Saturday, November 26th – Off To Jail

I have discovered that my writing has become rusty.  It is much harder to crank out the words than the last time I did this.  That or maybe it’s the pints.  It seems like everywhere you sit you have to have one.  Lunch.  Dinner.  Breakfast.  Again, pens and pints don’t mix.  I don’t know how Hemingway did it.  Of course, he only did it for so long…

Today was the day I planned to go to jail.  In a city of uprisings, rebellions, and insurrections, much of the recent history runs through the jail.  I’m not going to recap thousands of years of Irish history, and Kilmainham Gaol only covers a couple hundred, but it seems like the Irish have a long history with being on the losing side of a fight.  This may explain why they have such resilient personalities.

Anyway, the Gaol was not the first goal.  I trudged my way back past Christ Church and behind St. Patrick’s to go to Marsh’s Library.  Narcissus March was the Archbishop of Dublin at the end of the 1600s.  Apparently, he had a massive collection of books.  Anyway, this is the oldest public library in the country.  Most of the volumes I saw were older than our country (the United States).  There were a few of Jonathan Swift’s personal items here on display (it appears that he did not hold Archbishop Marsh in high regard).  I was interested to see the History of France, as of 1578, but nobody was allowed to touch the books.  Between this and the Long Room at Trinity, Dublin has two pretty cool libraries.

When you look at the map of Dublin, Kilmainham Gaol looks like it is about the same distance from St. Patrick’s as St. Patrick’s is from the GPO.  My legs told me otherwise.

Kilmainham is tied to every recent Irish uprising.  It was opened in 1796 and proceeded to house every major recent figure in Ireland’s history.  Or so it seems.  After watching the French Revolution, the United Irishmen decided to stage their own rebellion.  And lost.  Between 1798 and 1922, the Irish were either fighting the British or themselves.  There were twelve major uprisings, by my account.  And the reason we stop at 1922 for this discussion is because the Gaol was finally decommissioned in 1924.

The walking tour has given the best overview of recent Irish history I have had so far and was well worth the time.  We were led around by a little Irish girl in a black beret.  It kind of made you feel like you were part of the movement.  There are also a few floors of displays worth checking out, after you get the jail house tour.

From Kilmainham Gaol, I started working my way back to the heart of the city.  The next stop was the Royal Hospital Kilmainham and Irish Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).  Yep, it’s all one and the same.

The Royal Hospital Kilmainham was set up as a retirement home for veterans.  I guess the architecture is Georgian and the building of the hospital began a Georgian architecture boom in Dublin.  It reminded me a little of colonial Williamsburg but on a much larger scale.

Like most of Ireland’s buildings, this fell into compete disarray in the 1920s.  It was restored in the 1980s.  The Irish MoMA is in part of the main building but most of it is housed in one of the side buildings.  There is a heritage tour of the main building and, since I was the only one there, I got a personal tour and overview.  I saw the chapel and the main rooms.  The chapel ceiling is entirely made of papier mache.  Who knew that the skills I learned in second grade could be used to make exotic ceiling covers.

Alas, the MoMA had no egg carton fish (another item we made in second grade art class).  But, it was worth seeing.  Many of the exhibits were interactive.  In one room, there was invisible glue on the floor that captured the footprints of people who walked through.  In another room, there was just white noise and foam.

One exhibit of particular interest involved a police sketch artist and describing your first love.  This had to be done by appointment but the gist of it all was that you would sit down with the sketch artist, describe your first love, they would draw him or her, and they would become part of the permanent exhibit.  Cool, creepy, and a way to make that person who jilted you in grade school last forever.  In a sketch, everyone looks guilty.

Another exhibit that caught my eye was a roomful of ribbons in wooden peg boards.  Each ribbon had a wish on it.  All of the wishes came from people who had seen the exhibit.  The idea was that you could take a wish ribbon but you had to write a wish of your own on paper and refill the empty hole with that.  The artist would then make a ribbon of your wish and put it in the art.

You were to wear your ribbon until it fell off.  At that point, your wish would come true.  The wish I took was “I want a turtle and no more war.”  The wish I wrote was “I wish everyone could see the world the way I do.”  My ribbon fell off in the Porter House somewhere between the third and forth pint (more on that later).  So far, I don’t think people are seeing what I see…

The day was not over, yet.  From the MoMA, I walked over to the Guinness Storehouse.  This is one of the tours I felt that I had to do.  I think I have been on about fifteen brewery tours in the last three years.  All sponsored by the good folks at Wells Fargo.

The Guinness complex in Dublin is massive.  The Storehouse tour is only on a small part of it but the tour facility itself is HUGE.  It’s either five or seven stories, depending on how you count it and how much you’ve had to taste.  The brew tour is pretty standard stuff.  If you have done a few tours, you already know how beer is made, etc, etc.  I did the obligatory views here but quickly headed up to the Gravity Bar.

Sitting on top of the entire complex, Gravity Bar gives you a 360 degree view of Dublin as well as one free pint.  As you can imagine, the place is crammed with tourists.  It is like a tower of Babel, with dozens of different languages being bantered about.  I was up there to watch the sun set, which was worth the rush.

A nasty fact about Guinness I learned on the tour is that the yeast used to make the beer is the same one that has been alive since 1770.  That’s a hell of a yeast infection.

I dropped down to Arthur’s Pub, named after the founder, to grab a small bite and ended up watching the end of the ManU game on the telly.  At that point, it was time to work my way back to Temple Bar.

Temple Bar is a section of Dublin that runs along the River Liffey.  It is basically the party district (think Georgetown, Bourbon Street, etc).  My target stop was the Porter House.  One of my friends who had lived in Dublin had told me that this was a place where I could get some Irish stew.  Like almost all of the bars, live music comes on at some point.

I was fortunate enough to find an open barstool (tougher than you think, in Dublin).  This version of Irish stew was made with chicken broth.  Or so it seemed.  Never the less, it was good as I was hungry.  Of course, as with any meal in Dublin, you have to take a pint.  I stuck with the Guinness.  Dance with the ones that brung ya.

Soon the bar started to fill up for the evening and I got to talking with an old Dubliner named James.  The conversation started when the world’s second worse tranny sat down at the bar above us.  Anyway, James told me his sob story and I told him mine and we traded pints back and forth until he finally surrendered.  Score one for America.

James was quickly backfilled by a bunch of students from Wabash, an all dudes college outside of Chicago.  More drinking, more tales.  At some point in the evening I checked my e-mail.  One particular e-mail was from a program called Last Call and offered to help me “Stop Binge Drinking TODAY.”  Too late.  It had an 84% success rate but at this point in the night I am sure I was in the 16%.

Eventually, I drank the college kids away, too.  As they were carrying each other out, they told me to come on by the fraternity house if I was ever in town.

At this point in the evening it was just me, another pint, and more Irish kids.  It’s great to be the All-American pie face outside of America.  And, once again, I represented the country well.

Somewhere long after midnight and not much before closing, I bounced out of the Porter House, zagged my way across one of those bridges on the Liffey, and found myself at a McDonald’s.  The two cheeseburger meal was the last layer on top of an already too long day.  I crawled into bed around 3AM.

I’ve only got two days left and there is still a lot to see.