Tales From the Crypt

It seems each year that the closer we get to coming home, the harder it is to sit down every evening to post to the blog. We have such a luxury of time when we travel in the summers that it is easy to feel like there will always be time later to see this and visit that but once we’re within days of our return flight, we realize that there is precious little time left. 

Sunday morning, we went to Riordan’s for breakfast and then for a last walk through the Latin Quarter and then our neighborhood. We revisited some shops and tried to get back to a music store where Chris had looked at a bouzouki. Alas it was closed on Sunday. I’ve not ever been, but the Latin Quarter had a look I imagine the French Quarter has in New Orleans after Mardi Gras—if a street can be a little bleary-eyed, it certainly was. At 11 a.m., barkeeps were dumping buckets of water onto the sidewalks in front of their establishments, sweeping debris into the street and looking a bit haggard after the thrill of an 80 degree Saturday night with a full moon. We got to the station just in time to purchase tickets for the 2 p.m. bus, and, while I’m glad that we had the car for the week in Donegal and the week in Galway, the buses in Ireland are easy to navigate, clean and have wifi so our trip from Galway to Dublin was pleasant.  

Within steps of the bus station, it is apparent that Dublin is a major metropolitan area and gorgeous. The skyline here is textured, every building is from a different era, a different color stone, representing a different architectural style. In order to get to our B&B, which I probably would not recommend anyone else use, but which has given Chris and I multiple opportunities to laugh out loud in the last few days, we needed a cab because it is outside the city center. Lemonade: It’s interesting to see both the bustle of the commercial district and a more residential area. We arrived after 6 and there was some confusion—perhaps only on our part—about en suite arrangements: we thought we had them, but our host, Allan, did not. Our room is hilariously small. Chris doesn’t fit on his bed and we also probably thought we had arranged for a room with one bed, not two.  There isn’t a chair or a table so we’re using the sink for all different purposes than it was originally intended, and there is a small area in the clearance from the door that we use to stand. Whatever. We’ve had a good run in this country with our accommodations, and this room is sufficient. Allan told us there was a single restaurant within walking distance and then told us about a “short cut” to get there. We followed his directions to the best of our ability (“take a left and then take another left”), but it took us so long to find the restaurant that the kitchen was already closed. The bartender took pity and said he would find something for us to eat and then all of the air was sucked out of the room when the waitress who had to stay after her shift ended found out. There was some slamming of plates and we had to pay for our meal before we ate and we were never shown a menu. So our Sunday evening introduction to Dublin, what with our B&B not being quite what we had in mind and our server being actively mad at us in the restaurant, was rocky at best. The city redeemed itself on Monday.

A bus to the city center stops right in front of our door and we took it downtown after breakfast. We walked through the Temple Bar area, up and down streets as narrow as corridors looking for music shops where Chris could purchase an instrument. We found a few shops and he played octave mandolins and bouzoukis and settled on a bouzouki with a pick up to bring back to his teaching. There was some question about shipping or carrying and he decided to carry so I’m glad I had one airport experience on this trip that was unencumbered and easy. In any case, the end result will be worth it with more music at home. We had lunch at a place called Crave Pitta Café (because they call pitas here pittas) and had a nearly perfect lunch. Chris had beef with picked cabbage on brown bread and I had a pitta with gorgonzola and parma ham with relish.

After lunch, we spent the bulk the afternoon in the medieval district, where we visited Dublin Castle and Christ Church Cathedral. We didn’t tour Dublin Castle, just meandered around it and into the Revenue Museum which was the littlest bit interesting because, of course, the oldest records the town has are from the Custom House, but it didn’t hold our attention any longer than doing our own taxes would. Maybe our accountant would find it more of a thrill. An interesting note about the castle is that it is in municipal use today. We did tour Christ Church which was incredible. Like the city itself, the building is a collage of styles and movements. The oldest parts of the building date back to 1030: Strongbow was buried there in 1170, Henry II attended Christmas mass there in 1171 and in 1742 Handel’s Messiah was sung for the first time. There are 63 different medieval mosaic tile patterns throughout the Cathedral floors and a Gothic chapel will abut a Romanesque chapel so that in one view a visitor sees both pointed arches and rounded ones. There is a Cathedral Crypt dating from the 11^th century and it is the largest crypt of its kind in Ireland or England. It was unlike anything that I might expect—they use the space as a museum for the treasures and artifacts that remain from 1000 years of the cathedral above. There are gifts from kings there and books with ancient church records, tabernacles commissioned for special use (and a series of costumes from the show The Tudors, which was filmed there).  

We came back to the tiny room after that to prepare for our evening. It will come as no surprise that Chris made lasting friendships at Blas and we were invited to stay with his friend Albert while we were in Dublin. We had already made our arrangements when he offered so we couldn’t take him up on that, but we were glad to agree to an evening in the city with him. He took us to a restaurant downtown for what he called real Irish cuisine, and it was lovely. It was a pub setting but it wasn’t pub food and we enjoyed his company more than anything else, but if I could remember the name of the place, I would recommend the restaurant, as well. After, he took us to Cobblestones, a pub famous for its trad sessions and we had a pint and listened to the music. From there, he took us to another pub where the session takes place in the snug and between the music and the pints and listening to Albert talk about his experiences growing up in and now living in Ireland, we had a rich evening. The day was full enough that though Chris’s feet hang right off the end of his bed, we both fell fast asleep.