Dublin and The End

This vacation was one of the best vacations I've ever taken. I loved seeing another culture, even if it was only slightly different from ours. I loved how green and beautiful everything was in Ireland. I even loved the weather since I don't really enjoy extremely hot weather. The whole trip was "loads of craic" as our tour guide, Matthew, would have said. That's pronounced crack, and it means fun. 

One thing about the trip that was a little difficult was how much it made me miss my dad. He would have loved to have heard about everything we did and saw. He would have been delighted to know that much of the music he liked to listen to when I was growing up was still being played. He would have been happy that his grandchildren were getting to go on these kinds of trips. But I couldn't share any of it with him. As difficult as he could be, I do miss my dad, and it's been hard with Father's Day being this past weekend.

We spent the final two days of our trip in Dublin, and I'm going to cover both days in this one, final post about our trip to Ireland. On our way to Dublin we drove through Moneygall and stopped at Barack Obama Plaza. It was...weird, and rather American. It almost felt like being in a truck stop on I-80 in Iowa. President Obama had some distant relatives in the town (they've got a plaque on the house) and stopped there to have a beer. So they built up this entire center with a petrol station and chain restaurants inside and called it Barack Obama plaza.

One of the first things we saw in Dublin was the River Liffey, which is a tidal river. I had never heard of such a thing before, so I thought that was pretty cool. Our Dublin tour guide, Therese, called it the "sniffey Liffey." She was from Dublin and had served in the government. Her accent was much more formal and sophisticated as a result, and it made her easier to understand. She told us the native Dubliners are called "Dubs," and there's a common term, "Up the Dubs" to cheer for one of their sports teams.

Therese took us to St. Patrick's cathedral next. Oliver Cromwell used it as stable for his horses when he was in the country persecuting Catholics, and completely destroyed it. The Guinness family later restored it, and it's now a pretty impressive building to walk through. Our next stop was the Trinity College Library where we got to view (but not photograph) the Book of Kells. We also visited Phoenix park and saw the place where the pope spoke when he visited Dublin in 1979. Even in the city there are nice views of the Irish hillsides.

The view from Phoenix Park.

Phoenix Park. The cross marks the hillside where Pope John Paul II delivered a sermon.

Trinity College Library. 200,000 volumes are stored here.

Another picture in the Library.

Close up of a book shelf in the library.

Our final stop on our first day in Dublin was to the Guinness storehouse to tour the building. It wasn't really my thing, but the views at the top were pretty impressive. The bar at the top of the building has a 360 degree view of the city, and that was my favorite part of the tour.

A view from the top of the Guinness storehouse building.

The next day we toured Kilmainham Gaol, where we learned more Irish history. One thing the guide told us that really stuck with me was about how many people Ireland lost in the nineteenth century due to the potato famine. At one point there were about 6 million people in Ireland. During the famine about 1 million died, and 1 million immigrated out of the country. The population never really recovered and there are still only about 4.5 million in the country today, 1/2 million of which are in Dublin. He also asked if any of us had noticed the dragons over the entrance, which I had, and had of course snapped a photo. He said that they represented the five capital crimes, and that people were hung on either side of the entrance.

Dragons over the gaol entrance.

The five capital crimes which resulted in execution were:

• Murder
• Rape
• Treason
• Capital Theft
• Piracy with Violence (I guess piracy without violence just landed you in jail, but didn't result in execution!)

We finished off that night with a traditional Irish evening of singing, dancing, and a comedy routine. My daughter hates to be the center of attention, and of course they drug her up on stage. I was proud of her for going, and she got to play a tambourine and a bodhram drum. There was a table of German tourists sitting next to us, and some of them clearly didn't speak English as well as the others. So they didn't always get the jokes until someone told it in German and then there were these delayed laughs. It was kind of cute, and quite frankly, funnier than most of the jokes. But the music and step dancing were great.

My daughter on stage with the tambourine.

Playing the bodhram drum. This was one of her few smiles up there, so I'm sharing this photo even though her eyes are closed.

Dublin was a neat city. It was very international and we heard all different languages and accents. But it was still just a big city, and I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as the rest of the country with it's unique look of green hillsides in different shades, broken by stone walls or hedgerows and dotted with sheep and cows.

Here are a few final thoughts about the trip.
Our tour guide had some really fun little sayings, so I started a list of "Matthewisms."

• "This is us..." Matthew would say things like, "this is us, leaving Killarney." He used this particular term quite frequently.
• "Grand job"
• "Lovely"
• "Oh, aye"
• "Youse" This is a hold-over from old English and is something we hear native Spanish speakers using at home because they lost their plural possessive, ustedes, when they converted to speaking English.
• One day Matthew called his Grannie from Donegal and put her on speaker phone and she asked, "are they taking me well?" 

Matthew with my children in Dublin.

I also kept a list of terms that differ in American and Irish English:

Here are a few of the Irish food and drinks we tried while we were there. My favorites were the Club Soda and Dairy Milk, I'm not a huge drinker.

• Club Soda - citrus flavored soda
• Taytos - crisps
• Dairy Milk Chocolate
• Whiskey
• Bushmills
• Powers
• Jameson
• Paddys
• Stouts
• Guinness
• Murphys
• Smithwick (pronounced Smithicks) Ale

That was a fabulous trip and I'm so glad we took the time to go. I also appreciate those of you who stuck with me and read about the trip and viewed my photos! Tomorrow it will be back to current events.