Liminal Dublin

Like many people I've talked to, I realize that I much prefer Galway to Dublin as far as Irish cities go. I had fun in Dublin and all, but it just feels sort of like this awkward liminal space for me. Like a big, temporary waiting room for when I leave and enter Ireland. When I first arrived in Ireland back at the beginning of January we spent a couple days in Dublin for orientation before moving on to Galway and I did the same thing before leaving Ireland to go spend a week in France. Jane and I bused out to Dublin together and I stayed with Katie and her mom at The Westin hotel for the two nights before moving on across the pond. I know this makes me sound a little pathetic, but I really didn't have much interest in going to do or see anything in the city for the little time we were there; I just wanted to take a hot shower in the hotel (since we didn't really have hot water all semester in our apartment in Galway) and then take naps because I was rather sleep-deprived (Jane and I had spent the past few nights staying up until 3am hanging out with Pam and Ian before saying good-bye for the semester). As long as I had food, I didn't feel the need to try to conquer Dublin. Like I said, the city just felt like a waiting room.

Well, we did eat (and I had some pretty yummy meals as well as some pretty "meh" ones) and we did end up seeing a little bit (since Jane and Katie's mom didn't feel my same sense of anti-enthusiasm for Dublin). Our first night there, Jane, Katie, and I wandered around rather restaurant/pub-dense Temple Bar District to find somewhere to eat. We decided to stop in a place called Elephant and Castle since I thought I remembered seeing a restaurant with the same name in New York. Our waiter strongly encouraged us to try their famous spicy chicken wings, we caved and split some to start. It was the first time I remember ever really eating hot wings, but they were quite tasty. I spent the whole rest of the meal trying to figure out what all the flavors were in the sauce - I got something that tasted a little bit like vinegar, but I couldn't decide what else was in it. I followed up the appetizer with another first: a charcoal grilled burger with mozzarella and tomato with a pesto sauce and fries on the side (remember: they serve potatoes at practically every meal in Ireland). It wasn't my first time ever eating a burger, but it was my first time eating beef in Ireland. Everyone raves about how awesome Irish beef is, so I figured I should try it at least once before leaving the country. Now, I'm sure it was great quality and excellent tasting beef... but it just made me remember that I really don't like the taste of red meat. With each bite, I kept expecting chicken or a veggie burger, and I was disappointed when I tasted beef instead. I wound up taking out the beef after a while and just having the tomato and mozzarella and pesto on the bun. I ended it all with some mango sorbet - a pretty delightful way to end a meal.

We found a place near Trinity College for breakfast the next morning and I decided to go with yet another first: Irish porridge with fruit. I made myself a lot of oatmeal throughout the semester, but I hadn't ever eaten any real Irish porridge. The porridge itself was really good, but I was a little disappointed. When a menu lists a cereal-type thing with fruit for breakfast, I guess I usually assume fruit combinations of either apples-and-cinnamon or mixed berries of sorts. Instead, they gave me melon and pineapples and grapes, all of which tasted a little weird to me mixed with the creamy porridge. Oh well. Lunch was a bit better (although I can't seem to remember the name of the place). It was a cute little café, also in Temple Bar District, and I had an open-faced grilled chicken sandwich on ciabatta with mozzarella and peppers and salad on the side. Simple, but good. I took half of it back to the hotel with me and had it as a pre-dinner snack later... which proved to be a good idea, since I wasn't too crazy about dinner itself. I just wanted to find a place where I could just get a little soup, but of course the place we found didn't have any soup that sounded appetizing. I wound up just getting a Caesar salad, which usually isn't the best bet in Ireland; they always add bacon to their Caesar salads, and it was way overpriced for what it was. Again I say, oh well. We went to a pub for dessert and listened to some live music for a bit before turning in, so the night ended well, anyway.

As far as the "seeing a little bit" in Dublin goes, we really just went to see two exhibits: the Book of Kells at Trinity College and the Bog Bodies exhibit at the Archaeology museum. The Book of Kells was pretty sweet, especially since we had spent a fair amount of time examining medieval manuscripts in my Medieval Heroic Narratives class at Macalester last semester. The pages were all dizzying to look at, since all of the artwork and detail was so intricate and so tiny. Really though, seeing any remains from the medieval period is pretty awesome. Actually, add to that: seeing remains from the Iron Age is also pretty awesome, although really eerie. I've studied the Bog Bodies a fair amount over the past year, and I had seen pictures of the preserved bodies, but it's a totally different experience seeing them right in front of you in a museum. I couldn't get over how much hair the bodies still had, and the fact that you could still read expressions of fear and pain on their faces, centuries and centuries later. After the exhibit, I was a little creeped out and very much exhausted, so I just went back to the hotel and napped until dinner.

My last experience in Dublin was waking up at 4:00 in the morning to get dressed and catch a cab to the airport to make our 6:30 am flight off to Paris - something I will never recommend anyone ever do.