Journey To Dublin - Part Five

We left our hotel in Dublin around eight AM and walked due south to the closest light rail station. We took the light rail across the city to Heuston Rail Station. We arrived around nine fifteen AM and proceeded directly to a kiosk to purchase our 30 Euro tickets to Cork. We found the ten AM train immediately, but the price had jumped to 75 Euros per person. We stared at it for a couple of seconds. Then we stared at each other for a couple of seconds. I could tell Lara was thinking the same thing I was. I said, “75 is more than 30”. Lara nodded her head. Since she is an engineer, she knew intuitively that 75 is in fact more than 30. We were in agreement. 75 is more than 30.

I went to the information desk and told them that they changed the fare price on us and that I was mildly upset. I told the employee that I preferred the 30 Euro fare over the 75 Euro fare. I told the employee that paying less Euros was more agreeable to my nature. I told the employee that my girlfriend was an engineer and that she could prove that 30 was a better price than 75. The employee looked at me dumbly as I asked my girlfriend to please come over and create a bar chart for illustrative purposes.

Before Lara could sketch out a bar chart, the employee told me that the 30 Euro fare did exist, but it had to be purchased thru the company website, and it had to be purchased at least an hour before the scheduled departure time. Our attempt to purchase our tickets at a kiosk forty-five minutes before departure time broke those two rules. I told the employee that we didn’t know those were the rules. The employee stared back at me and said nothing. I looked at Lara. She showed me her bar chart sketch. It looked accurate.

We showed the employee the bar chart, and it was well received, but the bar chart would not win the argument. We had to decide if we wanted to purchase the 75 Euro tickets and get on the ten AM train to Cork, or find an internet station and pay 30 Euro for a train that departed at twelve PM. If we waited, we would lose half the day. We decided that we could probably do everything we wanted to do in Cork in half a day, so we waited for the twelve PM train.

While we waited, we found out that the train station had a little cafeteria where we could get some breakfast. We got in line and picked up some trays. As we proceeded down the assembly line, we realized very quickly that there was essentially only one thing to choose from at the cafeteria; the Irish Breakfast. And this was not your average breakfast.

The Irish breakfast starts with two fried eggs and bacon. But the bacon isn’t like American bacon. The bacon is actually what we would call a thick slice of cooked ham with a solid line of fat on the edges. The chef added something black and circular that looked like a hockey puck. Stacked on top of that was a similar looking hockey puck, except this second hockey puck was brown. I couldn’t figure out what the heck those things were. They may have just been garnishing. Lara and I watched the chef arrange these first few items on a small dinner plate with mild interest. This looked like a half decent breakfast. We both held out our hands with expectations that the chef would hand us our Irish Breakfast. But he didn’t give us the plate. Instead, he piled more items onto the plate.

First, he added a large sausage link. And I’m not talking about the little smokies you get at Denny’s. This sausage link was the size of a bratwurst. In fact, it was a bratwurst. Next, the chef added a little hash brown patty like you might get at a McDonald’s. Then he added a large piece of bread that an American might call “Texas Toast”. Then he added a side of sautéed mushrooms. Sauteed Mushrooms? What!? I mean, I love sautéed mushrooms as much as the next guy, but this was ridiculous. And it was all piled onto a small porcelain dinner plate. I began to worry about the integrity of that little dinner plate. It looked like it could buckle under the weight of all the food.

Lara and I stood there with our hands still held out, but my mild interest of the Irish Breakfast had turned to serious unease. I started looking around for an exit. There was still time. I could just make a break for it. I could lay low for twenty or thirty or minutes and just meet Lara at the train platform.

I didn’t run tho. I decided to just go for it. I could eat this Irish Breakfast: fatty ham, eggs, hockey puck things, hash brown patty, bratwurst, Texas toast, and sautéed mushrooms. Breakfast of champions, right?...

…Then the chef poured a ladle full of baked beans over the eggs.

He handed me the plate and I didn’t even register the fact that I took it from him. I think I was in shock. I must have been in shock. Because had I been in my right mind, I would not have taken that plate from him. I would have chuckled and asked if perhaps I could get a pastry and a cup of coffee. But no, he offered me the plate and I took it from him.

I did my best to eat it. I ate my hash brown patty, my Texas Toast, my sautéed mushrooms, and a bit of my bratwurst. And as that is a pretty filling breakfast for me, I didn’t eat much else. I gave my Beans/Eggs one bite for the experience, and was thoroughly disgusted. Same for the hockey pucks, as I was quite sure they weren’t supposed to be ingested anyway.

When we finished our Irish Breakfast, we wandered around the station while we waited for our train to depart. Lara had to use the water closet, and we found out that public water closets in Dublin cost 0.30 Euros per person. Not unreasonable, I suppose.

Our train was announced and we boarded. Above our seats was a cool little digital display of our names. The seats were clean and there was plenty of leg room. An elderly couple boarded the train after us and walked up and down the aisle several times before deciding on their seats. This perplexed Lara and I because we thought we all had assigned seats. Why else would they take the time to display them digitally?

We were discussing this for no other reason than to pass the time when we heard a voice on the speaker system tell us, “Please exit this train and board the train at Gate E. This train is shot”. The elderly couple jumped out of their seats and ran to the train at Gate E. I looked at Lara and asked her if I just heard someone say that this train is “shot”? She laughed and agreed. Turns out our train was shot. Didn't sound too promising.

She asked me if I saw the elderly couple run off the train. I nodded. A thought must have occurred to Lara at that moment because she stopped laughing and said, “A thought just occurred to me. What if we don’t have assigned seats on the new train?” I nodded. That would be unfortunate. I didn’t get it. I was still amused that our train was shot. Then Lara said, “What if we can’t find window seats on the new train?” Then I understood the precariousness of our situation.

We grabbed our stuff and hauled ass off the train. We boarded the new train, and sure enough, people were in our assigned seats. Our names were not listed on the digital display above the seats. I started to panic. I asked Lara where we would sit? What would happen to us? How would we go on? She pointed down the aisle and told me to look.

I looked down the aisle and there were at least twenty open seats. Oh. My panic began to subside. We chose a nice pair of seats with similar cleanliness and equal amounts of leg room as the old seats. We even had a bigger window in our new seats. Thank goodness for Lara’s icy nerves. Disaster averted.

We settled into our seats – on a train that wasn’t shot - for the three hour journey to Cork. The city landscape of Dublin quickly gave way to a rural landscape. There were a few ugly suburban neighborhoods in between. No getting away from those, but they were easy enough to ignore for those brief seconds that we passed by. Outside of the suburbs, I began to see pastures dotted with sheep. It is obvious why this place is called the “Emerald Isle”. Each pasture seemed to have its own shade of green. Every so often, I could see a little village or a farm house off in the distance. Off in another direction was the edge of a mountain range that was also its own shade of green.

It didn’t seem to be raining, but the sky was grey and the ground was damp. It looked chilly out there. I was glad to be able to see the countryside from the comfort of the train. I was reminded of a train I once took from Barcelona to Paris. I loved just sitting in my comfy chair and watching the landscape pass by. It is a great way to see a foreign land.

Lara took pictures of sheep when she wasn't sleeping. There was more sleeping than picture taking. Whenever she is in a moving vehicle, she passes out. Even if she is riding on a train thru a foreign land. She can't help it. Its unavoidable. But she did her best. Every twenty minutes she would wake up and gaze out the window. She would spot a sheep, and excitedly snap a picture of it. Then before she could put the camera down, she would pass out again.

I also took some pics. I had an old SLR camera that required film, and I tried to take some creative pictures that captured the train movement as well as the lush landscape. I experimented with the aperture setting and shutter speed. I was excited about the pics. I thought they were going to be very artsy.

When I got the film developed after the trip, all my experimental pictures from that train ride were completely washed out. Total whiteness. I completely overexposed every shot I took on the train. Whiteness is pretty cool, I guess. But I didn’t really capture what I was hoping. Sometimes the art you create isn’t the art you had intended to create. Sometimes the art you create totally sucks. (My art probably would have turned out better had I read the manual.)

We arrived at the Cork train station at three PM. We quickly found a bus waiting outside that would take us to the central bus station near downtown Cork. When we arrived at the bus station we quickly decided to take a bus to the Blarney Castle since it was only thirty minutes away.

We had also wanted to go to the coastal town of Kinsale while we were in the south. We heard the town was really cool and the cuisine was top notch. But because of our train ticket screw up, we didn’t have enough time. We chose the castle over cuisine.

The Blarney Castle is located just outside of Cork in the village of Blarney. There were very few people walking about in the town, and there were even fewer at the castle grounds. I suppose it was because it was so late in the afternoon, or because it was a dreary day, or because it was early spring and well before the peak tourist season. For whatever reason, the isolation seemed to add to the ambiance. With no one in front of us in line, we paid 10 Euro per person to enter the grounds.

We approached the castle without another person in sight. It sort of felt like we were trespassing, or like we were exploring some forgotten land. The Blarney Castle sat on top of a small hill. As we approached it we passed a small tower that was the exact shape of a Rook chess piece. A sign told us that it was the guard’s tower. We walk past the guard’s tower and into the main castle. Once again, there was no one inside and we got to explore the place all by ourselves. Very cool and surreal. There were dozens of little rooms to inspect. Each one had an information board that told us what the room was used as; the daughters’ room, the kitchen, the main hall, the holding cell, or the master’s chambers.

We made our way thru each room of the castle, steadily moving in an upward direction along narrow stairwells and hallways carved out of stone. When we arrived at the top, there was only an outer walkway along the castle battlements. Looking down into the interior of the castle was the entire main hall. Looking out over the battlements we could see miles and miles of Irish countryside.

It was only after a couple minutes of gazing outward that we realized there was one more thing we were supposed to do at the Blarney Castle; we had to kiss the Blarney Stone.

The kissing of the Blarney Stone is kind of a stupid touristy thing to do. It is said that if you kiss the Blarney Stone, then you will be granted the gift of gab. Just like a native Irishman, when you kiss the stone you will become endowed with unrivaled eloquence. People have been kissing the Blarney Stone for hundreds of years.

My brother had told me before our trip that if we decided to see the Blarney Castle, we should NOT kiss the Blarney Stone. Apparently, he had a friend that had grown up in Cork, and this native of Cork had on several occasions with his friends broken into the Blarney Castle and urinated on the Blarney Stone.

I had mentioned this little factoid to Lara on our way to the Blarney Castle and she seemed reluctant to believe the tale. I think she was excited to kiss the Blarney Stone. She badly wanted the gift of eloquence. I empathized with her. I wanted it, too.

As we stood there at the top of the castle, a couple of men appeared at the opposite end. I didn’t notice them at first, but I guess they had to sit on top of the castle all day to help the tourists kiss the stone. See, the stone is not so easy to kiss. It is located in the battlements about a foot away from the walkway and another foot below. If a person would like to kiss the stone, that person must lie down on their back, reach out to a cross bar that is nailed into the battlements, arch their back downward while holding onto that crossbar, and then strain their neck outward. Only if you can accomplish this back bend and neck extension can you reach your lips to the Blarney Stone. And just for fun, if you happen to look down below the stone, you can see all the way to the ground, which is fifty feet below you. Its slightly nauseating.

I watched the two men help Lara into the back bend and neck extension, and I snapped a photograph of her as she kissed the Blarney Stone. As they helped her up, all I could think about was my brother’s friend that said he peed all over it. When Lara got up, I gave her my camera and I laid down on my back. One man told me to reach out and grab the cross bar. I did as I was told. Both men then grabbed a hold of my jacket and slid me out over the precipice. I bent my back downward and strained my neck. For just a moment I looked down at the ground fifty feet below me and thought, “That’s probably where the urine landed after the guy peed on the Blarney Stone”. But then I remembered that I was being dangled over the edge of a castle by two strange Irishmen. And the sole reason I was allowing them to dangle me over the edge of a castle was to kiss a stone for the very remote chance that I could achieve unparalleled eloquence. And I so badly want that gift, because...you know...my current eloquentness isn't...you know...very good.

I closed my eyes and I kissed the Blarney Stone.

We descended the castle stairwells and meandered around the grounds for awhile. As we were exiting out the front gate, I noticed a restroom. I walked directly to it and thoroughly washed my lips with hand soap. Hopefully my desire for good hygiene did not neutralize my gift of eloquence that I was supposed to receive. But I just couldn't handle the thought of urine on my lips.

We took the bus back to the main bus station near downtown Cork. When we arrived it was nearly six PM. Our train back to Dublin didn’t leave until ten PM, so we had plenty of time to find a place to eat supper. We used our guide book to guide us to a fancy place off the beaten path. The guide book did not misguide us.

I ordered a lamb neck that had to be the most succulent lamb neck on earth. There were some side dishes too, but I can’t remember what they were. The lamb neck was so good that it didn’t matter what else was on the plate. Lara ordered something, too. But I cannot remember what she ordered. I'm pretty sure it wasn't nearly as good as my lamb neck.

We ate our dinner and drank a bottle of wine. By the time we were finished it was dangerously close to our departure time. We hurried back to the bus station. We looked around for the bus that would take us back to the train station. It took several minutes of wandering around, but we eventually found the place we needed to be. We waited patiently for our bus to arrive. And we waited. And waited some more. We double checked the time and the location. We were where we needed to be. So we kept on waiting. And we waited some more.

I kept thinking to myself that when we arrived at the train station this afternoon, and we took that bus to the central bus station, it didn’t seem to take that long. I thought we could maybe just walk to the train station if we knew where it was. But as I was thinking about this, I was also looking at the clock, and we were running out of time.

It was twenty minutes to ten PM, and still no bus. We might miss our train back to Dublin. We could try walking to the train station, but we could very easily get lost since we didn’t even know which direction to start walking. As I pondered our predicament, the bus appeared around the bend.

We boarded the bus at nine forty-five PM. I prayed that would give us enough time to get back to the train station by tem PM. The driver pulled out into the street and immediately had to stop at a stop light. Dammit! We waited. The light turned green and he crossed the intersection. He then made a right turn and travelled approximately six blocks. He pulled over and announced that we had arrived at the Cork Train Station.

Oh. Well. At least we made it. In fact, we made back to the train station with ten minutes to spare. And that’s how worldly travelers persevere.

We boarded the train back to Dublin. This time we did not have to disembark due to the train being “shot”. We sat across from a jovial middle-aged couple that was traveling to Dublin to attend a big rugby match the next morning. Apparently, the Irish national team was to square off against the Welsh national team. This particular rugby match only happens once a year. And it just so happened that this rugby match would be played at the football stadium directly adjacent to our hotel. Awesome.

We chatted with the couple the entire trip back to Dublin. The husband was a high school rugby coach, so I asked a million questions about the rules of rugby and the upcoming Ireland/Wales match. They asked us a million questions about Florida and the U.S. economy.

When we arrived back at Heuston Station in Dublin, we said farewell to our new friends. Lara and I took the light rail across town. We stopped in at a trendy little night club called The Good Bits for a night cap. The music was loud and the people were festive, but Lara and I were tired. We sat at a table in an empty section of the bar and watched the locals get drunk. We were too tired to watch for very long. We drank our pints and headed back to our hotel.

As we approached our hotel, I kept glancing up at the football stadium that loomed over our street. I was exhausted, but I was also giddy with excitement for the prospect of witnessing an Ireland v. Wales rugby match the following morning.

Journey To Dublin - Part Four

In the morning, we had set out from our hotel in the northeast corner of Dublin. We walked in a sort of southwesterly fashion so we could walk down O’Connell Street, and see the old Post Office on our way to Trinity College. Now that we had seen Trinity, we decided to stay on foot – even tho we were extremely tired – and walk due west along the River Liffey towards the Guinness Brewery. This allowed us to walk past Christ Church; a massive, thousand year old Cathedral that became a Protestant church when Henry VIII split from Rome in the sixteenth century.

We took a moment to ponder the hand-carved archways, the flying buttresses, and vast amount of stonework. I was in total awe of this building because I thought it was all done a thousand years ago. But apparently there have been multiple renovations and additions over the years. So a lot of the architectural design may only be a couple centuries old. Ho hum.

We continued west along the River Liffey, snapping pictures of random old buildings, interesting people, and signage, until we reached the gates of the Guinness Brewery. The brewery occupies multiple city blocks on the west side of town. We had to walk four blocks just to get from the outside gate to the main building for tourists.

The tour was mildly entertaining. A self-guided tour that cost 15 Euros. It started with lessons on the four main ingredients needed to brew beer: barley, hops, yeast, and water. This section was interesting because they illustrated the amount of each ingredient they use on a yearly basis. Numbers that I can’t remember, but they are truly staggering. Guinness brews a lot of beer. The next part of the tour was about the milling and the mashing. Then the filtering, the boiling, and the fermenting. After we learned a little about the brewing process, we learned about the packaging and shipping. And, of course, we learned the history of the Guinness family...they were Irish, or something.

Each section of the tour was on its own floor in the building, so by the time we finished the tour, we had ascended six floors. On the seventh floor - the top floor of the building - was the final part of the tour...the tasting room! Every participant was given a free pint in the tasting room. And the room itself was quite spectacular. At seven stories high, it is one of the highest view points in the entire city. (You read that right. I only saw one building in the entire city that was more than six stories tall.)

The Tasting Room is circular; with walls of glass from floor to ceiling to give you a 360 degree view of the city. The glass walls have some text sketched into them that describe what building you might be looking at beyond the glass.

The room was quite crowded. Lara and I walked around several times, and after ten minutes of jockeying, we found a corner of a table to stand next to. No chairs, but at least we had something to put our beers, hats, and cameras on. It wasn’t much, but it was helpful. Lara went to the bar to retrieve our free pints while I guarded the table. I took off my hat and realized that it was about three PM local time (ten AM Florida time). We left Lara’s apartment in Tampa about twenty-four hours ago. It was hard to believe that it was exactly one day later. It felt like a lifetime ago.

As I pondered my exhaustion, I saw Lara walking towards me with two full pint glasses and a big smile on her face. She must have been as excited as I was to sample this beer that we had been learning about for the last two hours. We raised our glasses, said the Irish word for cheers (“Slainte”), and clinked our glasses together. I must have sucked down half the pint in one drink. Thirsty. A wave of tranquility washed over me and I had to lean heavily on our little corner of the table. Man oh man, that tasted good.

After a couple minutes of standing and drinking in silent bliss, we saw a couple of chairs open up on the other side of the room. We rushed over at lightning speed and threw ourselves into them. If I was carrying a sword, I would have chopped off a man’s hand to get those chairs. Luckily, no one issued a challenge to us. We finished our beers in total rapture, slumped over in our thrones, laughing at the lowly peasants that were forced to stand around us.

Another couple from America was sitting down next to us and we sparked up a conversation. The girl’s name was Tinley and the guy said his name was Rejee. They told us they were from New York City. I told Rejee that he had an interesting name. He said it wasn’t all that interesting. It is actually spelled “Regis”, but since his family was French, they pronounced it “Rejee”. Since I am from the Midwest, I pronounced it Reggie for the remainder of the day. That’s the best I can do.

Reggie and Tinley had just arrived in town as well, and we traded itineraries. We enjoyed their company and wanted to continue the tasting room rapture, but we had drunk all of our beer. I watched our new friends finish their beer shortly after us. We all looked at each other and verbally agreed that we all needed another beer.

Reggie and I went to the bar and asked for another round. The bartender apologized and said we could only have one per person at the tasting room. I was dejected. But as I was deciding whether or not to begin begging, the bartender asked us if we had been to the Pouring Room yet. Reggie and I simultaneously shook our heads. The bartender smiled at us and said quite simply, “down one floor”.

We found a stairwell and descended one level. We entered into a totally empty bar: the Pouring Room. I had been told at the beginning of the tour that everyone had to choose either the Pouring Room or the Tasting Room at the end of the tour. You could either learn how to pour the perfect pint, or you could just drink the perfect pint. On that particular day, it looked like not one single person chose to learn how to pour the perfect pint.

Reggie and I walked into this empty Pouring Room and approached the bar. A bartender showed us how to perform the perfect pour. When he was done there was a full beer sitting on the bar. Since there were two of us, he asked us if we wanted another. We were very grateful and we said yes please. And as a matter fact, we could really use two more pints on top of that. He gave us a sideways look as he poured beer number two. When he was finished pouring that beer, he looked around the room as if to make sure the coast was clear. Then he started pouring beer number three. As he finished pouring beer number three and four, he asked us for 8 Euro. We gladly paid him. He said, “Slainte”, and we walked back up the stairs with two pints each.

We returned to the Tasting Room triumphant. We gave our girlfriends their pints and we sat and talked for another hour.

When we were all done with our beverages, Lara and I said fare thee well to our new friends and we set out for our next destination. We were content with our sightseeing conquests for the day, but we still needed to get some supper.

We knew that there was a large train station - Heuston Station - nearby. And we knew that we could take a light rail train back across the city to the east side to Trinity College, O’Connell Street, and Temple Bar.

Temple Bar is the hip bar district where all the action is at night. Since it was getting dark, we decided we should partake in that action. We meandered our way out of the brewery and down some empty side streets until we found the Heuston Train Station. We jumped on the light rail for 1.5 Euro a piece and rode it back across the city. The train was clean and full of work commuters. We disembarked near Temple Bar and ducked into a large tavern that looked inviting.

We ordered a round of Guinness to celebrate our successful day of sightseeing...and the fact that we didn’t succumb to jet lag. I ordered Irish stew for my supper. It had large chunks of lamb, potatoes, and carrots. It was delicious. I can’t remember what Lara ordered. It was some kind of soup. I don’t think it was as delicious as my Irish stew. We enjoyed our supper while we watched English Premier League soccer.

After supper, we walked back to our hotel. We got on the internet to send notes to our family and to make our plans for the next day. We found train tickets to the city of Cork for 30 Euros per person. The train would leave at ten AM and arrive in Cork around one PM. This seemed like the perfect time and perfect price, but for some reason, we didn’t purchase the tickets right then. We decided to wait and purchase the tickets when we got to the station in the morning. We would find out the next morning that this was a pretty stupid decision.