So here we are, on our second day in Dublin, and nothing is working. None of the adaptors ended up working, so we’ve got a dead laptop, two dead “global” phones that have no network access, and one camera battery that is only half charged.
CRISIS MODE: ACTIVATED.
PREPARE FOR CRISIS……*glug*
PREPARED.
I can’t do too much of that, since our hotel is violently decorated and I might have a seizure if I go there drunk. I mean, violently. There are several pieces of oversized furniture that look like something left over from Alice in Wonderland, juxtaposed next to wonderful replicas of French antiques, sidling up next to plaster statuary left over from a safari. It looks like a kitschy hotel that dropped acid and threw up Art Deco in Northern Africa. (On the upside, the rooms were huge and clean and there was a pub sing at 2 am in the lobby on Saturday night, with Christmas carols, Elvis, and Neil Diamond all making an appearance amongst the traditional pub songs.)
We actually had put together an agenda for our days in Dublin, but that pretty much went out the window immediately. After the electronic meltdown of the previous evening (is this sounding familiar? Yes, I touched it all, and it all immediately imploded.) our first order of business was to replace all of our adaptors. We dropped Linda off at Trinity College to see the Book of Kells, and on the advice of the concierge, who was fantastic, we walked down to Grafton Street looking for a store called Argo’s. More on that in a minute, since we actually got a bit sidetracked by the Vodafone store. Neither Mom nor I could figure out why the phones wouldn’t work – we both have “global” phones, and both of us had checked with Verizon and been assured that our phones would work in Ireland.
Tsk, tsk, Verizon – Liar, liar, phone monopoly pants on fire. You lose – no network in the Republic of Ireland at all, only in Northern Ireland. Once we established that it was in fact the communistic anti-freemarket policies of Verizon at work, and not some deep failing on the part of BlackBerry (natch, since I’ve since found out my Storm issues are the fault of Verizon, and not RIM), we descended upon poor Laura at the Vodafone store, to get a new SIM card and hook up our European service.
Wait for it. Wait for it.
The SIM card didn’t work. Shocker. Laura, bless her customer-service oriented heart, dialed up Verizon for us in the US, and we tried to get the phone unlocked – except that it was only 5:30 in the morning Stateside, and the peeps at Verizon don’t clock in until 6 am. DOH! So, off we went to Argo’s.
Let me tell you about Argo’s and how we so need one of these in the US. It is this basic box shaped store of about 1,000 square feet, with a bunch of catalogs (think the olden days Woolworth catalogs of 2,000 pages) on bar type counters, with a little order form and a stack of pens. There are a few cash registers, and a big serving window in the back with a deli-style number counter. You basically find what you want, write down the catalog number, and take it up to pay for it. The ticket is generated in the warehouse, and they bring it out to you at the window. Isn’t that FABULOUS? Great prices, since they don’t pay overhead, and stellar service. It was a totally fantastic experience, and we got exactly what we needed. They even brought me out one just to show me so that I could make sure it was the right one. We bought three, just in case, but all three were only $20.
CRISIS PARTIALLY AVERTED.
Then, after conquering Argo’s, we headed back to Vodafone. It’s after noon, Verizon should be open, and hopefully since we’re calling their global support direct number, we won’t be on hold for 13 years.
So wrong. It took about 45 minutes, three phone calls (on Vodafone’s dime, bless them) and dire warnings, new terms of agreement, and a promise to sacrifice my firstborn child on the altar of service agreements to get Verizon to unlock my phone so that we could spend €20 to get a new SIM card, complete with local Irish mobile number. Mom couldn’t get one, as she didn’t have her handset with her, but I’ve now got a number on the Vodafone IE network, and can make local (Irish!) phone calls from my cell. I know it’s a small thing, but I’m pretty excited about it actually, and probably will be right up until I get home and find out that Verizon has found a way to charge me a million dollars for having my phone abroad.
Grafton Street was an experience – it’s a pedestrian only street with a lot of boutique shopping, which is all pretty uninteresting, but it’s a GREAT place to people watch. The local ambulance corps were out soliciting donations, so I ponied up a few euro…
…and noted once again that I would hate to work out of the back of a European ambulance… they are TINY! I compare our big monsters to these little buses, and I almost cringe when I think how cramped the back must be. Sadly, they can’t even use the money to by new units, since there is NO WAY in hell that our type units would fit on these streets.
The local firehouse, incidentally, was next door to our hotel, and though I chatted up the local firemen a bit, I didn’t get a chance to tour the station. They did have a slight incident shortly after our arrival where one of the bay doors collapsed on a truck, which is hysterical in a universal coincidence type of way, since a similar thing recently happened in my own station. Really, what are the odds?
In any event, I recommend Grafton Street for people watching. There were buskers of every kind, from a gentleman sculpting sand into a puppy…
…to a crazy, ripe-smelling old man who strummed a guitar without actually playing anything and railed at me for taking his picture without paying him (and I wonder if he’s related to the mentally ill man who yelled at me this morning for taking pictures while talking on a cell phone [prior to my Vodafone hookup]?)…
…to real, live, honest to goodness Irish musicians who were playing a lovely tune as we walked by. I actually dropped quite a few euro in their basket, as the music was quite nice, and I feel bad for the lady who hauled her huge harp out to Grafton Street to play amidst the crowds.
Walking around trying to solve logistical issues is hard work, as is being berated by crazy people, and so though we had hoped to avoid the tourist areas, we ended up in Temple Bar for lunch. Temple Bar itself is a giant red building that you really can’t miss, with giant painted beer advertisements and a lifesize painting of the founder and his wife, both with a drink in their hands. They are quite clever, I think. They don’t actively discourage smoking, but their “ashtrays” are on the wall, about chest high, and have only the smallest slit in the top to dump your ashes. What human being on the planet is going to be able to drop hot flaming ash into a hole the width of a nickel after a half dozen pints of the stout? Tricky!
Although on second thought, I’m not sure how clever that really is, since the crest for the city of Dublin is a bunch of castles on fire. Oops.
But in any event, lunch was great, at a little café across the street with wonderful Irish stew and the best brown bread I have ever tasted, but what really made my stomach happy was this place:
They had the most marvelous tarts – strawberry and plum and chocolate pear with almonds…deliiiiiicious. They actually had good ones for lunch as well, salmon and leek and vegetarian tarts, but the ones that caught my fancy were loaded with sugar and terribly bad for my figure. I ended up getting a chocolate scone that looked more like a biscuit, but sent my tastebuds into spasms when I ate it. I desperately wanted to try the cupcakes as well, since they looked so pretty in their finest dress-up frosting, but I figured that might be going a bit overboard. Dang it. Too many of those, and I’m going to end up here:
(The secret of the Queen’s tarts is that you’ll be Queen sized if you eat more than one!) After gorging on the gorgeous tarts, we finally made it over to Dublin Castle, crossing several streets without crosswalks in a daring show of American bravery (or tremendous stupidity, if you’re at all familiar with Dublin traffic…).
Dublin Castle was another surprise – again the tour was wonderful. I have been astonished by the quality of the tours given by the OPW, and Aisling (pronounced Ashling) flawlessly held up the standards set by PJ and Maeve. The castle is a bit of an anomaly, since much of it has been rebuilt and restored after fire, and is mostly Georgian in nature. A bit too frilly for my tastes…
…but there were parts of it that I definitely enjoyed – such as the “petticoat mirrors” near the floor under the large mirrors in the Great Hall – nothing like having a built in failsafe for checking to make sure your undergarments aren’t showing and that you aren’t branded a hussy. If only they’d invent something like this that applies to the “whale tail”.
I liked the subtle digs in the portrait gallery – the figures most well-liked were hung up front and well-lighted, while the least liked man in the room, General Cornwallace (of American history fame in the US War for Independence) had his portrait hung in the very back corner, and deliberately placed lower on the wall than all the rest. Take that!
I also like that they knew not only that Mom and I were coming, but that we’d stopped at the Queen of Tarts, and they had a chair ready for us that could accommodate all the ass we brought. I’ve always had my own zipcode, but now I’ve got a big velvet throne as well. Sweetness.
Irish hospitality has been phenomenal since we’ve been here, and the only thing I’ve decided I like better is the Irish sense of humor. This came out in force at Dublin Castle when we got to the courtyard, as there is a statue of Justice above the gate that is a bit of a private joke in Dublin –
She was placed there (facing inward toward the courtyard, with her back to the city) to represent the English, as the building was an administrative HQ for the city, and the cheeky Dubliners quickly wrote a ditty about her, that goes something like this:
There stands Justice,
Mind well her station,
With her face to the Castle
And her ass to the nation!
Hysterical! I also think it’s funny that the scales she holds are the real deal, and when the rain would fall they would become uneven. Holes were eventually drilled to allow the water to drain, but I can only imagine the fodder that the unevenly balancing scales provided to the political papers back in the day.
There are still parts of the original medieval Dublin Castle left, and if you ever want to know the origins of the expression “beyond the Pale”, start there, but they were small and not very impressive.
Speaking of not impressive – we swung by Christchurch Cathedral at Mom’s behest later that afternoon, and…well, here’s a picture.
Perhaps I have become spoiled by visiting the great Cathedrals of the world – I have been to Notre Dame in Paris, St. Patrick’s in New York, several in London, and some in Australia that in my mind blow Christchurch away. It’s very pretty, don’t get me wrong, but I have seen SO MANY that a church is a church is a church, and I tend to prefer the small local chapels that have taken on the character of their congregation. I have seen a dozen small chapels, some hundreds of years old, since arriving in Ireland that I like immensely better than Christchurch.
We did quite a bit of walking today, I will admit. We were on our feet for over 7 hours, and all I actually wanted to see was the gold on exhibit at the Irish museum. We headed there after Christchurch, but of course got distracted by a whiskey store on the way, and Mom and Linda ended up “tasting” whiskey for a while, and I bought a birthday gift for a friend who is a rabid Jameson fan. There are free whiskey tastings every day in Dublin, and I can only imagine loving the stuff – it would be impossible to work for a living. I’d stop by for a “tasting” at 10 am, back at 11, have one at lunch to whet the whistle, come back at 2 for a nip, 3 for a dram, 4 for a wee bit more, 5 for a taste on the way to the pub, and then I’d fall in a cab and pour myself home.
The guys at the shop were fantastic though, and we learned quite a bit about how whiskey is made, the differences in taste, and the casking process. I still don’t care for it at all, but at least now I can say that I know a bit about it.
We did make it to the museum, at 4:55…
…only to find out that the museum closes at 5 rather than the 6pm listed in the guidebook. They did let us in to see the gold exhibit, but we weren’t able to stay past closing. They gave me access to the exhibit for free, so I’ll share with you my experience:
It was quite beautiful, actually. I was quite disappointed to have missed it, but I’m going to be on the lookout for some replica pieces while I’m here. You can never have to much gold, and I’m definitely true to my zodiacal sign of Dragon – I’m addicted to the shiny yellow stuff.
Museum disappointment aside, it was a very full day. We ended up doing just a wee bit of window shopping on the way back to the hotel, but everything was quite pricey and seemed mass produced. I haven’t been very impressed with Dublin shopping so far – it seems everything is SO stereotypically Irish as to be overly mass produced. I haven’t seem much of the local craftsmanship that is affordable to someone of my income level – I’d love to be able to spend thousands, but it just ain’t happening, and everything else seems made in bulk and shipped from Taiwan.
The end of the day came sooner than I’d like, and since our dogs were barking big time from our day of walking, we decided to take a cab to eat. We found a great place called Madina – Indian food that came highly recommended. We took a cab ride over there with a great guy, who gave us some fabulous tips on driving out of Dublin through the mountains (again using pubs as main direction anchorpoints) and dropped us off four blocks from the restaurant.
If you get a chance while you’re in Dublin, and you like Indian food, EAT HERE. Their mutter paneer was, bar none, the BEST I have ever tasted. Everything I ate was delicious, and an enormous amount of food that fed all three of us with leftovers was less than €60. Can’t beat it with a stick, and we walked back to the hotel feeling pleasantly sated without being overstuffed. It was a beautiful night, the company and the food were fabulous, the day was chock full of new discovery, and really, what more can you ask for on vacation?
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