We spell it with a 'ya' and are the rightful heirs to Bunratty Castle - maybe

I've been back from Ireland a week now. The dining room table which served as a final staging area for the last bits of packing and organizing is still covered with piles of stuff. The luggage is only partially unpacked and lying on the floor beside said table. (Since the laundry closet is in the hall behind the dining room this makes some sense but is mostly due to lethargy, illness and a malaise in general about the whole meaning of life, but that's for someother post someother day -- oh and it's been very warm here and we don't have air conditioning --ok, list of excuses over with)

I've returned home with many postcards, pictures, some jewelry and a number of souvenirs to go thru and organize, and soon, before it all becomes a fuzzy blur - blog about here.

One of my favorite knick knacks is a lucite disc which contains a drop of Guinness from the Dublin Guinness Storehouse. This was a giveaway from our first stop on our first day.

We arrived at Dublin Int'l the morning of Sunday July 3rd staggering through the airport weak from the 7 hour flight from Chicago O'Hare. Glenn noted that our boarding passes had the code "S" on them. He says that means Steerage. I agree. This is ironic, my ancestors left Ireland in Steerage and we come back in the modern day version. Well, without the death and disease...airline food and turbulence? OK, it's not really irony. I wonder why do airlines feel that they have to pack us in like sardines? My legs are still stiff.

Luggage took awhile but was uneventful (my sister's bag had been lost coming from LA to Chicago and arrived a day late so we figured that satisfied the fates and we were right) Customs was a guy sitting in a booth watching us walk by. No checks or declarations. However, before we could get through customs or to the luggage we had to go through Immigration. My brother had chosen a line and we went to stand with him. The line that had said "EU passport holders only" changed to "all Passports" but we didn't move lines. Sister & family and Dad did, other (smart) people did and they all got out of the room before us. Our line was immobile. I'm not sure why it was so slow, everyone ahead of us looked like a normal tourist and there didn't seem to be any problems going on. It was just slow.

There had to have been over 100 people waiting to get thru that room and we weren't the last ones to get there. However we ended up as the last ones to get out. My brother confessed that he is cursed in this manner. Whatever line he chooses is always the one that takes the longest. I carefully took notice from then on and chose a different line whenever possible.

We met our guide and coach (no, not bus, coach) driver. Niven was nattily attired in a brown tweed jacket, shirt and tie, slacks - very debonair. He was Irish but since he was raised in Scotland he spoke with a Scots accent; he was about 50 with thick, mostly white hair in a long brushy cut. Initially I was disappointed in his accent, having hoped to be listening to someone speaking in an Irish brogue for the next week and a day, perhaps picking up a bit of a lilt in my own speech that would impress and amuse folks when I got home. No such luck.

I got over it quickly as Niven is an experienced guide and funny as hell. (BTW, I recommend Brendan tours as a result of Niven's fine work. I say, ask for Niven if you go to Ireland. I wish I had learnt his last name!)

Because we arrived in the morning our hotel rooms were not available yet. We dropped off our luggage while Niven made sure the arrangements were taken care of and then it was off to the Guinness Storehouse to kill a few hours. (btw, that link is different from the one above and is all about the storehouse itself, not just Guinness, as the prior link was)

The tour of the Storehouse is self guided, we get a short history lesson from an employee and are on our own after that. Inside is a museum of antique brewing equipment, signs and posters about brewing Guinness and some areas with a history of the labels, the promos, etc. There is also a wall where you can post a comment covered with expressions from around the world. Someone from Santa Cruz had been there just the day before.

You travel a number of floors upward to reach the final destination which is the Gravity Bar where you get your free pint. The Gravity Bar was very busy that morning - it was standing room only and not much of that. Where else should these people be on a Sunday in Dublin? Undoubtedly all tourists. I had my first taste of Guinness after waiting in a line that moved fairly fast considering you can't hurry the pouring if you want to keep the nice white head of foam on the pint. (oh, and I also wasn't standing anywhere near my brother)

Not bad. I'm not a big beer afficianado so I won't try to critique the beer. I wasn't expecting to like it though, and I did. I heard from everyone who spoke on the topic that the Guinness in Ireland has a unique taste and that nowhere else would I taste any like it. They don't pasturize it in Ireland and they do everywhere else (including Nigeria the third largest market after Ireland and England - yeah, I listened to the opening lecture.) One fellow I spoke with, might have been a bartender, did say that the canned Guinness in the US, served very cold, was close and passable.

We bought a few souvenirs there and got back on the coach. Niven told us about the city as we went through it, both on the way to Guinness and back so my recollection as written here isn't quite chronological. We heard about the Georgian townhomes and why the doors are painted different bright colors and about some of the heroes of the Irish Republic after which various statues were erected and streets were named. The "Spire of Dublin" nicknamed Millenium Spike (among other things - read link below) sits on the site which formerly housed the Nelson Pillar on O'Connell St. which was blown up in 1966 by the IRA. There is more info on the spire here so I won't try to give you any details except to say it doesn't fit. Here is a town of low rooftops and old architecture. It is gradually morphing into a more modern city but it's not all glass and steel and concrete yet. This blatantly modern monument just looks dumb. Dubliners have a number of nicknames for it, my favorite is "the stiffy by the Liffey" do scroll down the page on the link just above and read the other nicknames.

I was rather more impressed by the statue of Father Theobald Mathew a 19th century temperence movement leader. Apparently temperance and Irish aren't mutally exclusive terms, although I bet you could win some bar bets with the facts and figures. (Google is your friend) Folks routinely try to perch a can of Guinness in his hand which is missing its fingers from all the attempts. (perhaps this is a Dublin Urban Myth, makes a good story anyway, so I'll perpetuate it)

Back at the the Westin they had put my son and daughter up in a room with one double bed and they were very slow about getting that fixed. My son was extremely tired and decided to wait for them to do the room while the rest of us went for early dinner (it was about 3). The story of the kids' rooms (yep, happened more than once) is worth its own post, might actually do that. I will say that jet lagged son sitting in 5 star hotel lobby and jet lagged Mom wanting to tear someone's head off were not pretty sights. At one point I was telling some poor soul behind the desk that I really didn't give a damn if the room hadn't been fully cleaned, I wanted the housekeeper out and my son in. Didn't get them to budge one bit.

We wandered down Temple Street because we'd been told would have some fine places to eat and ended up at a restaurant called Thunder Road. Yep. first day in Ireland and we're eating Americanized food. It was good though and that's all that counted.

After dinner it was back to the hotel and off to sleep. That's day one on the old sod.

Oh, and lest I forget, I'm shamelessly stealing this idea from MacAllister's "Stones in the Field" blog:
"Looking for a scam publisher! If you want to publish, America -- don't sign up with PublishAmerica!"

Book Publishing

adding a link to a good post called Macmilllan or Publish Brittanica" from a blog I recommend

Posted by Dawno at July 18, 2005 08:44 PM