Excursion Post Avalanche Part 1: Dublin

So I've been putting this off for about a week since I wasn't sure how I wanted to do these posts. I have a lot of things to write and a lot of pictures to post, but I just don't like messing with photos in the middle of my posts (thanks blogger for a not great photo importer). So I think I picked a format that I like pretty well, though I am likely to change it soon. Pretty much every thing will have an extended write up, and then a photo dump, with real limited captioning.

Dublin was the first of the excursions that my tuition is paying for. We take excursions pretty much every weekend, and get set up with hotels, usually a couple of meals, and tours of the things that are deemed important for us to see. We always have the nights mostly free, and the occasional afternoon free as well. The WU Galway crew traveled to Dublin on Friday the 15th of January and returned on the 17th.

We left in the wee hours of the morning (730) and hit the road for the 4.5 hourish drive to Dublin. The first stop on our tour was Croke Park, which is the stadium used to host the All-Ireland finals in the Gaelic Games (Hurling and Gaelic football). The stadium is also being used temporarily to host soccer and rugby while the other large Dublin stadium is being renovated. Croke Park also hosts the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) museum. We started with a tour of the museum, and learned about the rules of the two major gaelic games. Hurling and Gaelic Football are basically the same game played in two different ways. Gaelic football is played using a ball about the size of a soccer ball, but with the stitching of a volleyball. The goal is to either kick the ball over the top of the goal and between the goal posts for one point, or to put it into the net past the keeper for 3. Players can hold the ball in their hands for about 3 seconds (we think) before they have to bounce it or pass it. Hurling is essentially the same, but played with a ball slightly smaller than a baseball, and a stick which is somewhere between hockey and lacrosse. You play 15 a side and the field is slightly longer than a soccer pitch. After that we got to walk down onto the field. The place seats 80000 people. If you have ever been down on the field level of a stadium that big you know how it feels. I can only imagine what it is like to be representing your home county during a match in that stadium, with that many people cheering for you. Just standing there with it empty was intimidating. Its a really humbling experience.

After the stadium, we headed back into the downtown to hit the St. James (Guinness) Brewery. They definitely pulled out none of the stops on showing you the process. You get to see all the equipment, all the ingredients, all the advertising, everything that happens between when it begins being made, to when you get it poured into your glass. The visitors tour is an 8 story trek, ending in the "Gravity Bar" which is kind of like the great glass elevator, boasting 360 degree panoramic views of Dublin. You get a quarter pint tasting half way up (I had 3) , and a complimentary pint in the Gravity Bar (I had 2.5, some people didn't want theirs. Weird).

After the brewery was Kilmainham Gaol (jail). Kilmainham housed Irish prisoners from 1796 to 1924, the most prominent of which were the political prisoners during the Easter rebellion in 1916. We got a tour of the jail, and I snapped a few pictures of the cells which are small enough to drive a man mad, thats for sure. We also were told about the only escape, during 1907 where three prisoners broke out, but their wire cutters broke cutting the locks on the gates. They then broke back in to their cells, and waited another two weeks for a new pair of bolt cutters before escaping again. The most powerful image from the whole Dublin trip came from the grounds of the jail. In 1916 James Connolly, a leader of the Easter Rising was captured in the fighting. He was so badly wounded that he couldn't stand or sit for his own execution. The British were forced to tie him to a chair so that he would be seated while he was shot. In the place where he sat is a small wooden cross about a foot high. Its a small thing, but super powerful nonetheless.

Thus ended Day 1. We checked into our hostel, and everyone was way too tired to go out to the pubs that night, so we shared a few pints in the lounge of the hostel, played go fish and swapped stories and jokes. Remind me to tell you the one about the whales sometime when I get back. The next morning we were up around 9, and bound for a tour of Trinity College/Parliament/Dublin Castle/Temple Bar. Our tour guide, Peter, clearly had a degree in history, or at least an encyclopedic knowledge of Dublin, so the tour was pretty interesting given how much he could tell us about any and every little thing. After the walking tour, we hit the Trinity College library, and saw the Book of Kells, which is a very old religious manuscript, from about the year 800. We had the afternoon off and then saw a play called The Seafarer by Conor MacPherson. The play started with about 40 minutes of drunk irish banter, before the devil showed up and made things interesting. The play concluded with a game of cards for the main character, Sharky's, soul. It was a pretty interesting play. The night concluded with trip to the Temple Bar, which is the pub and club district of Dublin, before bouncers stopped letting us in places, and we headed back the the hostel's lounge.

The following morning had us up early again, and off to the countryside to see Newgrange and Clonmacnoise. Newgrange is a neolithic (I think) burial mound that was richly decorated, and now has been reconstructed. The coolest feature is probably the roofbox that allows sunlight to reach the back wall of the tomb, but only at sunrise on the winter solstice. Clonmacnoise is an abbey town in central Ireland, with a ton of ruins and old graves, as well as an epic castle ruin nearby. These two are mostly looking things, so I am just going to put up a bunch of pictures.

And thats Dublin. Pictures to follow in the next post.