Volume 7: Pete in Dublin. A city of contrasts. From beer the colour of the sun to dark as midnight

Day 1 – London to Dublin

This time the adventure would be a short to trip to the land of Guinness and leprechauns, whilst I’m imagining you only see the latter after consuming vast amounts of the former. Recently Dublin had overtaken London and New York City as a more expensive place to live, most likely due to businesses passing on the extra cost of paying insurance to protect themselves from these Celtic tigers that were apparently overrunning the city and impacting their economy. For me, the cost was something I was willing to pay for the privilege of being in a town with people that appreciated beer as much me. I’d enjoyed many a pint with an Irishmen in Melbourne, I was looking forward to them returning the hospitality. Now, if only I could find an actual Irishmen in Dublin… On a journey from London to Dublin, you of course have to leave from London, in this case Luton airport. In an oddity that could only be explained by British rail it was somehow cheaper for me to catch a train from London Euston to Luton, than to make the shorter journey from Watford Junction to Luton. From London Euston it was at least 10 stops, while from Watford Junction it was only the 3 stops of St Albans, St Albans Abbey and some other station I soon forgot as it was overridden by the thought of “How the f#$k can this be the case?”. So refusing to pay the extra money in a country that had already made me pay for a TV license (of course I purchased the TV license, I didn’t want the SWAT team breaking down my door shouting “Drop the remote mother f$#ker!”), I instead took the 20 minute detour in the opposite direction of Luton airport and caught the train from Euston station. Today’s flight would be on budget airline Ryan Air. If I had have booked my tickets earlier I could’ve got £1 tickets each way, making the flight cheaper than the train ticket to the airport, but in attempt to keep my life fresh and exciting I try not to plan my life further than 11 hours into the future, so I missed out. I imagine the main expense that airlines seem to incur is the purchasing of software that can organise the passengers into allocated seats, so Ryan Air like other budget airlines didn’t offer allocated seats. This of course leads to the mad rush to the departure gate as soon as the announcement comes on that the flight is boarding. For me, I still have a romantic view of air travel in that it takes you away to far off wonderful places (and away from poor people who can’t afford air travel), so I refused to queue with the masses like I was waiting to get on a bus. It’s funny how the universe looks after you the moment you stop caring. Here these people had all rushed to the gate like suicidal cattle in a rush to end it all by being the first into the slaughterhouse, while I had calmly got up and joined the line when there were only 5 people left in line. I got a seat right at the back of the plane, making me the first off the plane and the first through customs when we landed in Dublin as we were allowed to disembark from the rear of the plane. On board the plane the overhead lockers all had advertising, so but for allowing people to stand up during the flight it was like being on a subway train. There were no pockets on the seats, while the safety and emergency procedure sheets were embedded into the back of the seat in front of you. This didn’t fill me with confidence. It was like Ryan Air saying “our planes crash so often we’ve decided to put the emergency procedures in a spot that provides quicker access”, but my confidence was regained when they didn’t make us put on the life jackets before take off. As the subway train, sorry Ryan Air flight, continued onto Dublin every last minute was spent trying to extract as much cash out of the passengers as possible. First there were the flight attendants selling smokeless cigarettes (it’s only a 1 hour flight for Pete’s sake! Show some discipline you stinking, disgusting smokers!), that was followed by the sale of bus tickets and then the sale of Ryan Air scratchie tickets where you could win flights. It’s a quality airline that encourages gambling. Why stop there Ryan Air? Breakout the roulette wheel and poker tables! I was now beginning to think the only real gamble I was making was with my life and this plane landing. The plane landed (on it’s wheels surprisingly) and as they were letting people off via the front and back entrance I was one of the first off the plane. For the first time ever I was the first person to clear customs and I gave the EU passport owners a look of suffer in your jocks as I bypassed them all. Having flown through customs I was soon on the Airlink Express bus into the city. Behind me was an Irish woman on the phone asking her friend “What’s the craic?”. I was tempted to turn around and say “well, the drug colloquially known as ‘crack’ gets its name from the early days of it’s existence when it looked like cracked off pieces of soap” but I’d promised myself I wasn’t going to do any lame craic/crack jokes while in Ireland so I refrained from sharing that piece of information. I foolishly got off the bus at the central Dublin Bus office, instead of O’Connell street adding another half mile walk to my Hostel. Once checked in at the hostel I decided to go for a stroll to orientate myself with the nearby surroundings. It was as I walked down to O’Connell street I saw 2 blokes drunk off their ass leaving the “Basement Gym”. It looked like a gym, it was located in the basement, so it was somewhat unusual to see 2 blokes stumble out of it like they’d been playing a game of lift a weight, then drink that same weight in beer. Judging by the stagger and excessive profanity coming out of their mouths they could both bench press about 200 pounds. Then further along on O’Connell street I saw a drunk bloke being dragged to the ground and arrested by 6 cops. I was now starting to understand how the Irish had got the reputation of a nation that liked to drink. After a few hours walking I figured I had the city pretty much covered, either head for the Liffey River or head for O’Connell street. As it was starting to get dark and as my Lonely Planet guide (the book, not an actual person) said I was staying in a dodgy neighbourhood I decided to find a pub near the hostel for a few quiet beers before catching an early night. God looks after old folks and fools…and blokes looking for pubs. There was a pub opposite the hostel where I sat down and enjoyed 3 pints of Guinness. The pub had only 6 or 7 locals in it and they happened to be amongst the only 10 Irish people I would meet in Dublin for the duration of my stay. The locals all had thick Irish accents so it took about 3 pints before I could understand what the barmen and some old timer were saying. It wasn’t an interesting conversation so I bid them a fond farewell and headed back to the hostel for an early night.

Day 2 – Less talk, more Guinness

When I first land in a city I feel an overwhelming need to walk every square mile of it. Walking a new city is the best way to accidentally discover it, and also burns off any beer related calories. They say there is a meal in every pint of Guinness so I was now looking to burn off those 3 late “meals” I’d had the night before. As I set off on this long walk of accidental discovery on a gloomy Thursday morning I was amazed to see so many people walking down O’Connell street with a beer can in their hand before noon. It wasn’t anywhere on the same level as you might see in Las Vegas but it was unusually high. Although, I suppose better they’re walking with their beer cans and, say, not at work driving a bus or at their dental practice about to pull out someone’s wisdom teeth whilst performing the delicate balancing act that is trying not to spill your beer or your patients blood. Walking aimlessly for a few hours I eventually found myself at the Guinness Storehouse. Even though I’d serendipitously made my way there (sort of like how Bill Clinton seemed to serendipitously find himself in the White House with an intern and such an abundant supply of cigars that he couldn’t possibly smoke them all) I told myself I wasn’t going to go in today. I wanted to feel like a kid on the 24th of December, I wanted to build the anticipation and save it for another day. So, showing great restraint I walked away and headed towards Temple Bar. By now the on and off again rain had finally decided it would remain in the on position so I was left with no other option but to apply one of the fundamental rules of tour life: if it rains you go into a pub until the rain stops. I paid €5.50 for the privilege which seemed excessive compared to the €4.10 I’d paid the night before and that we were currently in the midst of the worst economic climate in 100 years. If you want to stimulate the economy and encourage spending, lower beer prices. A thought I sadly only shared with myself and not the Irish Government. Thankfully for my hip pocket, not necessarily the Irish economy, the rain cleared after only 1 pint so I was out walking again. I walked out of Temple Bar, past Trinity College and up Grafton street where I encountered the Molly Malone statue. Judging by the more than amble nature of the breasts on that statue, it was Molly Malone who first coined the term “sex sells” as she pushed her wheelbarrow of cockles and mussels, no doubt always being asked by her male customers to reach for the mussels at the bottom. Her breasts were so great that they were given their own day, June 13 each year to commemorate her death in 1699. It’s always tragic when a woman with massive breasts dies, on a near equal par with when a school bus has an accident. Now, as someone who believes the only true purpose statues play is to be shat on by pigeons or have novelty photos taken with, my immediate thought was I needed to get a picture of myself fondling this more than buxom wench. Unfortunately, it was a thought shared by the masses of people surrounding the statue so it now seemed to be a far less clever photo opportunity, so I continued on my way up Grafton street. I eventually stumbled across St Stephens Green at the end of Grafton street. St Stephens Green is a large 9 hectare square, which not surprisingly is mostly green as it is a park made up of large grass expanses. The park was originally common land where public whippings, burnings and hangings took place, so with so many popular past times that draw such large crowds you would’ve thought they could’ve built some toilets there! By now the pint from Temple Bar had decided my bladder didn’t offer enough living space and that it now wanted to seek accommodation elsewhere. I walked much of the 9 hectares before giving up and parting with the pint from Temple Bar at a nearby shopping centre. I continued on my journey of discovery by walking aimlessly. During that time I encountered multiple occasions where Dubliners would stop their car in the middle of an intersection to ask for directions or rekindle long lost friendships. On one such occasion the car was stopped so long I thought they might need to refuel. Exchange phone numbers and be on your way, not hugs, photos and a chronological listing of events from 1985. By now I’d walked for so long that I simply wanted to sit down. Feeling that sitting down was a waste of time when I had a new city waiting to be discovered, the only practical compromise I could come with was to sit on a bus, so I walked all the way back down to O’Connell street and jumped on one of the “Hop on hop off” tour buses. Once on the bus it soon became a game of musical chairs on the open top deck as the rain started up again. Thankfully, I still had a seat when the music stopped as I sat in the first 5 rows that were undercover. As if by some act of divine intervention trying to steer me somewhere, the bus found itself stopping at the Guinness Storehouse. I thought “bugger this, it’s now December 25” and bounced off the bus into the Guinness factory promptly looking for someone to take €14 out of my pocket for the privilege to enter. The Guinness Factory was to me what the Chocolate factory was to Charlie. The tour begins with the story that Arthur Guinness famously signed a 9,000 year lease for the land in which the brewery first begun, paying £45 a year. You can just imagine how both parties left those negotiations. Guinness turning to his mates saying “I can’t believe they capped it a £45 a year! Have they not heard of inflation?!?” while the other party most likely turned to his mates and said “I can’t believe he settled for only 9,000 years! I would’ve easily given him 10,000. Sucker”. It hasn’t always been a smooth sailing 9,000 lease, with Guinness threatening to put an axe in someone’s head when the city was going to shut down his water supply. As the tour winds on, inside is like a testament to propaganda that even Joseph Goebbels would have been proud to call his own. There were old Guinness posters that suggested drinking Guinness kept the doctor away. In one installation which featured a timeline of historic events there was a flimsy attempt to link Guinness with the Wright Brothers first flight (flying can be scary, I encourage all pilots to knock down a few pints so their hand is steady). Along the way you learnt the step by step process to make Guinness, with wording carefully chosen that just made you want to go have a pint. So that’s pretty much what I did as I flew past the last 2 floors and headed straight for the Gravity bar. The Gravity bar sits a top the brewery offering 360 degree views of the city, while you enjoy your “free” pint. It was just a shame I was travelling by myself and didn’t have anyone to share this special moment with. Out of the Guinness factory I hopped back on the bus. Not soon after the freakishly fast clouds that fly over Dublin were back again with more rain forcing me indoors and to the bottom level of the bus. By now, the bus was being driven by a driver telling jokes so old they were first seen as cave art drawn by pre Neanderthal man. I did, however, take away one quality joke: How do you get a pool table to laugh? You stick your hands in its pockets and tickle its balls Walking and learning is thirsty work, so after dinner I headed south of the river and found a pub called Sheehans. I had a couple of pints, didn’t partake in any expected banter with an Irishmen, so wasn’t overly impressed and decided to find a pub closer to my hostel north of the river. I walked into a pub on O’Connell street, ordered a pint before a delightful old Irishmen named Len tapped me on the shoulder and said “I couldn’t help but notice you were from Australia”. I rewarded his spectacular powers of observation by sitting down and chatting with him over a couple of pints. Len had spent the last 29 years travelling and working overseas. When he finally decided to come back to live in Ireland Irish customs were refusing to let him into the country. They said his passport was fake and that he was putting on a false Irish accent. Len didn’t take too kindly to this and told the customs official in no uncertain terms that he would have all the newspapers down at the airport reporting his story on how he intended to sue the customs official and also sue the Irish government for issuing false documents. That seemed a convincing argument so he was eventually let into the country. I told Len that I was contemplating going to Spain. He advised me not to go as he wasn’t overly fond of the place. Years earlier he had been working there and had been arrested for drink driving, despite not being breathalysed. He was arrested on the Friday night, and wasn’t released until Monday. In between he’d received no water or food. When his time for justice came the judge listened to no evidence and called him a “white c*nt” before issuing him with a €2,000 fine. Spain? A racist country? Surely not! From the country that greets Lewis Hamilton each year by painting their faces black and calling him a monkey, to that delicate bit of diplomacy that saw the Spanish basketball team get their team photo taken with each of them stretching their eyes impersonating the Chinese for the 2008 Olympics. As it was starting to get late, and I didn’t want to be beaten to death in the dodgy neighbourhood where my hostel was located, I wished Len well and went back to the hostel for a well earned sleep.

Day 3 – Learning the history of Irish sport and the English sport of shooting the Irish

Today was to be all about visiting Dublin’s major sporting arena, Croke Park. I’d seen it on TV a few times during International Rules games, a sport aimed mostly at burning the relationship Australia has with Ireland by having Australian professional athletes put amateur Irish athletes into hospital and out of work for 6 months through various modes of violence. I’d checked out a map of Dublin and figured I could walk to Croke Park from my hostel. It was probably about 2 or 3 miles, but soon became about 5 miles when I took a left when I should’ve taken a right. What made the decision to turn left all the more odd was that I could actually see a massive structure looking a lot like a stadium to my right, yet still went left as that is how I had interpreted my map (I think Moses had the same map reading skills and that’s why it took him 40 years to lead the Jews out of the desert). I eventually made it to Croke Park sometime after 12. The next tour of the stadium wasn’t due to start for about an hour, so I killed some time in the Gaelic Athletics (GA) museum. It was here I learned that the GA has been formed to revive Irish sports and to rival the English sport of shooting unarmed civilians. It was at Croke Park that “Bloody Sunday” happened in November 1920 when the British Police auxiliaries (Black and Tans) opened fire on civilians in retaliation for Michael Collins killing what he believed to be spies within his organisation. When the shooting had finished and the smoke had cleared, 14 were dead, including 3 children and the Captain of the Tipperary Gaelic Football team Michael Hogan. Hogan now has a stand at Croke Park named after him. So in short, for Hogan to get a stand named after him he had to die on the playing field. For Tony Lockett to get a stand named after him at Melbourne’s Docklands stadium all he had to do was chase a pig with his name on it around the SCG. It just doesn’t seem fair. Teams talk about bleeding for your team, but never in this context, which makes chasing a ball around an oval seem quite insignificant. I concluded my tour by trying to kick a Gaelic Football at some targets, pretending each one was an Englishmen’s head. Now fully learned up on every event in the history of GA sports, my tour of the stadium started with me the only one on it. I watched a short video presentation before continuing on the tour which had now been joined by 3 other Australians, one of which was an attractive lass. It was interesting to see the demeanour of the tour guide change upon arrival of the Aussie lass. The tour guide, a “jolly” (read fat) Irishmen in his 60s had greeted me with a “Yeah, the quicker we start, the quicker I can finish and sit my fat ass down again” demeanour, but was now a bundle of energy. He had a walkie talkie in his hand and his single focus was now this Aussie lass, with his entire attention focused on her while his subconscious caused him to stroke the antenna on his walkie talkie in a suggestive way. Unfortunately for the jolly old tour guide, one of the members of our small tour group was a bloke who worked at Lang Park stadium in Queensland and he would constantly interrupt the jolly old tour guides focus from the Aussie lass by asking possibly the most uninteresting questions possible. He had possibly the most Aussie accent ever, but it didn’t help make his questions seem any more interesting. Questions along the lines of “Who does your catering?” yeah, I’m sure you need to know this as their food would travel well on that 24 hour flight to Australia so maybe you could use them at Lang Park, “Who cuts your grass?” yep, so hard to find a good lawn mower I can see how you might want to import one back to Australia. “Who washes your sh%$ters?” okay, made that one up but it would’ve been just as irrelevant as his other questions. The questions became so annoying that eventually the jolly old tour guide pretended he had lost his keys and that the tour would be cut short. This Aussie bloke: you can only hope he never works at a suicide hotline. Whilst his phone call turnover would be high enabling him to answer more calls, the reason would be because 5 minutes into each call the person on the other end of the line would have hung up the phone, doused themselves in petrol and torched themselves. It takes a special personality to be that annoying. Anyway, in between looking for a match and being disturbed by the jolly old tour guide stroking his antenna, I’d learned of the debate about whether Croke Park now had to pay rent for using the air over the railway track after the stadium had been developed in recent years. I also learned the Irish share with Australians that annoying thing of thinking we can’t compete on a world stage. The jolly old tour guide had talked up this stadium as if he’d built it with his own 2 hands, such was his pride. He talked up its facilities as being world class, as if thinking he had to go out of his way to convince us that the Irish could build something this good. It reminded me of how annoying it was back home to watch Australian interviewers fish for compliments about how good Australia is by asking the international celebrities if they’re having a great time in Australia. Lame and somewhat embarrassing. If you don’t like it, hop in your jet and f#$k off. With the tour over I walked back into town and through Trinity College’s school grounds. Inside they had testament to another fine Irish sporting tradition; a turf cricket wicket. You may laugh at that, but I nearly got into a fist fight with an old Irishmen at the cricket world cup in Barbados when I pointed out his national cricket team comprised of 4 Aussie expats. The Irish have tremendous pride in their cricketing past, either that or he was just a drunk Irishmen looking for a fight. Once out of the school grounds I found myself walking up Grafton street again like yesterday, and like yesterday discovering St Stephens Green does not have any toilets. So once again I used the same toilet as yesterday inside the shopping centre and once again I paid 20 cents for the privilege. Whilst it’s annoying to have to pay to use a toilet, it does bring me a little joy as it reminds me I’m back in Europe. You’re helped to be reminded of that joy when you use the facilities in a pub and you pay some African bloke a random amount of change for him to perform that difficult task of handing you a paper towel. As the darkness approached I got some dinner on Grafton street before heading to The Globe, Sinnotts, O’Briens, and the Stag’s Head. 4 different pubs for 4 different pints. At only 2 of those venues did I find barmaids I was willing to marry which I would rate as one of the lowest strike rates ever. I also wasn’t able to find a crazy time so decided to head back to the hostel at around 11pm. That would begin the first ever running of the “O’Connell street 1 mile full bladder handicap”. I tell you what, I walked that last mile to the hostel faster than any of the last 5 Melbourne Cup winners ran the last mile. I made it, my bladder didn’t explode, and I was soon off to sleep.

Day 4 – Of nights involving hens

Today was just all about walking aimlessly. As I walked I discovered a store called “Pound World”, which I assume was like the English equivalent of “Pound land”, but every product inside weighed a pound because given Ireland used the euro it now wouldn’t make sense to name the store after a different currency. As I walked down O’Connell street I took time to checkout the O’Connell statue and look for bullet holes from the 1916 Easter uprising. It appeared one shot had hit him in the tit. As I continued to walk I begun to wish one of those stray bullets could travel through time and hit one of the many human statue street performers that littered the streets of Dublin. Quite frankly, it should be legal to stab a human statute street performer. I hate them so much. They stand still for 3 hours, then move just to scare 1 person?!? On a good day they’d be lucky to get 8 laughs. You could fart 9 times in an hour and you’d get a more laughs. To add to the slalom course of mediocrity that are some streets hanging off O’Connell street, there are the restaurant sign holders. I tell you what; nothing advertises a restaurant better than a bent over disinterested person leaning on a pole holding up the name of a restaurant. These people are only one step up in the food chain from passed out drunk homeless people. I negotiated the slalom course of mediocrity to eventually find myself at Ha’penny bridge, or as its officially known the “Liffey Bridge”. Built by William Walsh to replace dodgy ferries (and to stop boat people? Can trace Tony Abbott’s heritage to William Walsh?) the initial cost for an Irish punter wanting to cross the bridge was a ha’penny. The ha’penny toll is now removed, and now replaced by an unofficial 20 cent toll to climb over a gypsy sitting at the entrance. After much walking I reached Dublin Castle and decided to chill in the Castle Gardens updating my tour diary. Inside the Castle Gardens is the smallest (in height) hedge maze ever. Okay, might not be a hedge maze, just grass cut at about 3 inches and random lines stretching through like serendipitously placed concrete spaghetti. As I chilled, I noticed that it’s impossible for a pigeon to walk without bobbing its head like an aussie bogan dancing to AC/DC. Amazing the things you learn while overseas. Happy with that discovery of pigeon behaviour, I decided to celebrate it by heading to Temple Bar for a pint at the Porterhouse pub. In between watching the Lions versus South African rugby game, I learned of how Guinness made all his money after accidentally burning his beer and selling it to the local porters, hence the creation of the porter beer. There was no mention of his sister selling herself onto drunken porters, so it was nice to hear the Guinness family stayed of virtue true. After finishing that pint, I headed south along Grafton street where I discovered the Bruxelles bar in a side street. The bar had caught my attention as it had a statue out the front of Philip Lynott. At the time I didn’t know he was the front man for Thin Lizzy, but assumed based on the statue that he had appeared in a Soul Glow ad from the moving “Coming to America” as he was rocking a killer Jheri curl. I had a pint in there, watched some Gaelic football, headed out to Grafton street to get something to eat before setting up shop at Sinnotts Bar for what I hoped would be an interesting Friday night. And interesting is what it soon became. I got talking to an English bloke at the bar who had somehow been invited to a Hens weekend (who I assumed was commonly referred to by the girls as “our gay friend”. How does a bloke get invited to a Hens night unless he’s the stripper?). He then invited me to join the Hens night so I spent much of the night dancing with a woman dressed as Super Girl and the other ladies along for the party. I also spent the night dancing with 2 random chicks not privy to the Hens night, but who’d originally tried to photo bomb a shot, but were now actively participating in many of the photos I was taking after accepting my invitation. God bless digital photography and its ability to help you piece together the events of the previous night. I would have had even more photos but for some cow deleting some of my photos after asking to have a look at them. Good night that.

Day 5 – Of days that are only included for completeness

This morning I was awoken in my hostel room by the bin cleaner. I tried to get back to sleep but was then disturbed by some bloke vacuuming in the room. Then when he was finished a woman with a mop entered the room and I knew by now the universe had decided I needed to get out of bed, so I walked downstairs to have a shower where I bumped into a cleaner. This hostel had more staff than an aircraft carrier! As I walked the stairs to and from the bathrooms I noticed that the last step at the top and bottom were coloured red. I didn’t see the need for that as I would’ve thought the lack of continual movement in either an upward or downward direction was a fair hint you’d run out of stairs. Never in my life had I felt the need to complain to a proprietor “Excuse me my good fellow. I was rather embarrassed just moments earlier as I kept swinging my foot in the air looking for the last step only to discover one more step did not exist. You really should colour code those stairs my good man”. The ease in which it is to negotiate stairs without the need for particular ones needing to be marked red was made all the more obvious by the fact I’d woken up drunk from last nights Hens night shenanigans. Still drunk it also was making sense for me to suggest to the Irish government to train homeless people to play at least 1 musical instrument as that would make for a lot more pleasant experience for all, far better than having the sound of jingling cups full of change. And what was the deal with all the gypsies in Dublin? Surely you tow the caravan to a far cheaper city to live than Dublin. It’s one of the benefits of living a nomadic existence; you don’t like the city you pack up and move on. You can’t tell me setting up shop in such an expensive city with so much gypsy competition is wise. It’s such a competitive career path to choose pan handling in Dublin. Why, just today as I walked the streets I noticed a gypsy woman had had to move up 20 metres as a competitor had stolen her prime real estate at a phone booth. The homeless people sitting there doing nothing reminded me much of my last week at my job, except I was indoors. Today was to be all about avoiding walking. I figured on the Thursday I’d walked for at least 8 hours, so at 3mph I’d walked a marathon. I had lunch in a food court, where I watched some pony tailed bozo of a man trying to sell moisturiser to random women walking past. I entertained myself by trying to lip read what he was saying. “First it acts by cleansing your wallet of all money. This leaves an initial good feeling that you’ve done something for yourself, which will eventually become disappointment upon realising no one escapes age or death”. After lunch I wandered into Temple Bar for a few relaxing ales at an establishment called 5live. It had 5 of something, but all I could count was a bar, a pub, and a restaurant (perhaps the other 2 things included food poisoning from eating at the restaurant and subsequent diarrhoea?). I watched the British Formula 1 GP and other events until such time I decided I would head back to the hostel and get cleaned up and head out for dinner. When I arrived back at the hostel I was greeted by a 40 something American bloke who for some reason immediately struck me as a paedophile, there was just something about his voice and demeanour. He then started ticking a lot of boxes to suggest that hunch was correct; he worked as a teacher, he wanted a photo with 3 young Spanish blokes staying in our room (they would have to be over 18 as unaccompanied by an adult, but could have entered Disneyland on a children’s ticket) to “show his students in his class” (yes, of course you’d want a photo, Spanish people are as rare as big foot, no one would believe you met 1, let alone 3). All I needed to hear was that he taught at a catholic boarding school and all the boxes would’ve been ticked. The American paedophile was making me uncomfortable so I left the room with the sort of haste the Catholic Church uses to cover up illegal sex acts, and finished the night by having a few beers at a bar called “The Oval” watching a Brazil versus Italy soccer game. I was served by Asian woman with an Irish accent, so by my count this was only the third Irish person I’d met while being in Dublin. So many tourists. I had learned of a possible pub crawl after reading tourist doco at the hostel the night before, but instead choose a quiet night as I was flying out the next day. Peter Hart making sensible decisions: man, I must be growing up.

Day 6 – Dublin to London

Today was my last day in Dublin. As I flying out in the late afternoon I had to find a way to kill time. So I walked down to Trinity College and chilled on a bench overlooking the cricket pitch where I updated my tour diary and did some people watching. There was a 30 minute walking tour I could have done for €10, but I contemplated saving the €10 and casually merging my way into the back of the group. If you’re caught sneaking onto a walking tour, you simply run. It’s the beauty of the walking tour, the person leading it is traditionally an obese person which is ironic given the amount of walking they do. But, of course, doing a walking tour would’ve meant I had to walk, I was all walked out from the last few days so opted to just sit and people watch. A few hours out from my flight, I walked back to the hostel, got my baggage and walked back to O’Connell street to catch the Airlink express bus to the airport. Dublin airport for me falls into a similar question of what came first; the chicken or the egg? But in this case it was more what came first; the airport or the shopping mall? Judging by the amount of retail stores I’m going to say it was initially a shopping mall and by chance eventually became an airport. You walk vast distances to find a departure gate, and by vast I mean the type of distances where you contemplate air travel just to get to your plane. The gates started at D60, which was fitting because they could have fit another 59 gates in, that’s just how far you walk. Once on-board the Ryan Air plane (probably an Airbus, because it felt more like a bus than a plane with all the advertising) I noticed the safety documents embedded in the seats had a graphic that warned that passengers could not use Walkmans during flight. Given this wasn’t 1985, I figured there was little chance of any passengers doing that. The flight and train ride back to lovely Watford was largely uneventful and I was soon back on my couch enjoying quality British broadcasting.

#ireland #dublin #europe #hartofoz