Cashel to Dublin

Breakfast at 8 o'clock was one glorious banana, lashings of smoked salmon on scrambled eggs, and a veritable bucket of tea which I managed to spill on Laura's nice tablecloth. Butterfingers...

We all packed, and Pip and I had a last-minute scramble when we thought we'd lost the key. It turned up underneath her suitcase, however, so we returned it and set off to see the sights of Cashel. Laura had recommended the Bishop's palace, and Cashel castle, the "Rock of Cashel".

We walked through the gardens of the Bishop's palace, which were splendid even in winter. Winding pathways took us through immaculately-kept lawns, spotted with piles of raked leaves. We reached the back wall only to find that the gate to the Rock had been locked. We tried at a few breaches in the stonework, but failed to scale the wall.



That forced us back into the township, though, which made for a nice walk through some of Cashel's houses and shops. We were amused to see the way "tourism" still works in parts of Ireland - this sign was next to the gate of a ruined cathedral:



We climbed up the road to the Rock of Cashel, which was spectacular. Alas, no time to go in - but we got a good look at the outside. You must be able to see for miles and miles from the tops of the walls and towers.



We strolled back to Ashmore house again, stopping to look in more shop windows, and being greeted by cats. Back at the house we said our goodbyes to Laura and Brendan (talkative people, and lovely), and we set out in the car yet again. No hardship, though, because the roads were much easier. We stopped halfway back to Dublin to walk along a canal covered by houseboats, every one with its own little idiosyncrasies. Potplants, for instance:



Mum and I decided the best colour for any dream-houseboat was shiny red, though she thought she'd like gold edging along hers as well. It was cold (for us), so we crossed over to the Bridgewater hotel and had hot chocolate and a bowl of wedges to share. Then it was back into the car for the last stretch to Dublin.

Once we arrived we returned our faithful hire care, and caught a taxi across the city to Barry's hotel for another night. Dad and I formed a delegation to the laundromat soon after we arrived, and then I set out alone to explore the streets of Dublin for myself. It's a big, lively city, and hard not to like. I wandered for 5 or 6 kilometres by my best guess, taking detours down alleys full of Christmas shoppers, and strolling along the shops near the Liffey. The only shop I actually went into was a sort of "alternative" bookshop. You know you've not walked into a particularly commercial venture when you're greeted by walls of poetry, Irish mythology, philosophy and the edgier classics... and when the "popular fiction" is hidden down the back and contemptuously marked "3 for the price of 1". The philosophy section was marked only by a label that said "Big Ideas". This was my kind of bookshop. I wanted to buy a rather large book that said it was a sympathetic history of the Fenians, but it was outside my budget. Hell, I wanted to work in the place! I bought a birthday present for my friend C, and hurried out before I saw anything else too wonderful to pass up.

Down the street from the bookshop I flirted briefly with the temptations of the Dublin Wool Mill (beautiful cloaks! Ultra-snuggly jumpers! ...Exorbitant prices!) before hurrying away again. By now it was dark and most of the shops were closing, and I had strayed into slightly shadier backstreets. I consulted my map and returned to our hotel.

Soon after everyone got back (dad from the laundromat, and the others from an internet cafe), we went out for dinner on O'Connell Street at Murray's Bar, where the others had eaten the night I was sick. I ordered delicious Limerick ham, and this time managed an entire pint of Guinness on my own. Sadly, I have developed a taste for it - sad, because everybody (except the breweries) agrees Guinness outside Ireland isn't worth the effort. Once we had toddled back to the hotel, Pip made me walk in a straight line along her scarf to prove I wasn't tipsy...

...And the cow had laid down her scarf in a curve!

Dublin

We breakfasted downstairs this morning in our hotel's restaurant (nooo, not where you're thinking). It was a full Irish breakfast, and we sat listening to Radio Dublin, once again spellbound. Dad almost choked on his black pudding when one travel ad asked, "how would you like to have a white Christmas this year, instead of the usual grey one?" He'd just recovered from that bout of laughter when the coloured lights above our table were mysteriously switched on, and we ate the rest of our breakfast seated in our own, personal disco. T'was never explained, but it made our morning's entertainment.

We set off mid-morning through the bus-choked streets of Dublin, bound for Trinity College, which is nicknamed "the biggest traffic-island in Europe" among the locals. Dublin's traffic provids a number of puzzles. First of all, that the "green man" on traffic lights can seemingly be delayed by as much as 5 minutes after the traffic stops, and is therefore ignored without exception by the locals. Pedestrian crossings work on a "majority rules" basis, and you can really surprise a driver by stopping at the curb, instead of plunging out in front of them.

The other thing mum and I were delighted to find was a statuette of Jesus standing on a median strip, without plaque or explanation. Judging by his position, however...


..."blessed be this taxi stand", apparently.

Anyhow - Trinity college is very impressive in itself, but the real reason we were there was to see the Book of Kells, the famous illuminated manuscript. The exhibition that leads up to the actual book is one of the best I've ever seen. It was a lengthy explanation of how the books were made, from the stretching of the vellum, to the pigments used, to the cutting of the quills and bookbinding techniques. The clever thing is that despite having very few actual artefacts, the display is engrossing. I spent a long time watching the video footage of a calligrapher at work.

Eventually you are channelled up a short staircase (winged by several security guards), into a small, dark room, where two of the volumes of the book of Kells are displayed in a case topped with inch-thick glass. In the half-light you can only squint owlishly at the text, and the elaborate animals and patterns that have been coiled around the letters - I suppose magnifying glasses would be impractical to provide, but they would've come in handy. I was amazed by the level of detail shwon in the enlarged reproductions in the preceding display - but when you see the actual size the illustrations were produced at, it's jawdropping.

Also jawdropping (to me) was the room you exit into, above - the "long gallery", Trinity Library's hall of ooold books. Currently there's a restoration project going on, where people-who-do-what-I-want-to-do are re-gluing pages of centuries-old botany textbooks back into their bindings - there are hundreds of books sitting on the shelves waiting for the treatment, tied up with cotton tape. I was amazed to read that the restoration of just one book costs £50. That's $125 in my home currency... seems incredible, but perhaps they're quoting part of a conservator's earnings into the deal? At any rate, it was an incredible library - both the books and the oak-panelled room.

We left Trinity, and had lunch in the cafe at the National Gallery of Ireland; carrot soup. Uncultured-ly enough, we decided the exhibitions on display there sounded dull... but we settled instead upon the museum of archaeology, down the road. That proved fascinating even to Pip, who doesn't usually hold with "all that historical stuff" - it was really cool when she showed an interest (and even put up with me telling her things lecturing her about neolithic pottery). We looked at burial finds from the Hill of Tara, and countless gold torcs that have been dug up all over the country - literally hundreds. Particularly interesting were the displays of bog bodies in a side room. I'll readily admit that there's a morbid fascination involved with looking at bog-people; but there's actual information content provided here, too, so I don't feel too badly. The archaeologists' best guess is that many of these bodies belonged to competitors vying to become Irish Kings. Err - the unlucky ones, that is. Amazing to see what has survived in peat bogs; later on, there were cabinets full of clothing from the 1500s and 1600s which has been preserved so well it looks like it's only spent a week or so in a modern rubbish skip.

Before closing-time, we also rushed through the "treasury", which displayed a lot of Celtic and Germanic jewelry. The Tara brooch, for example, which is the epitome of elegance. I started wondering whether I might like to specialise in Germanic history at uni... not only is it intriguing, but it covers a LOT of different countries.

At last we set out to our hotel once more. We stopped in Temple Bar for a look, but Nigel had been very firm that we shouldn't buy a drink there. Well, we took his advice! There was an accordion player on one corner, and lots of people walking the footpaths in the disappearing light. We kept on our way, back along O'Connell Street, past the extremely tall "Spire" (never did find out what it's dedicated to). We also passed a Catholic supplies shop, which fascinated mum and I enough to go in. Weeeell... the prints were interesting, but in spite of myself, I was overcome by religious culture-shock. When I saw a book entitled "what every girl should know about fertility", I got the huff and went out again. Presumably the answer is "as little as possible".

Back in our hotel room, which overlooked the street, Pip and I heard hoardes of football fans honking car horns and playing trumpets. There was a huge game being held not far away between Ireland and Poland, and the fans lined the streets. On our way back out towards dinner, we were four of about ten people walking the opposite direction to the football crowds...

Dinner for me was a gigantic bowl of traditional Irish stew at Finnigan's pub. By the time we'd finished our meals, the football was over, and hoardes of subdued Irish fans were trailing back home past us on the street. It was painfully obvious which country had won the match, and I was amused to hear one snippet of passing conversation: "I don't buy into conspiracy theories, but..."

Mum, Pip and I stopped by an internet cafe on the way back to the hotel, and we were all in bed by about 10 pm. We were "serenaded" to sleep by the Polish fans' horns...

(I do apologise, to Rene in particular - a day spent in museums doesn't yield many photos).

Holyhead

We left Coniston at 8 am this morning, after breakfasting in the dark (watching English soccer on the TV. So much more interesting and skilled than Australian football... please don't lynch me...). Like a few days previously, we drove out of Sheffield and through Derbyshire, heading south-west until we entered Wales.

The only immediate difference I noticed upon crossing the border was that the road signs are bi-lingual in Wales... and my first thoughts were that the Welsh language needs an urgent booster-shot of vowels. (I didn't take get a photo of a good example, but you can almost see what I mean on this sign from later in the day:)


Quite suddenly after leaving the motorway, the Irish sea opened up on our right. It was pewter-grey and, though calm, looked very foreboding. At the same time, Welsh mountains were beginning to rise high above us on our left - all barren and rocky, and apparently literally in danger of falling down around us - I saw lots of reinforcement work going on around the sides of the highway. We drove along the coast, sandwiched between mountains and cold sea, watching animals grazing on the slopes above us. Is this why the English didn't utterly destroy Welsh culture - because they didn't want such bleak land? I wish I wasn't so ignorant of Welsh history. I also wish I could have seen more of Wales and its people, but you can never fit everything into one trip.

We arrived at the port of Holyhead (pronounced more like "Hollyhead") in the early afternoon, where we gave our hire car back, ate some lunch, and checked onto our ferry. While my family sat in the cafe to wait until boarding, I decided not to waste any time, and set out to explore a tiny sliver of Holyhead; out along the headland. Obviously I didn't have time to see much, but walking down the monochrome grey streets with the gulls mewling overhead felt so atmospheric.


I passed one man twice, as I was coming and then going, and the second time we had smiled politely at each other, he quirked an eyebrow and asked me whether I was lost - in a beautiful rolling Irish accent. That was when it finally dawned on me that I wasn't just "going to Ireland"... I was "GOING TO IRELAND!!" I've had a distant fascination with the place ever since I was little, and excitement had finally caught up with me.

I scrambled back just in time to catch the ferry. It's an enormous boat, and someone told me (though I have my doubts) that it's the biggest car ferry in the world. The passenger decks certainly seem very high-up when you look out the window...

Just as we pulled out, all the workmen on the dock stopped work to watch us leaving, and to wave up at the huge ship. Seeing me watching this, the man sitting at the lounge-table next to me made some amused remark (again in a broad southern-Irish accent), and he and I got to talking. His name was Nigel, and he explained to me that he lived in Manchester with his wife and young daughters (I relaxed significantly at this point!), but that he was heading home to Offaly for a funeral. Nigel told me at length about his exploits in Northern Ireland as a health insurance salesman; about escaping Orangemen skinheads in pubs, and about how awful the Guinness is in England - he's "trained" his local bartender in Manchester to pour a passable one. He recounted pub brawls he and his friend Mick had gotten into (and then escaped), straight before showing me and mum the photos from his daughter's 2nd birthday party. He teased dad about drinking, and offered us countless suggestions for places to go and see in his home-country. In short, he was a one-man riot, and the 3-hour ferry trip seemed to disappear in minutes.


The ferry pulled up in Dublin port, and we said goodbye to Nigel at the passport-check. By this time it was dark, so we caught a taxi to the city centre to our hotel. We listened spellbound all the way to the rapid-fire accents on Dublin radio, one of whom was advertising a patent hangover cure. Turns out Barry's hotel is "famous" among the city's cab drivers - it's built above "La Petite" lap-dancing club. Tee-hee... take a look, in the light:


Dinner was off one of the main streets in Dublin, at a pub called Madigan's (turns out to be a chain rather than a one-off, which was a smidgen of a disappointment - though we made up for that later). I met my first "real" Guinness there, though, when I took a sip of dad's. And all the fuss is warranted! That drink has subtleties, especially in the aftertaste. I'll quote mum here: "it's rather like drinking gravy browning, but nonetheless it's somehow enjoyable".

Not long after dinner, we fell into our beds back at the hotel.