Cathedralmania

St. Patrick’s Cathedral Outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral, a block away from Nick’s crib, we caught the end of this costumed drama troupe putting on a show for some kids. I was too slow on the draw with my camera to document anything except the final wave goodbye. Ah well, good lesson to learn early in the trip! Shot from another angle at night - Christ Church Cathedral The second Cathedral within a block of Nick’s digs. Quite a buyer’s market for Sunday mass options. I can picture the backroom brainstorming sessions between priests trying to reach their congregational recruitment quotas.

Nick’s childhood digs en route to Glendalough

On day two we hopped a train out of town to Nick’s family’s place out in “Kilgobbin Woods.” Just kidding, I’m not sure where they live, I just spotted Kilgobbin Woods on the map and decided to roll with that – you can’t make these names up (unless you’re J.R.R. Tolkien). After a lovely breakfast with Nick’s folks consisting of eggs and blood pudding (not kidding on the name, though I think it’s actually a kind of sausage) we hit the drizzly country road for Glendalough, by way of “Kilkenny” and “Lousybush” (serious).

Glendalough

After convincing me that left-side driving was just as dangerous for experienced Irish drivers as for American newbies, Nick narrowly maneuvered us out of the city into a foggy, pete-moss-spackled countryside toward the appropriately hobbit-sounding realm of Wicklow. Essentially, church and tower ruins mixed into a cemetary full of massive headstones. Many of the tombs listed off dozens of names in an almost comically rambling way (little known tourist fact: graveyards are hiLARious in Ireland). Was again struck by the sheer oldness, and the fact that the Glendalough outpost had been ‘equivalent’ to Dublin in Medieval times in that it housed a bishop (and hence was actually a cathedral… another secular-tourist anecdote: priest > church, bishop > cathedral. same building, different name based on the occupant.) Scenic walk to a lake (not *on* the lake, signs were on display to discourage that) and grabbed a surprisingly delicious latte from out of a snack truck near the lough (lake). Just sayin’ if you travel to rural Ireland, DON’T MISS this snack truck’s coffee. Beat back the jetlag for an energetic evenin’ of pubbin’.

The randomly scene

They’ve got support groups for just about anyone in Ireland… Just looked it up, apparently it’s the oldest charity in Dublin. If you believe the internets. Frolicking street youths at night.

Temple Bar

Temple Bar… …is neither a temple nor a bar, but a neighborhood of just south of the river in central Dublin that just happens to be packed with pubs. There is an actual bar called Temple Bar Pub, and one would assume maybe the neighborhood sprung up around it somehow, but one would be wrong – apparently it’s had the name for a few centuries, and the whole neighborhood was so run-down in the 1960s that urban developers overlooked it for their projects. Thus, its cobbled medieval street pattern and many of its old buildings are very well-preserved, and it stands as a quaint and historic shrine today. And a shrine of sloppy drunkenness, which was about as lofty of a purpose as Nick and I set out with when we descended upon it Friday night. Stag’s Head Great spot. Too crowded on Friday, but we hit it again on the flipside of the trip just before I headed back across the Atlantic. The Porterhouse When I spotted an “American Lager” called “Chiller” on tap at The Porterhouse I had to put the “how do Irish think American Lager tastes?” question to the test. It tasted… like a Pilsner. But a respectable Pilsner. The Porterhouse was kinda awesome – several floors connected by winding staircases and staggered platforms, bars on multiple decks, and a central open-air core with a performance pit visible over balconies on all sides and every level. The one-man acoustic mash-up was definitely on the cheesier side of entertainment, but I wasn’t feeling picky – and whose to say a Bob Marley > Neil Diamond > Bon Jovi singalong medley isn’t high art? The night wound down with a couple more somber, brooding, life-in-perspective pints at The Oak Bar around the corner from The Porterhouse, followed by the requisite stop at Iskander’s Kebabs on the way home. This pattern foretold many future late-night Kebab missions on the European continent in the upcoming weeks. Ireland’s finest cultural export Overall I would say the oak-walled, serif-lettered, top-40-playlist everyman ubiquity of Irish pubs we’re familiar with in America was mirrored by the Temple Bar Irish pubs, but they were definitely a good time. And as we migrated through the continent over the next few days I began to see this “genericness” of Irish pubs in a whole new light. More of a familiar, welcoming oasis in the midst of non-Engligh-speaking, non-pub-dwelling, what-do-you-mean-by-”on-draught?” Mediterranean cultures. The Pub as Ireland’s most vital and wide-reaching cultural export. An embassy of banter and merriment in every city.

Dublin/Glendalough kitsch-n-stub montage

Full Dublin & Glendalough photosets: Andy’s (flickr) | Nick’s (SimpleViewer)

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