Ireland Trip 2007

Now that it's all been properly blogged, here's the roundup of everything:

• Arrival in Dublin.
• Dublin, Part II.
• Dancing in Dublin: swing and ceilí.
• The Valley of the Boyne.
• County Wicklow.
• A Dublin Miscellany.
• Dingle.
• Doolin, and the Cliffs of Moher.
• The entire trip in limericks.
• The entire trip in photos.

Ireland, in Limericks

Usually, Limerick's in Ireland, but we'll go the other way here, since I did chronicle my trip in limericks. Enjoy.

Oh, the Long Room at Trinity's a sight,
That librarians dream of at night.
But good luck a-huntin'
For the titles you're wantin' --
They're arranged alphabetically by height!

If ceilís confuse you no end,
Just take heart, pay heed, and attend.
From the Limerick walls,
'Till besieged Ennis falls,
We'll dance them again and again.

A young Irish dancer named Sorcha,
Had a name with an int'resting quir-ika,
With the centermost syllable,
Completely invisible,
I've not seen the like in Amurica. *

Oh, the water in Galway's no jest --
It'll put your good health to the test.
Then you'll drink pesticides,
Just to cleanse your insides,
Of your cryptosporidium guest.

Tara, Newgrange and Monasterboice
Together make my tour of choice,
For throughout Brú na Bóinne,
There's nuthin' annoyin' ya,
While there's much about which to rejoice. **

When Mel Gibson was Braveheart to be,
'Twas to Wicklow, not Scotland, went he.
For the Minister of Arts,
Had filled soldiers' parts,
With the whole Irish Army, for free.

'Round Slea Head I needed no guide,
Just my new hired bike by my side.
Though it remains to be seen,
If I've ruptured my spleen,
From the fifty kilometer ride.

When hiking the Cliffs known as Moher,
I wish I'd put sunblock all o'er.
Crossing fields and streams,
I saw views from my dreams,
But got toasted by quarter past four.

- - - - -
* There are no real rhymes that I could think of for "Sorcha," I'm afraid. I really wanted to make a limerick with rhymes that were audible but not visible, though, so this is kind of a hack.

** You have to squeeze the "Tara" into the pickup beat on this one.

Doolin, and the Cliffs of Moher

My final excursion of the trip was to Doolin, a place small enough to make Dingle look like a big, bustling city. I stayed at the Doolin hostel, which also happened to serve as the town bus station and currency exchange point (handy, since there were no ATMs in town). I got put in room 17, which is normally an 8-bed dorm room, but which I got all to myself, since tourist season wasn't yet in full swing to fill up the rooms.

Doolin, small as it is, is known internationally as a hotspot for Irish music. So for the first time since my ill-fated Dublin excursion, I took my mandolin out to find some sessions. I found the local musicians here to be much more welcoming, probably because they go to these sessions expecting some folks to come along and join in, as well as just to listen. It is a little odd, though, to realize that they're basically human tourist attractions. Things there are really half session, half performance, with microphones and everything. Not sure how I'd feel about that if I lived there and played there regularly. It made it a little intimidating to join in as a newcomer too, but like I said, the people leading the sessions were nice, and that helped.

On the first night, I went to McGann's. The session there was being led by a very good guitarist/singer, and by probably the best tenor banjo player I've ever had the pleasure of playing with. Whereas in the Dublin session I went to I had felt relatively on a par with people skill-wise, here I felt rather more out-classed. But I played decently and had a great time listening as well. Would have liked to have picked the banjo-player's brain about a number of things, had there been time. On the second night, I went to O'Connor's pub. Instead of taking over a corner of the pub, this session was crammed into a little booth, around a little table. Didn't seem like people would actually have room to play pressed in elbow to elbow like that, but it worked somehow. This one was led by a trio of folks on flute, fiddle, and button accordion. Again, really good music. It was nice to finally get a really good fix of Irish music actually in Ireland.

On the morning of my one full day in Doolin, I decided to hike out to the Cliffs of Moher, rather than taking the bus. If you take the main street out of town, you see a sign directing you towards the main visitor center / lookout point, which is about 9 km or so down the road. Just next to that, however, there is a barred-off cart path with its own sign, reading "Caution: Very Dangerous Cliffs Ahead." Now really, which one looks like a more interesting hike? And besides, option 2 seemed to have a perfectly well-defined path, well back from the actual cliff edge. So naturally I headed off that way, between the cow pastures.

For a couple miles, things were pretty easy going. I just followed the path with occasional side trips to admire the various views or check out the ruins of some old building. It was a beautifully quiet, clear day, with no one else around. But after a bit (specifically: once I'd gone too far to want to turn back), it started getting trickier. First, I had to climb a fence to follow the path through a field of sheep. Then there were some streams to maneuver around, one of which sent me down a ways until I found a place I could get across, after which a marshy area disguised as a meadow tried to eat my shoes. I escaped that alright, though. Then I was climbing and ducking a few more fences before the path disappeared for a bit and I was just cutting clear across open cow pastures in the general direction I wanted to go. (Still paralleling the cliff edge, though not all the way down at the edge, since it was getting steep in some places.) After that, I went up and over what I think may have been the highest point on the Cliffs of Moher, at least from what I could see. I was back near the edge now, confronting a helpful sign indicating more danger due to continuing erosion. This would have been by far the scariest part if I had actually followed the path that reappeared here, especially with the wind picking up. But I scooted a couple yards to the left and went on the other side of a fence, which was a bit better.

By this time I was pretty sure that this wasn't the legitimate, alternate route I thought it was. But I could see O'Brien's Tower, which was where I was headed, and once I was over the peak it wasn't too much farther to get there. Just when I thought I had it in the bag though, the last fence turned out to be electric, for one final challenge. I wouldn't have minded so much except that it looked exactly like all the non-electric fences I'd been climbing, so I didn't know until it threw me off. (Well, after it through me off, really. Not much actually goes through your mind while you're being zapped.) Luckily, it was just one wire going across a metal bar fence, so once I knew where it was, I was able to climb more carefully and avoid it.

The main tourist lookout point at the Cliffs of Moher has some very nice views, though to be honest it's a bit anticlimactic after you've just hiked 5-6 miles along the cliffs to get there. The helicopter tours and the tourist crowds affect the ambiance a bit, too. But it was still worth spending some time there. And also getting the bus back to Doolin.

Back in Doolin, I had some simpler walks around to explore the area. The area known as Doolin seems to be sliced into numerous little town-lets or something, each of which is only about the size of a single road with cow pastures on either side, stretching a mile or so from the main Fisher Street to the ocean. If you head out towards the ocean, you find some really interestingly rocky areas, with occasional standing stones and old wells and such. I would have quite liked to have had more time to wander around there.

Relevant Tunes:

• 17
• The Cliffs of Moher
• The Road to Lisdoonvarna
• The Humours of Ennistymon
• The Clare Jig

Dingle

After leaving Dublin, I took a train to Mallow, another to Tralee, then a bus out to the Dingle peninsula, which is nearly as far West as you can go and still be in Europe. Dingle itself is a very small town on the coast, and is also known as An Daingean. Technically, since it's in a Gaeltacht, it's supposed to use its Irish name. It's opted not to, however, since the tourist the town relies on would probably just start calling it "the town formerly known as Dingle" anyway.

Dingle has a little aquarium called Ocean World, which is like a baby Monterey Bay Aquarium and includes both native and tropical fish. The tanks and displays are all very nicely done, though there's a severe lack of information anywhere, beyond simply the names of what's in each tank (and even those were incomplete sometimes). The touch pool was interesting, because a lot of the rays, and even a bottom dwelling fish like a flounder or a sole, were all swimming up to the top of the water, almost as if they wanted to be petted. Very convenient, but definitely seemed unusual. There were also some eels that were acting strange. Normally, eels wedge their bodies in between some rocks and just leave their heads out to grab passing fish. In the open ocean tank, though, a green moray eel seemed to have gotten things backwards. It appeared to have its head stuck in a rock, and its entire long body and tail just dangling straight down the outside. Maybe he was new at this, or maybe his head was poking out the other side and he didn't realize he didn't have a whole cave to be hiding in. There was also a leopard moray eel that I actually saw swimming, completely in the open. Again, very unusual, but a swimming leopard moray eel may be one of the most beautiful things in the ocean.

For my dinners in Dingle I ate takeout Indian food on the pier. The place I got it from was called either Sarena or Sareena , depending on whether you believe the sign or the menu. Yummy food, but this place was also interesting for a large sepia picture it had on its wall. It's a photo of the same building 90 years ago, when it had considerably fewer shades of purple on it and didn't serve Indian food. The guy in the picture next to the horse cart was the grandfather of the current landlord, who is now 77 years old.

While somewhat on the subject of food, I'll mention Murphy's ice cream parlor, which had some excellent ice cream with some interesting flavors. The ginger latte was unfortunately much more latte than ginger, but the honey almond cardamon was wonderful.

The center piece of my time in Dingle was my trip around Slea Head Drive, a 30-mile loop around the end of the peninsula with some lovely scenic views of ocean, cliffs and islands. I rented a bike in town and cycled it all, which was a bit of an adventure on narrow, cliff-edge, one-lane roads. Also, it turns out that 30 miles is rather more biking than I'm used to doing in one day, so it left me a little jelly-legged at the end of the 6 hours or so that I was out. But it was a great little tour and much more fun that it would have been in a car, I think.

Aside from scenic views, the other main points of interest around the peninsula were things made of rock. Some of them, like these beehive huts, date back over 2,000 years. The Gallarus Oratory is over 1,000 years old and still waterproof, even without any mortar or anything else besides stone. There are also some good places to see church ruins, and even an old Ogham stone.

One of my favorite spots along the ride was this beautiful little beach. I spied it from a higher lookout point, and decided I should find my way there for my lunch break. Turned out to be non-obvious to find, but an unmarked road leading between two cow pastures (there are lots of both of those in Ireland) got me there in the end. When I got there, I found that a rocky little stream fed into the ocean there and had some lovely grassy areas around it, still in view of the beach and perfect for picnicking. That put one of my favorite environments right next to one of my favorite views and made me very happy.

Relevant Tunes:

• Dingle Bay
• The Dingle Regatta
• The Dingle Polka
• The Rose of Tralee
• The Kerry Man
• The Star of Munster

A Dublin Miscellany

Today was my last day of work on this trip, and I've just recently finished working out (roughly) what I'll be doing for the rest of it. I'm leaving Dublin bright and early tomorrow morning, then spending two nights in Dingle, and two nights in Doolin. Then back in Dublin by Wednesday night, in time for one more swing dance before my flight home Thursday morning. Before I leave Dublin, though, an assortment of things to share....

Getting to my desk on my first day of work at the new office two weeks ago was an interesting process. I needed to get up to the 2nd (=3rd) floor, but the elevators were slow and full of the morning rush of people. So Signor Pezzin led me up on foot: The stairs in the lobby led to a door saying "Ladies WC." Through that, we took the door that wasn't the Ladies WC, but which led down a hallway to a mini-kitchen. Turn left, down a hall, turn left, down a hall, then through a door saying "Gents WC." Find more stairs through there, go up one more flight. Then U-turn to another door and U-turn to my desk. I thought I'd never find my way out on my own.

There are a few sets of "airlock" doors I go through regularly here, two doors with just few feet of space and nothing else between them. The ones at the top of the stairs here in my hotel are relatively airtight, and not latched, so when you open one, it opens the other a little and then drops it closed again. I always imagine a ghost that lives in that tiny little space between the doors, and vacates it for you to pass through, so he's leaving through one door just as you're opening the other. Very polite little ghost, not wanting to frighten anybody.

Some random teenagers on the street the other day told me I look like Gerry Adams, an Irish politician. I disagree.

There's a smoothie shop nearby called Zumo. Last night I got a discount on a smoothie because I pronounced "açaí" correctly, without prompting. The fellow working there proceeded to tell me all sorts of interesting things about açaí, like how you can't grow it anywhere but Brazil and they'll only export juice and pulp. It's also apparently used for lots of things, including treating children with dyslexia, and it fills the role of "the viagra of the amazon." Somewhat along those lines, this place offers "boosts," like Jamba Juice does. It has the usual expected ones, like energy boosts, immune boosts, etc. It also has one specifically for hangovers, as well as "love factors" for women and men. I suppose the latter probably includes açaí.

Apparently, Polish has recently surpassed Chinese as the second most commonly spoken language in Ireland. (Or third? I can't remember if it beat out Irish or not.) I would probably never have guessed either of those two languages for being so high up the list.

So far I have not had my umbrella out even once since I've been in Ireland. I realize this is completely atypical weather and I should not get cocky about it. However, if I make it through one more week like this before I go home, I'm going to consider writing to the newspapers and asking for a medal or something.

On a related note, as I write this, the weather report has just said we were going to have a warm, dry, sunny weekend. With occasional, heavy, thundering showers.

The house cleaning service here at the hotel always leaves all the lights on. It doesn't waste energy because they don't actually come on until I get home and put my key in the slot that turns the circuits on. But still, it means that the first thing I do is going around turning off most of the switches because I don't need everything at once. I could understand this if they, say, needed the extra light for cleaning purposes. But this extends all the way to the little light on the Mirror of Insecurity in the bathroom (the magnifying one, so you can enjoy your blemishes IMAX style). A couple times they've even left the TV on. Sheesh. If it weren't for the fact that they also replenish the tea supply, I'd just leave the "do not disturb" sign out the whole time.

Anyway, that's it for now. Any further updates of note will probably be from California, after I get back.

County Wicklow

Today's trip was a Wild Wicklow tour down through County Wicklow, south of Dublin. Though on the way we drove out to the coast to see Dublin Bay and Dun Laoghaire. We don't exactly have resort quality beaches out here. I only saw one with actual sand, and it didn't even reach the water. Still, I guess you make do with what you have.

From there we passed through Ireland's rich-and-famous area, which is fun if you like being told that people you've heard of (or haven't) live nearby. From one particular vantage point, we could see the houses of both Bono and The Edge (from U2), as well as Enya's castle (!), and the homes of various other people I've forgotten. There was also the place where the former Mexican president lives after running off with a bunch of money, and where the Canadian ambassador owns the most expensive home in the country. More exciting than all the name-dropping on this part of the trip, though, was my window of the bus repeatedly swinging within centimeters of walls and trees as we wound our way along the narrow roads. We stopped for a coffee break at some little shopping center somewhere, too, but that was just dumb, so I'm not going to get into that.

Then we got into County Wicklow, heading up into the Sally Gap between the Dublin Mountains and the Wicklow Mountains. The scenery is perhaps different later in the spring, but right now there's a lot of dark heather, with splotches of yellow gorse, rather than all the green you might expect in Ireland. There were also some large burned areas. Apparently some controlled burns got out of hand yesterday and spread before the fire department could get the fire out. We saw a couple patches still smoking.

The lookout point over Lough Tay had some lovely scenery, though, if you could hold on to the mountain without the wind blowing you off it. This lake has such dark water from all the peat bits floating in it that it's nicknamed the Guinness Lake. Someone even trucked in some sand at one end, to mimic the head on a pint of Guinness. I ventured over to the other side of the road as well, to try to go into the forest, but the trees were so pointed, scratchy, and closely-packed that I literally couldn't get in. Right before we had to leave, though, I found an opening that lead to what would have been a great hike up the mountain. No time for it, unfortunately.

This area of Ireland has been used for filming lots of movies, including Braveheart. The reason a Scottish movie got filmed in Ireland is that a canny Minister of Arts offered Mel Gibson the use of the entire Irish army as extras for the battle scenes, free of charge.

The Glendalough monastery was very similar in concept to Monasterboice, though larger and with some more complete buildings. This afternoon I was more interested in the hike out to the two eponymous lakes. We had about an hour and a half for this, which would have been fine if we just wanted to get out there, see the lakes, and come back. But it turns out that the mountainside there is covered with lovely trails which I probably could have explored and enjoyed for the better part of a day.

Overall, a less ringing endorsement for this tour than the previous one. If I had my druthers, I'd skip most of it and just spend a good long time in Glendalough, hiking around. But still, I enjoyed getting out to see the area a bit.

Relevant tunes:

• The Wicklow Hornpipe
• Sugarloaf Mountain
• Anything by Enya or U2 :-)

The Valley of the Boyne

This was my weekend for day-trips out of Dublin. I don't usually do the whole tour bus thing, but it seemed a handy way to get to a few interesting places without having to get a car and find my own way around. Yesterday's trip was north of Dublin to Brú na Bóinne. (I want to do a limerick rhyming that with "annoyin' ya," but wasn't sufficiently annoyed by anything there.)

Monasterboice was the first brief stop at the beginning of the tour. Some of the largest and best Celtic crosses are there, which is its main claim to fame. Other than that, it's a graveyard, a crumbling abbey wall, and one of the round towers you find around Ireland that were used for hiding from Viking raiders back in the middle ages.

Newgrange was the centerpiece of the day. It's a stone tomb that's 5,200 years old, dating it to before the pyramids. Over 4,000 years ago it fell into disuse, gradually crumbled into the hillside, became overgrown, and was forgotten. Then in the 1700's it was rediscovered and excavated enough to go inside. It was left completely open to the public for 200 years, though, so the rocks now bear various kinds of more modern graffiti as well as the ancient carvings. It wasn't until the last century that it was fully restored and protected.

For the large size of the mound, the interior is actually quite small. You can go inside, but not take photos. A tiny passage way leads into the middle of the mound and opens into a tiny room with three alcoves and a high, domed ceiling. That's it; the rest is solid rock. But on the winter solstice, for 17 minutes at dawn, sunlight will come in through an opening above the entrance, creep down the passage, and fill the entire chamber with light. The chamber currently has electric lights installed that let the guide do a simulation of this, which gets across the concept but not, I expect, the feeling. I was also disappointed that she seemed careful never to let the lights go completely out. Even when turning out the main lights before the simulation, they had just barely faded when the new light came in. I would have liked to have had a few seconds at least to really get the feeling of being completely encased in stone and darkness. But it's a fascinating place to be in, regardless. They're holding a lottery this year to determine who actually gets to be in there at dawn on the solstice.

Our last stop was the Hill of Tara. Since the visitor's center there doesn't open until some time in May, we got a different sort of intro to the area. The proprietor of an antique bookshop squeezed us all in among the shelves, turned out the lights, and gave us a slide show. He had some excellent pictures on cracked and dirty slides, including some of the excavations in the 1950's and of the British Israelites who tore the place up looking for the Ark of the Covenant, all accompanied by dramatic and entertaining narration. Probably more fun that whatever the official visitor's center might have had.

The Hill of Tara itself isn't actually so much to see when you're actually on it, though it's fun to ride the rise and fall in the land like waves. There were also too many people crawling over it to get the proper feel for it, much the way I remember feeling about Glastonbury Tor. But I did go out to see Lia Fáil, the Stone of Destiny, which is said to roar three times if touched by the true high king of Ireland. I touched it, just in case. A sheep bleated somewhere off in the distance, but I don't think that counts.

I also took a short walk down a little road where none of the other tourists were bothering to go. And so I got to see a little holy well there, with no one else around. It had a gate right on the side of the road, and all it was was a trickle of water coming out the side of the hill, down a pipe, and over the edge of a rock. I liked it because it was just sitting there modestly, doing its own thing and letting everyone else get distracted by the main sights.

Overall, this tour was very worthwhile. It was a nice, efficient way to get around to several of the main sites in this area in one day, filled with history, stories and jokes during the bus rides (props to John "His Grace" Bolton, the driver and guide). It was a Bus Éireann tour, if anybody out there is looking to go on one.

Relevant Tunes:

• The Battle of the Boyne
• The Boyne Water
• The Soul of the Limestone Rock

Ceilí-ing Dublin

So I didn't end up going to hear Handel's Messiah last night as I had originally planned, but it was a good tradeoff. Sorcha, who I'd met at the swing dance, told me about the Rathmines Festival and invited me to the ceilí that was happening last night at St. Mary's College. So I went to that and had a very nice time dancing and talking with her and other new dancing friends, and listening to good music. Really, I think this whole going to dances thing is just the best way to enjoy being in a foreign city.

The band included a fiddle, button accordion, flute, concertina, and guitar. The concertina player sang a couple of songs as well, in between dances and just accompanied by the guitar. The first one she sang was actually Erin's Shore, in Irish, and it was really hard not to waltz to it. But the songs were more for listening and resting there, and no one was dancing. Lovely to listen to, though. And the band sounded great on the dance tunes, as well. I would have liked to have just sat and listened and picked up some new tunes, but I was rather distracted trying to figure out the dances.

As for the dances themselves, well, it was a bit silly. Hardly anybody knew what they were doing (and the teacher was just barely hanging in there himself sometimes), and the dances were "taught" by doing a quick demo set of dubious accuracy and then throwing everyone into it at once whether they had been paying attention or not. Luckily, chaos can be fun if everyone is enthusiastic about it. Also, most of the evening consisted of doing the same three dances over and over and over again, so we got a bit better as we went along. The dances were a two-hand reel (whose name I've forgotten), The Walls of Limerick (structured like a contra -- couples of couples and progressing down the line), and The Siege of Ennis (a 4-opposite-4 dance, like a double contra).

Now the really funny thing was that I was paying very close attention and trying to learn the patterns as quickly and accurately as I could. Not only because I was new to ceilí dancing, but because it didn't look like I could depend on watching other people as I went along. The result was that by the end of the evening, I was helping do the demo sets, and I also got put in the front of the line for the two-hand reel because none of the actual Irish people trusted themselves to remember how it went. (I fooled them though and screwed it up by mistakenly starting with the wrong part.) I don't have the footwork or style or anything right at all, but I can remember patterns. Anyway, that was pretty amusing.

Besides our main three, we had a couple other one-off dances. The only one I can remember specifically was Shoe the Donkey (or possibly "Shoo," but I'm guessing "Shoe" because of the stomping involved). It was almost like a schottischy sort of waltz. In promenade position you do a hop-stomp-stomp, with the hop on the 3 as a pickup, four times, turning around to face backwards on the fourth time. Repeat all that four times, then just waltz around until the beginning of the tune comes around again.

Non-dance-wise, I learned all sorts of interesting things from Fiona and Niamh about Irish sports, the national anthem, and numbers (which have different words depending on what you're counting). Fascinating stuff, of which I have probably already forgotten a lot. Delightful evening overall.

Swinging Dublin

I had a very nice time at the Dublin swing dance last night. It was at the Camden Ballroom, which sounds rather grander than a little bitty dance floor in a restaurant/bar beneath a hotel. But it was a fine venue for the crowd size we had, and it seemed to be closed last night, since there were no regular customers there, only dancers. So that was kind of neat.

The evening started with an absolute basic East Coast Swing lesson, which I attended as much to have an easy way to meet people as for any other reason. The fact that I more or less know what I'm doing and that I also am always happy to dance with beginners helped a lot in terms of meeting people and feeling comfortable and welcome there. Some more experienced dancers arrived later in the evening as well. The overall skill level wasn't quite up to the level of lots of places in California, but everyone was perfectly good enough and enthusiastic enough to have fun, which is all I needed to enjoy it.

The partner-asking dynamic was kind of interesting. The gender imbalance didn't affect it much, since so many people were usually sitting out at any given time. These people would usually be off at a table or a bar and thus not very accessible to a stranger who might want to ask them to dance. Far fewer people actually standing near the dance floor looking available. But I still managed to get plenty of dances in, both asking and asked. I also had some nice conversations with some people, including one who turned out to be a co-worker, and another dancer with an invisible syllable in her name (Irish is fascinating that way).

Speaking of names, I started paying attention to my own name more than usual last night, since I was introducing myself to so many people. Sadly, I often say my name in a very flat, American-sounding, "Gram" kind of way. But over the course of the evening I found myself starting to give it more of the proper, British, triphthong treatment it deserves. I think there may have been some subconscious training going on, because maybe people understood it better in a noisy environment when I pronounced it that way, or because people kept repeating back to me it in an Irish accent. So it sounds silly, but I should really resolve to pay more attention to my own name. :-)

Overall, it was a lovely evening. Fun to be out dancing and making new friends. I'm looking forward to going back next week, and maybe even the week after, on the night before I fly home.

Dublin, Part II

Sunday was my first full day in Dublin and I spent a great deal of it on foot again and getting to know my way around. I was up early enough that O'Connell street was mostly devoid of people, which I'm sure is not its usual state. By the time I made my way back this side of the Liffey, though, things were waking up more.

I went by Dublin Castle, though I didn't go in for a tour (still too early). Nearby is a delightful little snake-themed garden. It's mostly a large circular lawn with narrow brick snakes forming paths that twist around in Celtic knot-work. There are other little sculptures and things around the edges as well, hidden behind the shrubberies.

I took a tour of Trinity college and was amused by their two bells. One is an everyday bell, but the Great Bell is rung only for examinations and funerals. One hopes that isn't because the two events are related. Trinity is also the home of the Book of Kells, but unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures of it, or of the rest of the illuminated manuscript exhibit. (Though I did sneak one photo of the Ogham script display, so I could learn the code.) Even more disappointingly in the can't-photograph category was the Long Room. This is the library that houses the 200,000 oldest of the college's books. It's 65m long and has bookcases reaching all the way up to its towering ceiling. Enough to strike awe and reverence into the heart of any book lover. The tricky thing about this library comes when you want to find a particular book (not that we tourists were allowed near them, of course). For reasons, I presume, of space efficiency, all the books are organized by height. Tall books are on the tall shelves near the floor, and everything shrinks as you go up.

In the afternoon I went to the National Museum, which was mostly interesting for the ancient dead people they've dug out of bogs from a couple thousand years ago. I also went to the National Gallery (both of these are right near my hotel) but failed to be very impressed. Of course, I was also kind of tired by then, which probably affected it.

After dinner and a bit of a rest, I headed out with my mandolin to find my first pub session. The Cobblestone had been recommended to me as the best place to go, so I landed there around 9:30. The musicians there let me play with them but, while I don't think any of them were trying to be outright rude, I did feel distinctly ignored. The piper pretty much ran the session, started all the tunes, and nobody did anything without him. He would also spend several minutes in between each set just tuning and adjusting his pipes and reeds, during which time nobody seemed to want to speak to me. The most I got out of anybody was when the bodhran player suggested somewhere else I could go play, "where they're more open to newcomers." I think he was trying to be nice, but the implication was very much that I was in the wrong place. So I felt pretty bad about that. Especially since I felt I was doing the session justice, musically. The other musicians were all good, but not stellar, and I don't think I was dragging anything down. So anyway, not sure what I'm going to do next in the music department. I don't actually want to try the pub that was suggested to me, since someone at work said it was more of a tourist pit and not recommended. So we'll see what else I can find.

There's a TV in my room and the other night I found an Irish language channel, with English subtitles, so I watched that for a while. I know a few words in Irish, so it was fun to try to catch them going by, and also to try to pick up a few more. I saw one talk show discussing someone who had been a great linguist and proponent of the Irish language, which was rather interesting historically. After that was a sitcom about an undertaker. Apparently he wasn't prepared to handle both a cremation and a funeral on the same day. Ah, the hilarity.

Work has been good so far. I like the office and I like the people, though it's also weird being on an almost non-overlapping schedule with the people back in California.

Coming up, I'm planning on going swing dancing tomorrow night, and I'd like to hear Handel's Messiah in Christ Church Cathedral. Oh, and I probably won't actually be going to Galway during my time off after next week, as I had planned. Cryptosporidium in the water doesn't sound like much fun.

Arrival in Dublin

My flights and everything went very smoothly, minus some little things like being able to get a good night's sleep (that's on tonight's agenda, though). My first view of Ireland was all clouds, as we flew over it to my stop in Heathrow, but once I actually landed in Dublin, the weather was lovely and sunny.

I'm staying at the O'Callaghan Davenport hotel, which is rather nicer than anywhere I'd stay on my own if I didn't have a company paying for it. I'm on the third floor, for large values of three (since they start counting at zero over here). It's a lovely room, though I'm not sure why I need two desks, or a phone next to the toilet, or this weird "Man by Carmen" thing in the closet. And this is just a "junior suite." Who knows how many things I wouldn't know what to do with if I had gotten a full grown one. But it does have a bed and a shower, which are the things I'm most interested in just now.

I mostly just strolled around this afternoon, getting my bearings. I'm less than a mile from the office, and it's an easy walk, so I'm all ready for Monday morning. The hotel is very close to a couple lovely parks: Merrion Square and St. Stephen's -- that is, James Joyce's -- Green. Both full of happy Saturday afternoon people, Dubliners and otherwise. I also walked up the pedestrian mall at Grafton Street, went by Christ Church Cathedral, and zigzagged over various bridges across the Liffey.

Relevant Tunes:

• The Rocky Road to Dublin
• Banks of the Liffey
• The Merry Sisters of Fate

Tune Titles I Should Use:

• Fishamble Street (or, The Ambling Fish)
• The Fire Hose Reel (a sign I saw on a wall in the airport, where they kept the fire hose)