholic island off the western coast of Wales. The British treated the Catholic Irish inhumanely. It is a terrible stain on British history, much like slavery is for America. Cromwell in particular was awful to the Catholics. After several hundred years of being maltreated the Irish began agitating for independence. Who wouldn’t? So in 1916 there was the Easter Rising in which the Irish Republican Brotherhood took over several buildings, such as Dublin Castle and the General Post Office and fought the British troops. As is often the case with rebellions, this one didn’t end well and the British response was incredibly harsh. Many, many were executed and many more imprisoned. Then there was a campagin of violence masterminded by Michael Collins in which what would become the IRA killed British G-Men wherever they could find them. Finally, in 1921 an Irish Free State was declared, which consisted of the whole of Ireland except for the northernmost 6 counties of the province of Ulster. All of this is dramatised in a great movie called Michael Collins with Liam Neeson, Alan Rickman and Julia Roberts. I love it.
The six counties of Northern Ireland were kept under British rule as part of the United Kingdom because the majority of Protestants in Ireland were in those six counties. But not everyone there was Protestant, there were still a goodly number of Catholics, who believed that all of Ireland should be united. Things were uneasy until the mid to late 1960’s when full scale violence and mayhem broke out. So now to Belfast specifically.
The mural for Bobby Sands in the Catholic side of Belfast.
Belfast was divided into Catholic and Protestant parts with a HUGE fence dividing them and gates that let you from one side to another. To this day the gates still open and close every day. Most open at 6 am and close at 9 pm. We saw the apartment building that the British troops used as an observation point on the Catholic side. They took over the top three floors of the apartment building and used the Catholic tenants underneath as human shields to protect themselves. Catholic tenants only moved back into the top three floors of that building 14 months ago. Our cabbie, Patrick, told us about how the troops had once put the entire Catholic side on curfew until further notice. That meant ANYONE, man woman child who was seen leaving a house was to be shot dead. No questions asked. It lasted for 3 days when some women who were’t under curfew told the troops to go home and they would handle it. Arming themselves to the teeth with bread and milk they went from house to house delivering supplies to the people who had been under house arrest for days because they knew that even British troops wouldn’t shoot women taking food to people. We saw rememberance gardens for people who had been killed in the violence. There were people from the age of 4 up to their 80’s. We saw houses that backed up to the wall and saw how they had been built with giant metal screens on the backs of the houses to shield them from anything that was thrown over the wall. Our cabbie told us how both sides kept score, and for every Protestant that the IRA killed, the Protestants would kill a Catholic and vice versa. We saw some beautiful murals that commemorated various people who had died during the struggle, including Bobby Sands, a Catholic who was elected an MP while he was in prison. He died on hunger strike. Our cabbie told us all about the struggles of Catholics who had been arrested by the British government and their fight to be recognised as political prisoners, not as criminals. If you want to see another fantastic movie that dramatises some struggles faced by the Irish Catholics in prison, check out In the Name of the Father with Daniel Day-Lewis and Emma Thompson.
The Sinn Fein headquarters.
We went past the headquarters of Sinn Fein (which means we, ourselves) and is the political arm of the Irish Republican Army. He told us about the struggles to get into government and getting the British to recognise them and sit in government with them. It has been recent, in the last 10 years. We talked about how the IRA decided to fight with guns as well as with the ballot boxes (it was when they realised that Catholics, who as part of their religious views don’t use birth control, were having families with 10 or 12 children and the Protestants were having one or two and so the Catholic popoulation had very nearly caught or surpassed the Protestant population). It was fascinating.
Murals and the wall dividing the Catholic and Protestant areas of Belfast. This is the Protestant side of the wall.
Then we went over to the Protestant side of the city and saw some more sights. The most moving were the murals on the Protestant side of the wall. We also went to a park and saw some Protestant murals and the tops of one of the prisons that used to house Catholic prisoners. There was one mural of a gunman, and it was painted so that no matter where you were standing in the park, the gun was pointed at you. It was so weird and more than a little unsettling.
I’m glad that they have reached an agreement. As I have already said, I don’t understand the whole hatred of people based on their religion. I don’t understand why the Catholics and Protestants hated each other, just like I can’t understand why many Muslims hate Christians and vice versa, or why some Christians hate Jews. It doesn’t make sense to me. But especially not Catholics and Protestants. Its the same God people. Maybe it is because when my parents got married my mum was Catholic and so was her whole family and my dad was Protestant and so was his whole family. Maybe it is because I was baptised Catholic and later baptised as a Protestant. Maybe it is because my best friend is Catholic. Maybe it is because I find the Catholic mass to be very beautiful. I don’t know why, but I just can’t understand hating someone enough to kill them just because they are Catholic or Protestant. And I never will.
I realise it sounds like all this was terribly depressing, but we had a good time. Our cabbie had a great sense of humour. The best part was when Kenzie was smoking and he walked up and took her half smoked cigarette and walked off and finished it. He told some fun stories. He even showed us a picture of him with Vince Vaughn when Vince Vaughn had taken his cab tour. He even recommended a great lunch place for us to try. We did and it was awesome.
Stepping on the crown at The Crown pub in Belfast.
We had lunch at a pub called The Crown. It was built by a couple that was called a “mixed marriage” in 1849. He was Catholic and she was Protestant. She wanted to call it The Crown and he wanted to call it The Shamrock. Of course his wife won, because wives almost always do, but he had one condition. They had to put a crown on the step so that everyone who entered and exited the pub would step on it. And it is still there. We took pictures stepping on it. We got inside and got seated in a snug (or snuggie as the cabbie called it). Basically it is a giant booth with a door and seats on all 4 sides. It was so cool. We loved it. Everyone had big heaping bowls of Irish stew and it was fantastic, heavy and really filling. Almost no one could finish theirs because of how much we got and how filling it was.
So from the crown we went back to the bus station and bought tickets and hopped on a bus for Dublin. It took about 3 hours to get down to Dublin but we went through some really beautiful countryside. It is really, seriously green. I did use the time to take a nice nap, which wasn’t hard with some music and a full tummy. Once we got to Dublin we went and found the hostel. Only there had been a mixup with our bookings and we had been shunted next door to the hotel part, which was really nice. Instead of being in a room fro 20 people with no privacy and such we were in 2 rooms each with its own bathroom, which was so nice. So it was me, Ryan, Stephanie, Kristen, and Kyle in one room and Kaitlyn, Katelyn, and Kinsey in the other. Basically we stayed in the hotel room long enough to drop off stuff and then went exploring.
With the statue of James Joyce.
We went down by the Customs House which was really pretty and wandered about looking for something to eat. We got onto O’Connell Street which is one of the main streets in Dublin. We got waylaid by Carrol’s Irish Gifts and everyone but me bought something for friends or family and we all had a ball looking at all the crazy stuff they had. We saw a great statue of James Joyce near the Dublin Spire (a huge spire hundreds of feet high, that has no discernable purpose as far as we could tell, other than being pretty) and all took pictures with the Joyce statue.
Down the street we went again, still searching for food. Finally we settled on O’Shays which was a halfway decent sitdown place and we all had traditional Irish food. I had Shepherd’s Pie and it was the best Shepherd’s Pie ever. Yum yum yum! From there we went out exploring again. One of the girls collects Hard Rock Cafe t-shirts so we hunted down the Hard Rock Cafe so she could get her shirt and then we went back to O’Connell St because several people wanted dessert. We actually ended up at a little 50’s themed diner called Eddie Rockets, which was amazingly similar to Johnny Rockets in the States. I was still too full to eat again, but everyone else managed some sort of dessert and we had a good time chattering and listening to the music. Then it was back to the hotel. We were in bed, lights out by 10 pm and it was glorious.
An unknown, but awesome building at Trinity College Dublin.
We were up bright and early on Saturday morning and downstairs for breakfast at 8. By 9 we were out the door and on our way over to Trinity College so that we could see the Book of Kells. The Book of Kells is one of the most beautiful examples of a medieval illuminated manuscript. It has the 4 Gospels and is very incredible. It took something like 185 calf skins to make the vellum for the book. It is still in very good condition to have been made in 800. It was really neat. I was pretty excited to get to see it, since I’ve read about it. Then we went upstairs in the library at Trinity College to The Long Room. It is a very beautiful and very impressive library containing some 200,000 of the libraries oldest volumes. It also has a lot of busts of famous writers. I loved that room. I had seen tons of pictures of it in the many coffee table books about Ireland that I have acquired over the years. It was beautiful. Maybe the coolest thing in there was the actual harp that the little Guinness harp is based on. I didn’t know that at the time I saw the harp, but I found that out when we went to the Guinness factory later. We were all really impressed with the library and Book of Kells and so that was great fun.
Then we seperated because people wanted to do their own thing for a couple of hours. A few of us headed over to Nassau Street because we knew that there was some shopping there and there were several good stores that had the luxurious thick Irish wool sweaters and Irish tweed stuff. There were many scarves and hats purchased by various group members. I myself purchased a tweed hat that I’m rather fond of. There are pictures, but I’m sure you’ll see me wearing it when I get home. I also ended up buying a pair of absolutely gorgeous Waterford crystal wine glasses. They are so pretty. I love them. Then we grabbed some lunch at a little bagel shop and went exploring some more.
In front of Dublin Castle
We went in the direction of Christ Church Cathedral. On the way we stopped to take pictures outside of Dublin Castle and to get some snacks at The Queen of Tarts. Finally we got to Christ Church and saw the outside of it and took pictures. We didn’t have time to to go in, but we’ve seen enough churches that it is ok. From there we made our way down to St Patricks, which we couldn’t have gone in even if we wanted to because it was closed for some graduation. It is another cathedral with a good literary connection. Jonathan Swift, author of “A Modest Proposal” and Gulliver’s Travels was dean of St Patricks for a while. There was a nice little park next to the cathedral and we played there for a bit. They had a marker where the well that St Patrick used to baptise people in the 5th century supposedly was. We also looked at the memorial to major Irish writers that is in the park, so that was cool. From there we made our way over to St Stephen’s Green, which is a beautiful park in the middle of the city. I think it may be my favourite park ever, even moreso than the London parks that I love like Hyde Park and St James’ Park. We ran into some hoodlem kids, who were smoking and cursing and causing mayhem. They couldn’t have been more than 12 years old. It was funny, but also a little bit worrying at the same time.
My first ever taste of Guinness, with my friend Steph.
We met back up with the whole group at about 2.20 at Trinity and began the trek over to the Guinness factory. We got there and got right in, thankfully there was no line. The Guinness factory is a self guided tour, so you can go at your own pace and see everything. It starts out with a copy of the original lease that they signed– for 9000 years. Then you go see displays about the barley, hops, yeast, and water that is used to make Guinness. There are also displays about all sorts of other things. My favourite was the section about advertising that showed some of the old advertising campagins. I love the old “My goodness, my Guinness” on with all the animals best. They had some great ones. There was a tasting station where you got to try the Guinness and I had my first ever taste of Guinness. I even allowed it to be documented, and I don’t ever let anyone photograph me holding the least bit of alcohol. The tour ended on the 7th floor with the gravity bar. The bar offers a 360 degree view of Dublin and it is amazingly beautiful. We got up there at twilight and it was magnificent. With your entry fee you get a complimentary beverage of choice in the Gravity Bar, and of course we all had a pint. I actually finished mine. It’s definitely not my favourite, but it surely isn’t the worst thing that I’ve ever had. Then of course we went downstairs to the massive shop of all things Guinness and I bought a couple of things for a couple of friends.
We left and had a cheap dinner at a little pizza joint and then attempted to go on a Literary Pub Crawl, except it was full so we couldn’t go. I was actually a little relieved, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to go. Instead we went back to the hotel and dropped off all our purchases and then went back out to a bar called Doyle’s. I didn’t have anything to drink there, because one pint was more alcohol that I normally drink in 2 or 3 weeks. Especially since I’m just a social drinker getting pissed at a bar just didn’t sound like much fun to me. So Steph and I just watched everyone else drink for a while. But watching people drink is only entertaining for a little while, so we left and went back to the hotel to go to bed. We stopped off for some dessert on the way, but I was in the bed asleep by 11. The rest of the group scraggled in at about 2.15 in the morning.
At the Remembrance Park for all those who lost their lives for the cause of Irish freedom.
Sunday morning we slept in a little, and didn’t go down to have breakfast until 8.40. Then we all packed and checked out of the hotel and made our way up to the Dublin Writer’s Museum. We missed our turn and so we walked a lot past where we wanted to, but it was cool because we got to see more of the city and we were really early anyway. When we did get back to the Museum we were still about 40 minutes early because they didn’t open until 11. There is a really beautiful Remembrance Park across the street that is dedicated to all those who lost their lives for the cause of Irish freedom. We went over there and took several pictures and such and then went to a little store and found some snacks.
The Dublin Writers Museum
The Dublin Writers Museum was pretty neat. It took about 40 minutes to get through and they had a lot of interesting things there. I was disappointed that you couldn’t take pictures, I wanted to take some for Dr Wilson, but oh well. My favourite things were seeing the first edition Dracula, first edition Ulysses, an autographed copy of Ulysses, James Joyce’s piano and Samuel Becket’s telephone. Some of the less Englishy people in the group weren’t that impressed with the museum, but I really enjoyed it.
We hiked back through the city and caught a bus back to Belfast. The border controls were non existant. I was shocked. No one checked our passports as we went into Ireland and no one checked them as we went back into Northern Ireland. Once we got back to Belfast we caught another bus back to the airport. We hung out in the airport for a while and ended up playing an interesting version of charades to kill time. Going through security was a real pain because I forgot to take my phone out of my pocket and of course it beeped. So they had to do the whole pat down thing and check all my stuff. They even tested my shampoo to make sure it was actually shampoo. Oh well. It didn’t take that long and it didn’t really bother me. Finally we got on the plane and flew back to London. Then it was on the train back to London Victoria and then another bus back to the res hall. We made it back to the res hall a little before 10, which was nice, because we were all exhausted. I slept well last night.
This morning I didn’t turn on an alarm and slept until I was ready to get up, at the shockingly late hour of 9.20. I got up and made a cup of tea and then read the news and such. I started this post and worked on it for a while and then made lunch. After lunch I headed over to the Imperial War Museum to do more research. I hope that it was for the last time. I got a ton of stuff today, so I should be finished there. I’ll know more tomorrow when I actually start the paper. I was going to do it today, but I’m too tired of typing things to actually start a paper that needs to be good. But now I’m going to go and finally end this epically long blog post.
