06-09-2023, 01:26 PM
May 3 - continued.
First I needed to find out where I left the car in the Smithfield Park Rite. On the way to the car, I noticed two woman I had seen in the elevator now standing by the car with clamp on the tire. The sign on the car window said they owed a lot of money in order to free their car. I guess they didn’t know about the parking rules for Dublin. There is no free street parking. All of the parking needs to be paid for at a kiosk.
I found our car in the park rite by the expedience of walking down the entrance ramp and remembering where I drove the car. I’m sure The Queen just wondered why I didn’t remember where I parked the car. When I pulled in the evening before, I had just pulled straight into the slot. But I noticed the majority of people had backed their cars into their slots. It seems in the States most people don’t back in their cars. It’s kind of a showy move. But in Ireland, the land of tiny parking space, people back in as a defensive measure. My theory is parking garages were built at a time of much smaller cars. Your car tax for many years was based on the size of the car engine. Bigger engine. Bigger tax. I guess people have more money now and can afford the higher tax because cars in Ireland are noticeably bigger. But don’t get me wrong, they are still tiny compared to your average American car. As the cars got bigger, spaces in parking lots became tighter. And there always seems to be a concrete post right next to where you park. The final car thought, most cars have retractable mirrors that close against the car when you lock the car.
But we found the car pretty easily and headed off to the airport. It was early so we backtracked on surface streets that we took last night to get to the hotel. While I drove, I realized my Sportage had lane assist. Every time I would creep over the line, I would get a beep and the steering wheel would tighten up and turn me back into the lane. It wasn’t annoying at all. The other trick the car played was that it would disconnect from Apple Carplay. One second, I would be looking at Google Maps. The next I would be looking at all the icons native to the car. Carplay would usually cut out at the most inopportune time, like when I was about to make a turn. Occasionally, you could get Carplay to reset by unplugging and then plugging the cable back in. Nothing more challenging than trying to shift and replug in the phone. We tried using the The Queen’s phone for a while but her phone had the same challenges. It got to the point during some drives, the connection to Carplay would only last for a few seconds before switching off.
The Queen Mum had only been waiting a few moments by the time we showed up. I was able to park in another parking structure with all it’s hazards. The Queen Mum had a miserable time during her journey. The worst part being all the walking between gates at the airports. The walks are difficult enough for the healthy never mind the breathing challenged. The Queen Mum eventually contacted wheel chair services and had them wheel her from gate to gate.
The drive back to the hotel went much smoother than our initial drive into town. I was able to get into the proper lane and took the M1 tunnel into town. Now, I had thought I had heard the guy at the Hertz counter say tolls on the M1 would be charged to my account. I heard wrong. Toll takers on the M1 wanted their money now and it wasn’t cheap.
I did finally get my wish to drive along the Liffey as that is where the M1 drops you off. I thought the Queen and her mum would be more excited about my narrated tour of the drive through the heart of Dublin but they seemed to be more interested in catching up.
After all that travel, I thought it best if the Queen Mum took a nap. Fortunately, the Hampton had a room available and checked her in. While I went over to Park Rite to drop off the car, The Queen helped The Queen Mum to her room with her bags.
When I parked the car this time, I paid much closer attention to where I parked and what stairs I climbed to get out of the garage. I should have paid more attention on the first day because it would have solved the problem of finding My Meat Wagon as well. When I came out of the stairwell, I was opposite my new favorite Dublin restaurant. I hustled back to the hotel, snapping a photo of a dog behind the gate at St. Michin’s along the way. My plan was to go see some sights with the Queen while the Queen Mum rested.
I think this was the only time I actually looked at our hotel room. The room had a big window which looked out at the Four Courts Building. After awhile I noticed I could see the Gravity Bar at the Guinness Storehouse experience through the window. The Gravity Bar is the best thing about the tour. If I could I would just skip the tour and hang out at the bar. But you have to pay for the tour to gain access. What is nice about the bar is you get 360º views across the city through the floor to ceiling windows. I took the nephew on the tour back in 2009. We got to the top and wouldn’t go near the edges of the room because of his fear of heights. What I noticed from our hotel window was that there are actually two circular glass fronted rooms atop the Storehouse and if you squint they do look like the tops of pints of Guinness as the buildings below the white tops are a dark creamy brown.
The room was full of oddities and knickknacks. I’m looking at you giant SMEG brand teapot. There was a postcard in a frame on the wall and I didn’t know if I was supposed to take the card and send it off or if taking the card would ruin the art piece. The final item in the room that caught my attention was a vinyl LP by the band The Passengers. The Passengers was a side project of Bono and The Edge from U2 along with Brian Eno. The most famous song from that album was Miss Sarajevo recorded with opera star Luciano Pavarotti.
For the morning tour, we had three main stops: Archbishop Marsh’s Library, The Chester Beatty Museum and St. Michan’s Church. I figured to go to Marsh’s library first, since it was the furthest from our hotel and then make our way back to the other two stops along the way. Me being me, there would be various side quests along the way.
The first side quest was to the original walls of Dublin. When I learned that pieces of the original walls still stood, I knew I had to see them. I never picture Dublin as a walled city but that is how Dublin started. The walled section is next to St. Audeon’s Church and looks much like any giant stone wall. But it was interesting because this piece of medieval Dublin was still here for us to view. More important to the Queen than the brickwork, was the white dog that joined us, our first dog photo from the trip.
We walked around St. Audeon’s and over to Christ Church Cathedral so I could recreate another photo from 1993. I had stood at the intersection across from Christ Church 30 years ago and I did the same again today. I also found a really depressing wall plaque that I had first spotted in 2009 on tour with the nephew. Turns out there are a bunch more of them, all telling short stories of the people who lived in that area of Nicholas and Bride Streets.
Archbishop Marsh’s library stands in the shadow of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, just a short walk down Patrick Street from Christ Church Cathedral. Why two Protestant cathedrals within minutes of each other? Back in the day there were too many wealthy people for just one cathedral, so they built another. Both were within the city walls.
Archbishop Narcissus Marsh, great name Narcissus, opened the library in 1707 and was the first public library in all of Ireland. It is also the only building from that time still being used for it’s original purpose. I didn’t get a chance to see the check out register but Bram Stoker came in to do research for Dracula and signed the register. They recently moved a book case and found a fireplace behind it. Supposedly, Dean Swift would come and sit beside this fireplace. One bookcase has books which still have bullets in them from the 1916 Rebellion. The bookcase is opposite a window and the bullets came through the window and into the books despite the fact the library was far away from the serious military engagements.
I had heard about the Lego figurines scattered around the shelves and I finally spotted one on one of the cases. I guess they put them there for the kids to see. I went and asked who that figurine was supposed to represent. I was told. I found another and asked about that one. Eventually the people at the front desk just gave me the kids map that listed all the figurines and who they represented. Should have kept that map then I could tell who I saw but there were figures of Joyce and Stoker and Dracula.
The most interesting features of the library had to be the reading cages. Patrons who came into the library were put in small seating areas that had a wire screen to block off the seats. People who checked out books were locked in with their books to read on the premises to keep them from stealing the books. The library has about 25000 books in all and I assumed no one had read them in forever so I asked when someone had last read one of the books. They said books were checked out yesterday. There are separate rooms in the library were researchers do their work with the books.
The Queen and I had been through St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 2016 so we skipped that visit this time although we did walk through St. Patrick’s Park in front of the Cathedral. Kitty Corner to the Cathedral on Golden Lane are a row of corporation houses with giant ceramic plaques depicting Gulliver’s adventures in Lilliput. The round plaques were put in place in 1996 as part of the refurbishment of the area.
Our library journey continued with a stop at the Chester Beatty Library right behind Dublin Castle. The museum has two main permanent collections, Sacred Traditions and Arts of the Book. Both were fabulous and overwhelming. They have a copy of the Book of the Dead written on Papyrus. My favorite piece was probably a 30’ long by 2’ tall painting of London. The idea was you can unroll the scroll and look at different sections of London as if you were standing on the bank of the Thames looking at St. Pauls Cathedral. My brain rapidly filled with all the different art. Fortunately there was also a nice cafe on the first floor where we could get water and Diet Coke. But my ulterior motive to visit the library was to visit the roof top garden and take pictures out across Dublin. Sadly, there is a large wall surrounding said rooftop garden making it difficult to take pictures.
After the Chester Beatty Library, we had to make a quick pit-stop in Dublin Castle for two reasons. First, I needed to take a 30 year compare picture and second, we needed to purchase our Heritage passes. Heritage Passes get you in free to many historic sites around Ireland. The first thing we were going to need the passes for was our tour of Kilmainham Gaol which we would do tomorrow on May 4. I had about half a dozen other spots lined out on the itinerary where I could use the card and make the card worthwhile. And by going in to Dublin Castle to purchase the pass, this would mark the first time I have actually stepped inside one of Dublin Castle’s various buildings. This should trip would also be my only trip inside Dublin Castle. Once again it has failed to make the list of places I want to visit. I do want to visit inside, there wasn’t enough time on this trip. Next trip, maybe.
From Dublin Castle, I did a mini, self guided walking tour through the narrow streets of the original medieval City. Specifically, I wanted to walk down Crane Street and more specifically stand in front of 3 Crane Street, the former building where Michael Collins ran his spy campaign against the nearby Dublin Castle. 3 Crane Street was also where the Shields brothers lived. Arthur Shields the younger of the two brothers actually met up with Michael Collins when they were both interred in Frongoch Prison in Wales after the 1916 uprising. But the Shields are probably better known for being actors. William Shields changed his name to Barry Fitzgerald so he wouldn’t get in trouble at work. Both brothers appeared in The Quiet Man. Barry was Micheleen O’Flynn and Arthur played the Reverend Playfair. Everything is tied together.
But nothing on Crane Street looked like it should. Plus, there weren’t any street numbers on the buildings, making it even more difficult to find number 3. We moved on, heading to Eustace Street so the Queen could look at United Irishman Plaque and the Frederick Douglass Plaque on the Quaker Meeting House.
For lunch we stopped at Darkey Kelley’s pub, named in honor of a woman burned at the stake for practicing witchcraft. The burning could aslo have taken place because she was a brothel owner. Her brothel was not far from where the current Darkey Kelley’s pub stands. The food was good. The waiters all seemed like they hated life and we were part of the cause of that hate. They finally did send in a waiter with a better disposition. This pub was always where I came up with the new travel rule: Always bring your phone to the loo to take pictures. They had a great map on the wall listing all the pubs in Dublin. The title on the map was “Dublin’s Greatest Evils”
After a quick stop on Fishamble Street so The Queen could see where Handel’s Messiah was first performed, we headed across the Liffey to St. Michan’s Church where I would finally get to see the mummies. I had been thinking about seeing these since I had first heard about them. I even told DM about them so he could see them which he did which made me jealous. Now, the time was at hand for me to see them.
The Queen and I pulled through the gate on Church Street to St. Michan’s at 1pm and headed for the entrance. There was a giant blue door but nothing that screamed out enter here. There were confusing signs that were confusing. We walked around the building looking for a way to get in. Nothing. At this point, The Queen noticed the sign with church hours printed on it. According to the sign, St. Michan’s was closed from 12:30 to 2pm. Failure writ large right in front of me. In all my research, I had never seen a time for when they were closed for lunch. I had only seen they were open from 10 - 4. We couldn’t hang around until they were open. There was a tour waiting for us over at Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. We couldn’t come tomorrow because we were leaving for Galway in the morning after a stop at Kilmainham. The Sadness was palpable as we left the grounds. No mummies for me.
As I moped back to the hotel along Church, The Queen decided to test out Dublin’s gravity to see if the earth’s pull was just as strong as it was back in California. She misjudged the edge of the curb, placing her foot half on and half of the lip and fell into the bike path. Hard. I turned and waited to see how badly she was hurt before helping her up. A nice young Dublin man rushed up to see if she was okay. He offered her a caramel for her pain stating they were okay, they were from his office. He then realized and stated that is what someone trying poison you would say. The Queen declined his caramels while she struggled to her feet. Her hand was pretty bruised up. The fall also did no favors to her bruise from walking into bed two nights ago.
At the Hampton, we rested for a bit. I had called for a cab to take us over to Trinity College at 2:45. Because of the bruise to her hand the Queen needed help with her shoes. We met the Queen Mum down in the lobby. Our cab waited for us out the side door.
The cab driver dropped us off in the area known as College Green which is opposite the main gates to Trinity. To our right was the former house of Parliament, currently an Allied Irish Bank. They stopped using the parliament building back in 1805 when the Irish Parliament was dissolved and everyone had to report to Westminster.
We had some time before the tour started so I had The Queen take a shot of me standing in the main quad, known as Parliament Square, of Trinity to recreate the photo I took of my father in that spot in 1993. It took a bit of doing to get the right spot and angle. One of my side quests for this tour was to get into the Museum Building. I had been seeing pictures of the interior for quite some time. The whole foyer seemed like something you would find in an Islamic temple and not something you would find on Trinity campus. I left the ladies and ventured off. I had some trepidation about going into the building because I’m sure the campus didn’t want unsupervised visitors just wandering into their buildings. They needn’t have worried. When I got to the main door and pulled on the handle, I found the door was locked. Stupid locks. I wandered around the entire building to see if there was another entrance that might be open, but that giant wooden door was the only door. I only felt a little thwarted.
The tour guide met us at the Campanile next to Parliament Square. A good spot since our first stop would be about twenty feet to the left of the Campanile, that statue of the man on the toilet. Once you see the statue that way, you can’t unsee it. In actuality, the statue is of George Salmon, provost of Trinity College from 1888 to 1904. The great story about Salmon, although not true overall was the he stated women would be admitted to Trinity over his dead body. The first woman student at Trinity arrived on the day Salmon passed away.
Our guide was equal parts funny and knowledgeable. You could tell he cared about the school when he would remark disdainfully about the new additions to the school. The biggest one being the new exhibition space for the Book of Kells exhibit in The Printing House Building. If you want to see the Book of Kells in the Long Room of the Trinity Library, you have to do it this year as the Long Room is closing for the next three years as they fire proof the building. In the center of the New Square is where they are building part of the new housing for the Kells exhibit. Our guide was not happy about it, either.
We passed by my friend the Museum Building so the guide could talk about the different stone work on the building. It was amazing. All the panels were different flora and fauna from Ireland. Small animals were carved into the tops of column capitals. As an aside, he mentioned similar sculptures had been carved on the outside of the National Library where they had sculpted a group of monkeys playing pool. As we left the Museum Building, he said we could go into the building but he couldn’t take in such a big group. We could enter the building by ourselves after the tour.
Our final stop on the tour was the Long Room and the Book of Kells exhibit. Finally, after many visits I would finally have my own pictures of the Long Room. I was very jealous when a friend showed me her pictures of her trip through the Long Room. I accused her of sneaking the shots because every time I had been, there were plenty of signs saying no photographs in the Long Room. Nope. The rules had changed and you could snap away as long as you didn’t use a flash. I guess Trinity got tired of policing the photographers.
Of course there had to be a twist for my visit. There was. Sure I could take pictures of the long room but half the room was devoid of books. The process of moving the library’s collection had started in preparation for the remodel and a lot of the shelves were empty. The iconic busts that line the room had been swaddled in bubble rap. But the first four busts of woman were still available to be seen. One other reason to be in the Long Room was to see an original copy of the 1916 Uprising proclamation. Only about 50 copies remain and the Long Room has a copy.
The YouTube video which angered me the most covered the Book of Kells exhibit. The influencer doing the video advised people to skip the Book of Kells because he didn’t really see the point of spending all that money to look at a page of a book for a few seconds. I would punch him if I could. Our tour guide stressed the fact of taking your time going through the exhibits that explained the book to gain some understanding of what you were seeing. If you just race up to the page that is open for the day, you will probably have a bad experience. I think that’s what happened with the YouTube Boob. On the flip side, how can you not be excited by seeing a hand drawn page of a 1200 year old book?
After the tour I was going to take one more crack at the Museum Building. I would not fail. The Queen and Queen Mum opted to go with me after the build up by the guide. Here is where you get to find out why I am genius. The door to the Museum Building opens a lot easier if you push on the door rather than pull on the door. In my defense there was a pull handle on the door leading me to believe you had to pull on the door to open it. In the door’s defense there are several centuries of wear marks and discoloration where a million people have pushed on the door. Our group was the only one in the ornate lobby, pretty as the pictures I had seen. But I couldn’t quite get as good a picture as the ones I had seen.
Before I went to Dublin, I contacted one of our neighbor’s from when the Queen and I lived in Los Angeles. He was born and grew up in Dublin before emigrating to the United States. If anyone knew a cool place for dinner in the Hibernian Metropolis, it would be Seamus. He responded to my query about cool places to eat in Dublin with a question of his own: when were we going to be in Dublin? I told him and he told me he was going to be in Dublin at the same time. Ah, coincidence. Seamus suggested we eat dinner together. I told him we had a short window to eat as we had a Literary Pub Crawl to do after our dinner. Seamus opted to join us on the pub crawl as well.
We all met at Lennan’s Yard at the top of Dawson Street near Stephen’s Green. The Queen mum was feeling a bit tired after the tour and fortunately we found an exit from the Trinity grounds that put us on Dawson St. Heading up Dawson, we passed a still running Tower Records and St. Ann’s Church which I wanted to explore but didn’t have time at this point. St. Anne’s is where Bram Stoker married Florence Balcombe. Balcombe was at one time the fiancee of Oscar Wilde until Bram Stoker came along. The other fun fact about St. Anne’s is St. Anne’s had a policy of having bread by the altar and anyone that was hungry could come and take some. I needed to verify that story.
Lennan’s Yard was very nice and we had a great meal. The only problem was they sat us up stairs. Stairs are the Queen Mum’s kryptonite. She hates them every time she sees them. During our meal, I got a visit from my friend the Chairman that is loaning us his house in Lahinch for a night. I’ve known the Chairman since my days at the Crescent. His father worked for my father at Verbatim in Limerick. The Chairman has done very well for himself running two High Tech companies in Dublin. Currently, he is the Chairman of the Board of several undisclosed companies. And yet here he was schlepping some keys to me in Dublin. He was a bit cross at the hostess because he asked for me and they said I wasn’t here. The table was under Seamus’s name. I went down the stairs and got him and convinced him to come up stairs for a glass of wine. The Chairman is a great man for the wine. What a lovely time sitting around the table with friends chatting. At one point, I snapped a picture and the Chairman told me I was not to put it online. He’s spent fifteen years of his life being online and in the press daily and he was done with that nonsense.
A big thanks to Seamus for grabbing the check. He informed us before dinner that he would be paying and that would be that. When we would meet on dogwalks in Montecito Heights he would tell us tales of his time in Dublin. He visited Newgrange before it was rebuilt and used to go inside the main chamber all the time. He also shook hands with the crusader mummy in the tomb of St. Michan’s.
The Literary Pub Crawl started at the The Duke Pub on Duke Lane which was only a short walk from Lennan’s. Unfortunately, our first stop where we were to meet the guides was up more stairs. The Queen Mum was going to kill me.
Since we were in a pub of all places, drinking was involved. Seamus was kind enough to keep buying rounds. Our hosts for the evening would be Frank and Finbar. Our entire gathering was about 20 people. I was amused the entire night but I can’t for the life of me think of any of the pieces they performed with the exception of 15 minutes of Waiting for Godot by Samuell Beckett. According to Dean of English Seamus, that was about all I needed to hear.
From the Duke, the group headed back to Trinity College. As we started to cross Nassua Street from Dawson Street, the Queen Mum decided to do a gravity test of her own. We stood in one of the ramps in the sidewalk that allow wheel chairs to cross street and the Queen Mum didn’t quite notice the difference in height between curb and street. Down she went. Fortunately, Seamus mostly caught her and she was back up in a jiffy. I think one of the most treacherous parts of the Dublin sidewalk are this channels place in the sidewalk to gather rain water. The channels are about an inch deep and six inches wide and are everywhere. I can’t count the number of times I put my foot wrong in one of those channels.
One of the special parts of the tour was we were allowed to be on the campus of Trinity after hours when the college was closed to visitors. Frank and Finbarr performed on the steps of the Examination Hall. The Examination Hall was where The Clash performed back in 1977. Frank and Finbarr were a little more sedate. I had a fine time showing Finbarr pictures of my father standing in Parliament Square from 30 years ago. Along with every bit of performance, the lads also give a bit of history, which was again well received. At the end of the history section, they always tell us there were clues in the speeches for a the trivia quiz at the end of the night.
The group made it to O’Neills pub without any further mishaps from our quarter. O’Neills was a warren of different areas to drink. Seamus wanted to know what I wanted to drink and I asked for water. He said there was no way he was asking the bartender for water. He might get kicked out. Our job from our guides was to find the picture in the portrait room in the pub of a man with a white beard and find out who that man was. The portrait of the white bearded man was easy to find because Finbar and Frank were sitting right in front of it.
The lads didn’t perform in O’Neills. Instead we walked across the street to the Molly Malone statue. Her statue stands in front of the former St. Andrew’s church. Molly used to be out on Grafton Street opposite Trinity College. She was installed in the Grafton street location in 1988 as part of the millennium celebration for Dublin. Dublin locals promptly christened her ‘The Tart with The Cart’. I encountered her in Dublin in 2009. I was quite surprised when I came back in 2014 and found a bunch of construction work going on at her spot and no sign of Molly. They were building the Light Rail Luas line and Molly had to go. She didn’t go far, just around the corner to Suffolk Street where tourists still take pictures of themselves rubbing her breasts for luck. That is the reason her endowments are so shiny.
One of the powers Molly posses is that when you stand near her statue, you break into the Molly Malone song. Seconds after the tour arrived, we all started singing about cockles and mussels, alive, alive-o. Finbarr and Frank set up in an archway of the church to do their segment. There was a giant mural of Noseferatu. After St. Andrews church stopped being a church it became a Dublin Tourist Office. That didn’t work out. The church has had different uses including I guess a haunted house, hence our friend Nosferatu.
We did take a bunch of pictures in front of Molly because that is required by Dublin law. But I knew I had to come back because the pictures I had taken in the before times were in the sunlight and I wanted to my photos to match.
Stop three for the evening landed at the The Old Stand Pub, just around the corner from Molly. Our trivia hunt for The Old Stand was find the picture which included the original name of the Pub. The other fun fact about the pub came in the form of plaque stating this was a pub where Michael Collins would hang out. I’m sure there were plenty of pubs where Mr. Collins imbibed, he was on the move constantly to keep away from the British, but The Old Stand had the plaque and a picture of the Big Fella. For a time while in the pub, I thought the Queen Mum might be making a love connection. A nice man by the name of Neal, who sat next to us, leaned in and started quizzing the Queen Mum about who she was and where she was from. Naturally, I took a picture of the happy couple before I rescued The Queen Mum by saying it was time to meet up with the tour.
Our final stop for the night was next to Davy Byrne’s pub where the trivia questions were unveiled. I was able to gain one point by knowing the original name of The Old Stand pub which I don’t remember now. The woman who won the contest was a full on cheater. She had been on the tour before and remembered the answers to most of the questions. Davy Byrne’s was important to Seamus as well. As we listened to Finbarr and Frank, Seamus casually mentioned that Davey Byrne’s was where he first came out as a gay man.
The tour ended there. We thanked Frank and Finbar with money, because that is what you do. We went down the lane to end of Duke Street and caught a Taxi back to the hotel. That seemed to be enough for our first day in Ireland.
First I needed to find out where I left the car in the Smithfield Park Rite. On the way to the car, I noticed two woman I had seen in the elevator now standing by the car with clamp on the tire. The sign on the car window said they owed a lot of money in order to free their car. I guess they didn’t know about the parking rules for Dublin. There is no free street parking. All of the parking needs to be paid for at a kiosk.
I found our car in the park rite by the expedience of walking down the entrance ramp and remembering where I drove the car. I’m sure The Queen just wondered why I didn’t remember where I parked the car. When I pulled in the evening before, I had just pulled straight into the slot. But I noticed the majority of people had backed their cars into their slots. It seems in the States most people don’t back in their cars. It’s kind of a showy move. But in Ireland, the land of tiny parking space, people back in as a defensive measure. My theory is parking garages were built at a time of much smaller cars. Your car tax for many years was based on the size of the car engine. Bigger engine. Bigger tax. I guess people have more money now and can afford the higher tax because cars in Ireland are noticeably bigger. But don’t get me wrong, they are still tiny compared to your average American car. As the cars got bigger, spaces in parking lots became tighter. And there always seems to be a concrete post right next to where you park. The final car thought, most cars have retractable mirrors that close against the car when you lock the car.
But we found the car pretty easily and headed off to the airport. It was early so we backtracked on surface streets that we took last night to get to the hotel. While I drove, I realized my Sportage had lane assist. Every time I would creep over the line, I would get a beep and the steering wheel would tighten up and turn me back into the lane. It wasn’t annoying at all. The other trick the car played was that it would disconnect from Apple Carplay. One second, I would be looking at Google Maps. The next I would be looking at all the icons native to the car. Carplay would usually cut out at the most inopportune time, like when I was about to make a turn. Occasionally, you could get Carplay to reset by unplugging and then plugging the cable back in. Nothing more challenging than trying to shift and replug in the phone. We tried using the The Queen’s phone for a while but her phone had the same challenges. It got to the point during some drives, the connection to Carplay would only last for a few seconds before switching off.
The Queen Mum had only been waiting a few moments by the time we showed up. I was able to park in another parking structure with all it’s hazards. The Queen Mum had a miserable time during her journey. The worst part being all the walking between gates at the airports. The walks are difficult enough for the healthy never mind the breathing challenged. The Queen Mum eventually contacted wheel chair services and had them wheel her from gate to gate.
The drive back to the hotel went much smoother than our initial drive into town. I was able to get into the proper lane and took the M1 tunnel into town. Now, I had thought I had heard the guy at the Hertz counter say tolls on the M1 would be charged to my account. I heard wrong. Toll takers on the M1 wanted their money now and it wasn’t cheap.
I did finally get my wish to drive along the Liffey as that is where the M1 drops you off. I thought the Queen and her mum would be more excited about my narrated tour of the drive through the heart of Dublin but they seemed to be more interested in catching up.
After all that travel, I thought it best if the Queen Mum took a nap. Fortunately, the Hampton had a room available and checked her in. While I went over to Park Rite to drop off the car, The Queen helped The Queen Mum to her room with her bags.
When I parked the car this time, I paid much closer attention to where I parked and what stairs I climbed to get out of the garage. I should have paid more attention on the first day because it would have solved the problem of finding My Meat Wagon as well. When I came out of the stairwell, I was opposite my new favorite Dublin restaurant. I hustled back to the hotel, snapping a photo of a dog behind the gate at St. Michin’s along the way. My plan was to go see some sights with the Queen while the Queen Mum rested.
I think this was the only time I actually looked at our hotel room. The room had a big window which looked out at the Four Courts Building. After awhile I noticed I could see the Gravity Bar at the Guinness Storehouse experience through the window. The Gravity Bar is the best thing about the tour. If I could I would just skip the tour and hang out at the bar. But you have to pay for the tour to gain access. What is nice about the bar is you get 360º views across the city through the floor to ceiling windows. I took the nephew on the tour back in 2009. We got to the top and wouldn’t go near the edges of the room because of his fear of heights. What I noticed from our hotel window was that there are actually two circular glass fronted rooms atop the Storehouse and if you squint they do look like the tops of pints of Guinness as the buildings below the white tops are a dark creamy brown.
The room was full of oddities and knickknacks. I’m looking at you giant SMEG brand teapot. There was a postcard in a frame on the wall and I didn’t know if I was supposed to take the card and send it off or if taking the card would ruin the art piece. The final item in the room that caught my attention was a vinyl LP by the band The Passengers. The Passengers was a side project of Bono and The Edge from U2 along with Brian Eno. The most famous song from that album was Miss Sarajevo recorded with opera star Luciano Pavarotti.
For the morning tour, we had three main stops: Archbishop Marsh’s Library, The Chester Beatty Museum and St. Michan’s Church. I figured to go to Marsh’s library first, since it was the furthest from our hotel and then make our way back to the other two stops along the way. Me being me, there would be various side quests along the way.
The first side quest was to the original walls of Dublin. When I learned that pieces of the original walls still stood, I knew I had to see them. I never picture Dublin as a walled city but that is how Dublin started. The walled section is next to St. Audeon’s Church and looks much like any giant stone wall. But it was interesting because this piece of medieval Dublin was still here for us to view. More important to the Queen than the brickwork, was the white dog that joined us, our first dog photo from the trip.
We walked around St. Audeon’s and over to Christ Church Cathedral so I could recreate another photo from 1993. I had stood at the intersection across from Christ Church 30 years ago and I did the same again today. I also found a really depressing wall plaque that I had first spotted in 2009 on tour with the nephew. Turns out there are a bunch more of them, all telling short stories of the people who lived in that area of Nicholas and Bride Streets.
Archbishop Marsh’s library stands in the shadow of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, just a short walk down Patrick Street from Christ Church Cathedral. Why two Protestant cathedrals within minutes of each other? Back in the day there were too many wealthy people for just one cathedral, so they built another. Both were within the city walls.
Archbishop Narcissus Marsh, great name Narcissus, opened the library in 1707 and was the first public library in all of Ireland. It is also the only building from that time still being used for it’s original purpose. I didn’t get a chance to see the check out register but Bram Stoker came in to do research for Dracula and signed the register. They recently moved a book case and found a fireplace behind it. Supposedly, Dean Swift would come and sit beside this fireplace. One bookcase has books which still have bullets in them from the 1916 Rebellion. The bookcase is opposite a window and the bullets came through the window and into the books despite the fact the library was far away from the serious military engagements.
I had heard about the Lego figurines scattered around the shelves and I finally spotted one on one of the cases. I guess they put them there for the kids to see. I went and asked who that figurine was supposed to represent. I was told. I found another and asked about that one. Eventually the people at the front desk just gave me the kids map that listed all the figurines and who they represented. Should have kept that map then I could tell who I saw but there were figures of Joyce and Stoker and Dracula.
The most interesting features of the library had to be the reading cages. Patrons who came into the library were put in small seating areas that had a wire screen to block off the seats. People who checked out books were locked in with their books to read on the premises to keep them from stealing the books. The library has about 25000 books in all and I assumed no one had read them in forever so I asked when someone had last read one of the books. They said books were checked out yesterday. There are separate rooms in the library were researchers do their work with the books.
The Queen and I had been through St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 2016 so we skipped that visit this time although we did walk through St. Patrick’s Park in front of the Cathedral. Kitty Corner to the Cathedral on Golden Lane are a row of corporation houses with giant ceramic plaques depicting Gulliver’s adventures in Lilliput. The round plaques were put in place in 1996 as part of the refurbishment of the area.
Our library journey continued with a stop at the Chester Beatty Library right behind Dublin Castle. The museum has two main permanent collections, Sacred Traditions and Arts of the Book. Both were fabulous and overwhelming. They have a copy of the Book of the Dead written on Papyrus. My favorite piece was probably a 30’ long by 2’ tall painting of London. The idea was you can unroll the scroll and look at different sections of London as if you were standing on the bank of the Thames looking at St. Pauls Cathedral. My brain rapidly filled with all the different art. Fortunately there was also a nice cafe on the first floor where we could get water and Diet Coke. But my ulterior motive to visit the library was to visit the roof top garden and take pictures out across Dublin. Sadly, there is a large wall surrounding said rooftop garden making it difficult to take pictures.
After the Chester Beatty Library, we had to make a quick pit-stop in Dublin Castle for two reasons. First, I needed to take a 30 year compare picture and second, we needed to purchase our Heritage passes. Heritage Passes get you in free to many historic sites around Ireland. The first thing we were going to need the passes for was our tour of Kilmainham Gaol which we would do tomorrow on May 4. I had about half a dozen other spots lined out on the itinerary where I could use the card and make the card worthwhile. And by going in to Dublin Castle to purchase the pass, this would mark the first time I have actually stepped inside one of Dublin Castle’s various buildings. This should trip would also be my only trip inside Dublin Castle. Once again it has failed to make the list of places I want to visit. I do want to visit inside, there wasn’t enough time on this trip. Next trip, maybe.
From Dublin Castle, I did a mini, self guided walking tour through the narrow streets of the original medieval City. Specifically, I wanted to walk down Crane Street and more specifically stand in front of 3 Crane Street, the former building where Michael Collins ran his spy campaign against the nearby Dublin Castle. 3 Crane Street was also where the Shields brothers lived. Arthur Shields the younger of the two brothers actually met up with Michael Collins when they were both interred in Frongoch Prison in Wales after the 1916 uprising. But the Shields are probably better known for being actors. William Shields changed his name to Barry Fitzgerald so he wouldn’t get in trouble at work. Both brothers appeared in The Quiet Man. Barry was Micheleen O’Flynn and Arthur played the Reverend Playfair. Everything is tied together.
But nothing on Crane Street looked like it should. Plus, there weren’t any street numbers on the buildings, making it even more difficult to find number 3. We moved on, heading to Eustace Street so the Queen could look at United Irishman Plaque and the Frederick Douglass Plaque on the Quaker Meeting House.
For lunch we stopped at Darkey Kelley’s pub, named in honor of a woman burned at the stake for practicing witchcraft. The burning could aslo have taken place because she was a brothel owner. Her brothel was not far from where the current Darkey Kelley’s pub stands. The food was good. The waiters all seemed like they hated life and we were part of the cause of that hate. They finally did send in a waiter with a better disposition. This pub was always where I came up with the new travel rule: Always bring your phone to the loo to take pictures. They had a great map on the wall listing all the pubs in Dublin. The title on the map was “Dublin’s Greatest Evils”
After a quick stop on Fishamble Street so The Queen could see where Handel’s Messiah was first performed, we headed across the Liffey to St. Michan’s Church where I would finally get to see the mummies. I had been thinking about seeing these since I had first heard about them. I even told DM about them so he could see them which he did which made me jealous. Now, the time was at hand for me to see them.
The Queen and I pulled through the gate on Church Street to St. Michan’s at 1pm and headed for the entrance. There was a giant blue door but nothing that screamed out enter here. There were confusing signs that were confusing. We walked around the building looking for a way to get in. Nothing. At this point, The Queen noticed the sign with church hours printed on it. According to the sign, St. Michan’s was closed from 12:30 to 2pm. Failure writ large right in front of me. In all my research, I had never seen a time for when they were closed for lunch. I had only seen they were open from 10 - 4. We couldn’t hang around until they were open. There was a tour waiting for us over at Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. We couldn’t come tomorrow because we were leaving for Galway in the morning after a stop at Kilmainham. The Sadness was palpable as we left the grounds. No mummies for me.
As I moped back to the hotel along Church, The Queen decided to test out Dublin’s gravity to see if the earth’s pull was just as strong as it was back in California. She misjudged the edge of the curb, placing her foot half on and half of the lip and fell into the bike path. Hard. I turned and waited to see how badly she was hurt before helping her up. A nice young Dublin man rushed up to see if she was okay. He offered her a caramel for her pain stating they were okay, they were from his office. He then realized and stated that is what someone trying poison you would say. The Queen declined his caramels while she struggled to her feet. Her hand was pretty bruised up. The fall also did no favors to her bruise from walking into bed two nights ago.
At the Hampton, we rested for a bit. I had called for a cab to take us over to Trinity College at 2:45. Because of the bruise to her hand the Queen needed help with her shoes. We met the Queen Mum down in the lobby. Our cab waited for us out the side door.
The cab driver dropped us off in the area known as College Green which is opposite the main gates to Trinity. To our right was the former house of Parliament, currently an Allied Irish Bank. They stopped using the parliament building back in 1805 when the Irish Parliament was dissolved and everyone had to report to Westminster.
We had some time before the tour started so I had The Queen take a shot of me standing in the main quad, known as Parliament Square, of Trinity to recreate the photo I took of my father in that spot in 1993. It took a bit of doing to get the right spot and angle. One of my side quests for this tour was to get into the Museum Building. I had been seeing pictures of the interior for quite some time. The whole foyer seemed like something you would find in an Islamic temple and not something you would find on Trinity campus. I left the ladies and ventured off. I had some trepidation about going into the building because I’m sure the campus didn’t want unsupervised visitors just wandering into their buildings. They needn’t have worried. When I got to the main door and pulled on the handle, I found the door was locked. Stupid locks. I wandered around the entire building to see if there was another entrance that might be open, but that giant wooden door was the only door. I only felt a little thwarted.
The tour guide met us at the Campanile next to Parliament Square. A good spot since our first stop would be about twenty feet to the left of the Campanile, that statue of the man on the toilet. Once you see the statue that way, you can’t unsee it. In actuality, the statue is of George Salmon, provost of Trinity College from 1888 to 1904. The great story about Salmon, although not true overall was the he stated women would be admitted to Trinity over his dead body. The first woman student at Trinity arrived on the day Salmon passed away.
Our guide was equal parts funny and knowledgeable. You could tell he cared about the school when he would remark disdainfully about the new additions to the school. The biggest one being the new exhibition space for the Book of Kells exhibit in The Printing House Building. If you want to see the Book of Kells in the Long Room of the Trinity Library, you have to do it this year as the Long Room is closing for the next three years as they fire proof the building. In the center of the New Square is where they are building part of the new housing for the Kells exhibit. Our guide was not happy about it, either.
We passed by my friend the Museum Building so the guide could talk about the different stone work on the building. It was amazing. All the panels were different flora and fauna from Ireland. Small animals were carved into the tops of column capitals. As an aside, he mentioned similar sculptures had been carved on the outside of the National Library where they had sculpted a group of monkeys playing pool. As we left the Museum Building, he said we could go into the building but he couldn’t take in such a big group. We could enter the building by ourselves after the tour.
Our final stop on the tour was the Long Room and the Book of Kells exhibit. Finally, after many visits I would finally have my own pictures of the Long Room. I was very jealous when a friend showed me her pictures of her trip through the Long Room. I accused her of sneaking the shots because every time I had been, there were plenty of signs saying no photographs in the Long Room. Nope. The rules had changed and you could snap away as long as you didn’t use a flash. I guess Trinity got tired of policing the photographers.
Of course there had to be a twist for my visit. There was. Sure I could take pictures of the long room but half the room was devoid of books. The process of moving the library’s collection had started in preparation for the remodel and a lot of the shelves were empty. The iconic busts that line the room had been swaddled in bubble rap. But the first four busts of woman were still available to be seen. One other reason to be in the Long Room was to see an original copy of the 1916 Uprising proclamation. Only about 50 copies remain and the Long Room has a copy.
The YouTube video which angered me the most covered the Book of Kells exhibit. The influencer doing the video advised people to skip the Book of Kells because he didn’t really see the point of spending all that money to look at a page of a book for a few seconds. I would punch him if I could. Our tour guide stressed the fact of taking your time going through the exhibits that explained the book to gain some understanding of what you were seeing. If you just race up to the page that is open for the day, you will probably have a bad experience. I think that’s what happened with the YouTube Boob. On the flip side, how can you not be excited by seeing a hand drawn page of a 1200 year old book?
After the tour I was going to take one more crack at the Museum Building. I would not fail. The Queen and Queen Mum opted to go with me after the build up by the guide. Here is where you get to find out why I am genius. The door to the Museum Building opens a lot easier if you push on the door rather than pull on the door. In my defense there was a pull handle on the door leading me to believe you had to pull on the door to open it. In the door’s defense there are several centuries of wear marks and discoloration where a million people have pushed on the door. Our group was the only one in the ornate lobby, pretty as the pictures I had seen. But I couldn’t quite get as good a picture as the ones I had seen.
Before I went to Dublin, I contacted one of our neighbor’s from when the Queen and I lived in Los Angeles. He was born and grew up in Dublin before emigrating to the United States. If anyone knew a cool place for dinner in the Hibernian Metropolis, it would be Seamus. He responded to my query about cool places to eat in Dublin with a question of his own: when were we going to be in Dublin? I told him and he told me he was going to be in Dublin at the same time. Ah, coincidence. Seamus suggested we eat dinner together. I told him we had a short window to eat as we had a Literary Pub Crawl to do after our dinner. Seamus opted to join us on the pub crawl as well.
We all met at Lennan’s Yard at the top of Dawson Street near Stephen’s Green. The Queen mum was feeling a bit tired after the tour and fortunately we found an exit from the Trinity grounds that put us on Dawson St. Heading up Dawson, we passed a still running Tower Records and St. Ann’s Church which I wanted to explore but didn’t have time at this point. St. Anne’s is where Bram Stoker married Florence Balcombe. Balcombe was at one time the fiancee of Oscar Wilde until Bram Stoker came along. The other fun fact about St. Anne’s is St. Anne’s had a policy of having bread by the altar and anyone that was hungry could come and take some. I needed to verify that story.
Lennan’s Yard was very nice and we had a great meal. The only problem was they sat us up stairs. Stairs are the Queen Mum’s kryptonite. She hates them every time she sees them. During our meal, I got a visit from my friend the Chairman that is loaning us his house in Lahinch for a night. I’ve known the Chairman since my days at the Crescent. His father worked for my father at Verbatim in Limerick. The Chairman has done very well for himself running two High Tech companies in Dublin. Currently, he is the Chairman of the Board of several undisclosed companies. And yet here he was schlepping some keys to me in Dublin. He was a bit cross at the hostess because he asked for me and they said I wasn’t here. The table was under Seamus’s name. I went down the stairs and got him and convinced him to come up stairs for a glass of wine. The Chairman is a great man for the wine. What a lovely time sitting around the table with friends chatting. At one point, I snapped a picture and the Chairman told me I was not to put it online. He’s spent fifteen years of his life being online and in the press daily and he was done with that nonsense.
A big thanks to Seamus for grabbing the check. He informed us before dinner that he would be paying and that would be that. When we would meet on dogwalks in Montecito Heights he would tell us tales of his time in Dublin. He visited Newgrange before it was rebuilt and used to go inside the main chamber all the time. He also shook hands with the crusader mummy in the tomb of St. Michan’s.
The Literary Pub Crawl started at the The Duke Pub on Duke Lane which was only a short walk from Lennan’s. Unfortunately, our first stop where we were to meet the guides was up more stairs. The Queen Mum was going to kill me.
Since we were in a pub of all places, drinking was involved. Seamus was kind enough to keep buying rounds. Our hosts for the evening would be Frank and Finbar. Our entire gathering was about 20 people. I was amused the entire night but I can’t for the life of me think of any of the pieces they performed with the exception of 15 minutes of Waiting for Godot by Samuell Beckett. According to Dean of English Seamus, that was about all I needed to hear.
From the Duke, the group headed back to Trinity College. As we started to cross Nassua Street from Dawson Street, the Queen Mum decided to do a gravity test of her own. We stood in one of the ramps in the sidewalk that allow wheel chairs to cross street and the Queen Mum didn’t quite notice the difference in height between curb and street. Down she went. Fortunately, Seamus mostly caught her and she was back up in a jiffy. I think one of the most treacherous parts of the Dublin sidewalk are this channels place in the sidewalk to gather rain water. The channels are about an inch deep and six inches wide and are everywhere. I can’t count the number of times I put my foot wrong in one of those channels.
One of the special parts of the tour was we were allowed to be on the campus of Trinity after hours when the college was closed to visitors. Frank and Finbarr performed on the steps of the Examination Hall. The Examination Hall was where The Clash performed back in 1977. Frank and Finbarr were a little more sedate. I had a fine time showing Finbarr pictures of my father standing in Parliament Square from 30 years ago. Along with every bit of performance, the lads also give a bit of history, which was again well received. At the end of the history section, they always tell us there were clues in the speeches for a the trivia quiz at the end of the night.
The group made it to O’Neills pub without any further mishaps from our quarter. O’Neills was a warren of different areas to drink. Seamus wanted to know what I wanted to drink and I asked for water. He said there was no way he was asking the bartender for water. He might get kicked out. Our job from our guides was to find the picture in the portrait room in the pub of a man with a white beard and find out who that man was. The portrait of the white bearded man was easy to find because Finbar and Frank were sitting right in front of it.
The lads didn’t perform in O’Neills. Instead we walked across the street to the Molly Malone statue. Her statue stands in front of the former St. Andrew’s church. Molly used to be out on Grafton Street opposite Trinity College. She was installed in the Grafton street location in 1988 as part of the millennium celebration for Dublin. Dublin locals promptly christened her ‘The Tart with The Cart’. I encountered her in Dublin in 2009. I was quite surprised when I came back in 2014 and found a bunch of construction work going on at her spot and no sign of Molly. They were building the Light Rail Luas line and Molly had to go. She didn’t go far, just around the corner to Suffolk Street where tourists still take pictures of themselves rubbing her breasts for luck. That is the reason her endowments are so shiny.
One of the powers Molly posses is that when you stand near her statue, you break into the Molly Malone song. Seconds after the tour arrived, we all started singing about cockles and mussels, alive, alive-o. Finbarr and Frank set up in an archway of the church to do their segment. There was a giant mural of Noseferatu. After St. Andrews church stopped being a church it became a Dublin Tourist Office. That didn’t work out. The church has had different uses including I guess a haunted house, hence our friend Nosferatu.
We did take a bunch of pictures in front of Molly because that is required by Dublin law. But I knew I had to come back because the pictures I had taken in the before times were in the sunlight and I wanted to my photos to match.
Stop three for the evening landed at the The Old Stand Pub, just around the corner from Molly. Our trivia hunt for The Old Stand was find the picture which included the original name of the Pub. The other fun fact about the pub came in the form of plaque stating this was a pub where Michael Collins would hang out. I’m sure there were plenty of pubs where Mr. Collins imbibed, he was on the move constantly to keep away from the British, but The Old Stand had the plaque and a picture of the Big Fella. For a time while in the pub, I thought the Queen Mum might be making a love connection. A nice man by the name of Neal, who sat next to us, leaned in and started quizzing the Queen Mum about who she was and where she was from. Naturally, I took a picture of the happy couple before I rescued The Queen Mum by saying it was time to meet up with the tour.
Our final stop for the night was next to Davy Byrne’s pub where the trivia questions were unveiled. I was able to gain one point by knowing the original name of The Old Stand pub which I don’t remember now. The woman who won the contest was a full on cheater. She had been on the tour before and remembered the answers to most of the questions. Davy Byrne’s was important to Seamus as well. As we listened to Finbarr and Frank, Seamus casually mentioned that Davey Byrne’s was where he first came out as a gay man.
The tour ended there. We thanked Frank and Finbar with money, because that is what you do. We went down the lane to end of Duke Street and caught a Taxi back to the hotel. That seemed to be enough for our first day in Ireland.
As a matter of fact, my anger does keep me warm