Yep, we indulged in the Irish pub scene last night, hanging out and drinking
housemade stout at The Porter House, a local bar that features four floors
of music and booze. Unfortunately, we left before the show began, having
stuffed ourselves silly on Irish Stews, Roasted Cod, Mash and Veg and
too many beers. I am starting to realize how indulgent this country is
– but what do you expect from a land that refers to caloric content
in food as “energy content”? I think I have a little extra energy
on my heinie, but that is another matter.
Yesterday was wonderful -- got up early, had a big breakfast at the Elephant & Castle, and spent the day walking, first around the Temple Bar area littered with towering rows of empty kegs, down by the Design District with its fashionable furniture stores and then around Grafton Street, the central shopping area. Grafton Street is amazing – stores of every kind lining the pedestrian street and open flower stands and street hawkers everywhere. Lots of outdoor cafes, too, which make for great people watching. We stopped in the Sheridan Cheesemongers, a great cheese shop with huge wheels of unpasterized cheese, olives and sausages. The scent alone would have killed Kyung. We grabbed a sandwich and the best yogurt I’ve ever had and walked over to St. Stephen’s Green, a 22 acre city park equipped with gardens, man made ponds, fountains and vast swatches of lawn. School had just begun so there were many Trinity students lying on the grass, groaning about their workload and trying to nap between classes. It’s crazy but Dublin has a gigantic Asian population and they are everywhere you look! As a result, there is no weirdness about being Asian and I’ve even seen a few interracial couples.
Trinity College itself, is nice but small compared to the sprawl of American colleges. It does feature an amazing library however, dating back to 1712 and housing the Book of Kells. Around 800 AD four monks illustrated a Latin version of the Gospels. They wrote the whole thing on vellum made from stretched calf skins and ink squeezed out of bugs and plants. They turn one page a day for the public to view. After that we saw some modern art at the college gallery. The show consisted of a large, empty white room with a jar of pollen in the corner. I just didn’t get it.
On the way back to the hotel we stopped at Claudio’s Wine Shop, one of the few wine shops in the city that offer non-European wines at reasonable prices. Claudio is a big Brazilian guy and a little intimidating but quite nice (editorial comment: he was also standing on a raised platform that Cheong didn’t notice, which in his proper height would put the Goliath Claudio at around 5'8"; he looked like a skinny version of Flip, the CEO of divine). The tiny wine shop was plastered with fraying copies of magazine and news clipping about him.
After a brief rest, we popped into The Clarence Hotel, owned by Bono and The Edge, for a drink and found it rather plain and very overrated for an upscale hotel, then moseyed across the Liffey River to The Morrison which was much more to our liking. In fact we’re going to celebrate our 5th anniversary at The Halo, the hotel’s restaurant.
One of the best things about Dublin is that the locals don’t seem jaded in the least. They shop, eat, drink, play internet video games right alongside the tourists. Because everything is still so new to them, there is very little of the "strictly for tourists" attitude that prevails in other big cities. They seem to be as equally delighted by what their city has to offer as we are.
Not to end things on a sour note, but I do have two small gripes about Dublin: the weather, which seems constantly on the verge of rain and is already quite cold (definitely sweater and trench coat weather -- Chris is already regretting that he did not bring a jacket) and the smell of cigarette smoke in my clothes. I feel a little dirty all the time and would love to throw myself in the dryer with a little fabric softener just to air out a bit.
In typical form, it's drizzling today so off to the Guinness Brewery and the Irish Museum of Modern Art we go.
All for now.