Lara and I slept in the third day of our journey to Dublin. The only plan for the morning and afternoon was to witness the pandemonium surrounding the rugby match between the Irish National Team and the Welsh National Team. This was a simple plan since our hotel was at ground zero of the festivities. When we rolled out of the hotel room in the late morning, we found all the streets surrounding our hotel, and the football stadium, were blocked off. There were thousands of people milling around the stadium. Every single person seemed to be wearing something that was electric green. Most of those people were visibly drunk as well.
Lara and I began walking away from the stadium. I kept my eyes open for any scalpers, but I didn’t see a single one. Of course, the scalping procedures may be much different in Ireland than I am accustomed to. In America, the scalpers raise their tickets high in the air and scream “TICKETS!!!” into the face of every person that passes. In Ireland, scalpers might keep their tickets hidden underneath their bowler caps until someone punches them in the face to get their attention. Or perhaps you have to say some magic word in Gaelic to make it known that you are looking for a ticket.
Since no scalpers presented themselves to me, I quickly gave up hope of watching the game in the stadium, and resigned myself to watching the game at a pub. Lara and I figured witnessing the game in a pub would be pretty exciting anyway. We continued walking away from the stadium and towards downtown.
We hadn’t yet seen the Grafton Street Pedestrian Mall, so we decided to head there for some shopping and lunch. We found a quaint little pizzeria on Grafton Street called Pacino’s. The atmosphere was similar to a boutique coffee shop. There was local artwork displayed on the walls, ambient techno beats playing on the stereo, and young waitresses chatting at the bar instead of minding their customers. Lara and I each ordered a personal pizza. We waited for an hour for our order to arrive, but the pizzas were delicious.
After we ate, we did some window shopping along Grafton Street. Neither one of us were particularly inspired to enter any of the shops. Lara was looking for some souvenirs and I was just looking for anything that appeared odd. Most of the shops were fairly mundane though. When we came to the end of the pedestrian mall, a beautiful building of glass and white wrought iron terraces stood before us. This was the St. Stephen’s Green Shopping Mall, and since Lara hadn’t found any good souvenirs yet, we decided to go inside.
Almost instantly, Lara found what could have been the hokiest souvenir shop of all time. It was an explosion of green trinkets, t-shirts, postcards, shot glasses, pint glasses, key chains, posters, and hats. Lara quickly veered into the store. She didn’t want to go in, but the gravitational pull of the souvenir shop is too much to withstand for the average tourist. I tried to walk past the opening, but I got sucked in as well.
We must have been in that souvenir shop for an hour. Lara got out with a bag full of gifts for her family. I ended up purchasing a couple of postcards that had those old Guinness cartoon advertisements that you always see at American pubs. I was going to mail them to my family from the famous Dublin Post Office, but right after I purchased the postcards I remembered that I didn’t have any of their addresses memorized…or written down. That clever idea turned into a stupid idea fairly quickly. But my ideas that turn out to be terrible always tend to amuse me the most, so I was not totally displeased with myself.
After we escaped the souvenir shop, we still had time before the rugby match to wander a little further south of Grafton Street to see St. Stephen’s Catholic Church. The church has been around for a thousand years, just like its protestant counterpart, Christ Church.
It was equally as impressive as Christ Church with its slender, pointed-arch windows, intricate stonework, and massive spires that rose up into the heavens. The difference between Christ Church and St. Stephens was in the surroundings. Christ Church was surrounded on all sides by busy thoroughfares. St. Stephen’s was surrounded by quiet streets and mostly large homes and office buildings. St. Stephen’s was also situated in the middle of a lush courtyard with immaculate landscaping, gravel paths to meander along, and inviting benches to sit and gaze up at the elegant architecture.
Lara looked at the church for a bit. I looked at the church for a bit. I took a picture of Lara looking at the church. Lara took a picture of me looking at the church. After about 30 seconds of looking at the church, we had seen enough.
I asked Lara if she wanted to sit down for a bit on a bench and take in the surroundings. She said matter-of-factly that she would not like to sit on a bench for awhile. I asked her if she would like to meander through the courtyard. She said no. It was cold out there and she was ready to find a warm bar, order a pint, and watch some rugby. That’s why we get along so famously.
We walked back to Grafton Street and started peaking in at the pubs that we passed along the way. Each pub we looked in was more crowded than the last. It was something that had not occurred to us earlier in the day, but all of a sudden we realized that we may not be able to get into a pub to watch the game. Every single pub seemed to be overflowing with patrons. Not only was there no where to sit in any of these pubs, there wasn’t even room to stand. A couple of places had some openings in a nook or a cranny, but those places had no view of a television.
We walked up Grafton Street pedestrian mall looking for an open spot in a pub. We walked back down the Grafton Street pedestrian mall. We attempted to walk to Temple Bar, which was just a few blocks away. It was more crowded at the pubs in Temple Bar than on Grafton Street. We walked back towards Grafton Street and took a wrong turn somewhere and ended up walking thru a few empty side streets and back alleys.
We eventually found a bar near Grafton Street that had some room to stand and also had a view of a television. Lara and I were elated. But it wasn’t a sustained elation. We quickly found out that there was a reason that we found an open place to see the game. The reason was that the game was nearly over. The Irish National Team had secured the victory and most people were just waiting for the clock to run out. We missed the match.
Lara and I looked at one another, shrugged our shoulders in near unison, and went to the bar to order a Guinness. We watched the closing minutes of the rugby match and cheered with the other patrons when the clock ran out and the victory was official for Team Ireland.
Lara and I hung around for awhile after the Ireland v. Wales match. We entertained ourselves by watching another rugby game that came on, as well as an English Premiere League soccer match. We also had to discuss our plans for the evening.
We decided that we should take a Literary Pub Crawl of Dublin that we had seen on the internet. Just about every renowned writer that lived in Dublin seemed to spend large chunks of time in various pubs around the city, and it had become a popular pastime for tourists to be led around to those pubs by a couple of locals that could regale the tourists with tales of drunk Irish writers and poets turning inglorious moments of debauchery into transcendent narratives.
Lara and I arrived at a pub called The Duke about half an hour before the Literary Pub Crawl was scheduled to begin. We had hoped to eat a quick dinner before the tour started, but when we arrived at the pub, we found it overflowing with patrons. The Duke must have been a popular spot to watch English Premiere League Football, because there were about a dozen TVs tuned into the current match, and just about every person in the bar was watching intently.
We walked around the bar and found no place to sit. We found a set of stairs and walked up to the second story bar and found no place to sit. We walked back downstairs and did another lap around the bar and found no place to sit. We walked back upstairs and did another lap around the second story bar and found no place to sit. We did, however, locate the room that we needed to go into for the beginning of the Literary Pub Crawl. We decided to just sit down there and wait for the crawl to begin.
I was excited for the tour because I have always wanted to be a writer. One of my literary heroes is James Joyce; a native of Dublin who wrote a 265,000 word stream-of-consciousness style novel that takes place over the span of one single day in the city of Dublin. I’ve tried several times to read the novel, but it is nearly impossible for me to decipher. I had high hopes that I would hear bits and pieces of his novel on this tour and it might help me to understand how to read his work. I also hoped I could pick up some tips and tricks on how James Joyce, and other Irish writers, crafted their narratives.
The room had typical restaurant seating at booths and tables, but there was also a small stage in the corner of the room. Two middle-aged men walked onto the stage and began a dialogue from a Samuel Beckett story. Beckett was a student of James Joyce and was one of the first postmodern writers in the early 1900’s. Many of his stories deal with the absurdity of life and of characters struggling to find meaning in a meaningless world.
About two lines into the dialogue I turned to Lara and quietly asked her if she could understand what the guys were saying. She kind of shook her head, and we both leaned in closer to the speakers. Didn’t help much. They both had thick Irish accents and were speaking lines that were heavily littered with Irish lingo. I don’t know if it was ironic, or just absurdly appropriate, that we couldn’t understand a story written by a man that loved to write about the meaninglessness of life.
After the Samuel Beckett dialogue, we were lead outside on a short hike to Trinity College. On the steps of one of the main buildings, we were told a story about Oscar Wilde. This story was a little bit easier to understand since our tour guides weren’t speaking in old Irish lingo. They told us that Oscar Wilde was one of the more famous writers that attended Trinity. He often boasted of his drinking abilities. One time while on a tour of United States, he was invited to Leadville, Colorado to view the mining operation there. He ended up drinking all day with the local miners. Apparently, they didn’t like him much because he was a bit of a dandy. So they took him down to the mine and planned on getting him so drunk that he would pass out in the mine and they would leave him down there. But he was such a prolific drinker that all the miners passed out before him, and he walked out of the mine by himself.
Our next stop was at M.J. O’Neill’s pub. O’Neill’s pub is over 300 years old and might be the most well-known pub in the city of Dublin. We stopped out front of the pub and our tour guides told us a story while they stood on the steps of a neighboring church. I’m not sure what they were saying about O’Neill’s, if anything at all. I think I heard something about Jim Plunkett, but I have no idea why they would be talking about Jim Plunkett.
I did hear the tour guides tell us that O’Neill’s was usually too crowded to do any public speaking activities, so the tour would pause for twenty minutes so that we could all go inside independently and have a pint. So we did. And the tour guides were right. The place was absolutely packed. Lara found a place to sit, and I wrestled my way up to the bar between a couple of giant Irishmen that were big enough to be on the Irish National Rugby team, and I ordered two pints. We slugged down our pints while Lara chatted with a couple she met from Chicago. I had nothing to say to these people, so I said nothing to them. When I can find nothing to say, this is usually a good indication that I’m approaching a point of over-intoxication.
The next pub on the Literary Pub Crawl was called The Old Stand. Once again, the tour guides stopped outside of the pub to perform their little dialogue that I could not understand. Then they told us that we could go into the pub independently and have a pint. I was getting bored of this little routine. And I was getting a little tired of standing outside and listening to dialogues that I couldn’t understand. Not to mention the fact that I was very drunk and I hadn’t eaten any dinner. I was ready to be done with this little pub crawl.
We went inside The Old Stand and once again I had to fight my way up to the bar. We found a corner to stand and watch the patrons. There were quite a few older folks, but they were pounding down beers like they were college students. They erupted into various songs that may have been Rugby fight songs, or they may have just been regular old pub drinking songs. This was fairly amusing and gave me a little boost of positive energy to help me endure.
The last pub on the Literary Pub Crawl was called The Davey Byrnes. The tour guides stopped outside the pub to tell us that Samuel Beckett used to live in the apartment above the bar, and there was something else about James Joyce. I don’t really know for sure what they were talking about and I really didn’t care. I was drunk and I was ready to find some food.
We went into The Davey Byrnes and Lara and I shared a pint of Guinness just so that we could say we had a pint in every pub on the Literary Pub Crawl. We slammed down the Guinness and started walking towards our hotel. We knew we had to walk thru Temple Bar to get back and we hoped we’d find a restaurant that was still serving. We were both a little nervous about that because it was fast approaching midnight.
Lara spotted an Indian restaurant on a crowded street in Temple Bar that had patrons at just about every table. We asked if we could get seated and they welcomed us right in. It may have been one of the happiest moments of my life. I was totally famished and I did not have the energy to walk all the way back to the hotel after such a long day of walking, shopping, sightseeing, and literary pub crawling.
We sat down and the waiter put a strange metal contraption on the table. I was very drunk and not thinking quite clearly, so I decided to try to take the metal contraption apart. Lara told me to stop it. I told Lara to stop trying to control me. Lara told me I was going to break the metal contraption. I told Lara that I would not break it. Then I broke it.
It turned out that the metal contraption was a little hot plate for our dishes. When the waiter brought out our dishes and set them on the metal hot plate, the dishes looked lopsided. The waiter looked at me strangely and I smiled back at him. He looked at Lara and she stared back at him with wide eyes. He looked again at the lopsided dish, shook his head, and walked away.
I had reassembled the hot plate, but I couldn’t get the top to sit flat. The waiter knew something happened to the hot plate, but he couldn’t prove it. I happily dug into my Chicken Tikka Masala. I can’t remember what Lara ordered, but she ate it while trying to pretend like she didn’t think I was an idiot. Which must have been quite difficult. When we finished our late supper, we trudged back to the hotel.
We didn’t do much in terms of tourist activities for the day. But we spent the day in the city doing things that most locals might do. I felt like we got to experience the everyday culture of the city. I felt like a Dubliner. I felt drunk.
