(Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, Ireland)

Maybe, just maybe, the north side of Dublin wasn’t going to be as squalid as “The Commitments” made it out to be.  It certainly started out fine:  O’Connell Street is a very wide boulevard with fast food outlets and souvenir shops similar to those that you’d find in any other European capital.

My travel schedule and the Gaelic football and hurling schedules seemed to be working at cross-purposes, so I didn’t make it to a live match.  To compensate, I ventured deep (by tourist standards) into the north end of Dublin to visit the Gaelic Athletic Association Museum.  The Museum is located at Croke Park (a stadium with a capacity of 82,300 spectators that is devoted to these uniquely Irish sports – see top photo), so I would at least get to see the premier Irish sporting venue.  Even better, the Museum advertised an extensive interactive section that would allow me to try these sports for myself!

Ireland is enthusiastic about its language, music and sports.  Irish schoolchildren are presented with ample opportunities to explore each of these elements of their culture…which, in this case, meant that I had to dodge rampaging groups of schoolchildren at the Museum.  Fortunately for me, they didn’t linger too long in any one place.  While they were commandeering the interactive area, I was learning how integral these Irish sports were to the national identity…and how they also provided an excellent “cover” for discussions of independence when Ireland was still completely controlled by the U.K.

While I carefully studied the history and the artefacts in the Museum, deep inside I really wanted to kick a Gaelic football and to “hurl” something,   Finally, after much dodging, I had the interactive hurling and football zones to myself.  First up was Gaelic football and an accuracy test.

A Gaelic football is like a soccer ball that has been crossbred with a volleyball.  My soccer teammates will be amused to hear that I had some trouble with the accuracy test.  Kicking the ball from my hands (as a soccer goalkeeper would do) turns out to be much harder than kicking the ball from the ground, at least as far as accuracy is concerned.  We’ll skip my specific results.

Suitably humbled, I moved on to hurling.  Hurling is like a cross between lacrosse and field hockey:  the stick is similar to field hockey but the ball is in the air a lot more and players must wear helmets and cages due to the wildly swinging sticks and rocketing shots.  The ball looks like a stitched leather tennis ball that doesn’t keep its shape very well.

Luckily for me, the hurling test was strictly for speed:  a radar gun had been set up to measure the velocity of your “hurl”.  I am sure that my technique was terrible; I acquired callouses after only a few swings.  However, my golf/baseball/ice hockey-influenced technique yielded some decent results…including a 94 km/h effort that I photographed for posterity (not that I’m competitive or anything).  Sadly, I don’t think a hurling career is in the works for me:  the short stick would undoubtedly leave me with serious back problems if I were to devote any time to the sport.

After leaving the museum, I stopped by the stadium’s sport shop and picked up a neat souvenir:  a DVD of the national Gaelic Football championship match.  My initial impressions:  these guys are crazy!  They must get concussions every other game.  Never mind my lack of kicking accuracy; the intense collisions (like rugby, they don’t wear any padding of significance) would stop my career in very short order.

I spent more time at the GAA Museum than I had expected; I really enjoyed the opportunity to do something a little more strenuous that walking or cycling.  While I took a quick look at some other North Dublin attractions, I wanted to make sure that I made it back to the National Museum of Archaeology before it closed.  I did, and now I can say I have seen the ancient bog bodies as well as the Cong Cross and the Tara Brooch.  The bog bodies were kind of creepy: these are 2000-year-old bodies that were preserved (more or less) in bogs until their discovery in recent years.   They are not for the squeamish!

I had a nice final dinner in a Dun Laoghaire Chinese restaurant.   I went for an appetizer of “Salt Chilli Crispy Shredded Chicken” and a main course of Lemon Chicken.  As in Cashel, the Lemon Chicken was almost Schnitzelesque in its quality.  This time, however, I have a photo to prove it.

While still very much present, my cold didn’t really inhibit my final day in Dublin.   I’m happy with what I accomplished and at the same time am also ready to return to Canada.  My next post will reflect on my Irish trip and also drop some hints about my exciting next destination!

(Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, Ireland)

Part of my preparation for this trip was to watch “The Commitments”, a 1991 movie that captured the grimness of the north side of Dublin prior to the years of the Celtic Tiger.  In short:  the north end of Dublin is rougher than the south.  Incidentally, even if you disregard the rest of the movie, the climactic performance of “Try a Little Tenderness” is one of the most powerful musical moments I’ve ever seen on film.

My initial impression of Dublin on this trip was the main bus station: it is (barely) in the north end and I didn’t feel very comfortable there when I arrived.  Particularly given my viral situation, I thought it might be better to start off by visiting the “softer” south side on my first full day in Dublin.

Accordingly, I set a modest goal of commuting into Dublin and experiencing two things:  a tour of Trinity College (University of Dublin) and a visit to the National Museum (Archaeology).  Just in case, I also took note of the address of a favourably reviewed used record store.  These were all within walking distance of each on the south side of the River Liffey.

Trinity College reminded me somewhat of the Ivy League schools in the U.S…and, of course, my alma mater Queen’s University in Kingston!  Despite being in the middle of the city, it was relatively quiet, green and filled with old stone buildings.  Our tour was led by a current student who had returned to Trinity to complete his doctorate.  Trinity has quite a history of architectural corruption and incompetence…with much of the corruption on the part of the school!  It also was the site of a late 18th century murder, in which the accused students were acquitted because it was just a “student prank gone wrong”.

It was great to get some personal insights into the school and to learn about some of its famous alumni.  In the field of literature alone, its alumni include Samuel Beckett, Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde and Bram Stoker (“Dracula”).

However, the prize at the end of the tour was seeing the Book of Kells in the college’s Old Library.  This is a remarkable book from Europe’s darkest days when literacy was just barely alive and there was extremely little in the way of artistic expression.  It was prepared in about 800 A.D. by monks and consists of four gospels… but it is the presentation that is most remarkable.  It contains an astonishing and whimsical (crossing a “t” with fish?) assortment of calligraphy and vibrant illustrations.  To get an idea, do a Google search for “images” of the “Book of Kells”, or just check out this link: Work | Book of Kells. IE TCD MS 58 | ID: hm50tr726 | Digital Collections

You will be amazed by what was created during such a grim time.

Interestingly, I found the preliminary displays to be more vibrant than the Book of Kells itself.  Because it is more than 1,200 years old, it is necessary to keep the book in a highly controlled environment with minimal light.  This understandably lessens the impact of the colours.  Two folios (consisting of two pages each) are available for viewing at any given time, but they are under glass and you cannot touch anything.  Of course, everybody else wants to see the Book too…with the result that you have only a few seconds to look at the pages before either the “marshal” tells you to move along or the crush of people forces you aside.

Upstairs from the Book of Kells is the “Long Room”.  It is, as you might expect, a very long room with a lot of very old books.  However, it also contains the “Brian Boru Harp”:  the oldest known harp in Ireland and the model of the harp that appears on everything in Ireland from government documents to bottles of Guinness beer.

I also visited the National Museum of Archaeology later in the day but somehow missed out on several of the most important exhibits.  Fortunately, I had some very successful record-buying therapy in not one but three separate used vinyl record shops.  I may have to devote a post to this once I am back in Canada.

I resolve to visit the north side of Dublin tomorrow and also rectify my oversight at the Archaeology Museum.