Dia duit agús sláinte!

The title means 'Hello and good health!' in Gaelic, the native tongue of Ireland, where a large group of students from ICLC went to spend the weekend in Dublin...including myself. It was the longest trip that the school has scheduled; we left Friday morning and came back late Sunday night and actually ended up flying on Aer Lingus (crappy airline, try not to fly with them). Sadly, the main discovery of the trip was that Ireland is not all rolling hills, sheep and drunken redheads. Dublin was mainly industrial, had little to no sheep that were sighted...but was still filled with drunken redheads.

We touched down around noon and waited around for the coach to arrive, who then took us to our hotel. It was a really nice one that fed us a full Irish breakfast, which consisted of rashers and sausages, black and white pudding (sesame seeds and pig's blood compressed into half-dollar sized patties), eggs, hashed potatoes and croissants. YUM. After dropping our stuff off at the hotel, we popped back onto the bus and took a tour of the city in the coach with Sarah, one of the administration at the London Centre, doing the city commentary, which was ridiculously funny. Normally we have Bill, the director of the Centre and omniscient historical/cultural/literary guru, doing the narration and he goes on these long-winded historical stories about the area we're in that are really fascinating. But Sarah would read two sentences off of the paper she had been given and followed that up with, "...and that's all I've got." Hilarious. Since we were running so late, we only stopped for 25 minutes in the National Museum of Ireland to see a lot of weapons, a giant Viking ship and creepy mannequins before being dropped off in central Dublin for a couple of hours. Luke and I found this relatively inexpensive crepe and panini place tucked away in a little alleyway that had amazing crepes for dinner purposes.

Shortly after this, we regrouped at the Ha'penny Bridge Pub where we began our musical pub crawl. A pub crawl is a gathering by three or more individuals who travel from pub to pub, having a pint along the way at each pub. Yes, our school organized this. However, this was not any ordinary pub crawl; this was a MUSICAL pub crawl. Irish musicians accompanied us on a glorious parade as we bought a pint, sat down and were taught Irish folk songs while we sipped from our foaming glasses. Some had more than others and...well...as our guide taught us to do, if you can't sing well, sing loud. From there, we walked to Brannigan's, on the opposite side of the river Liffey, where eight people (including myself) were put into the centre of the room to learn a traditional Irish partner jig. It was probably the closest to authentically Hollywood Irish that any of us had ever come. From there, we met up with Sara and Alexa and a group of other people to wander the Temple Bar area for the rest of the night.

Saturday morning, we were out of the hotel by 9 a.m. in time for Bill's first walk to Sandy Cove. Bill's walks are very educational and quite extensive; this one was no exception. However, it was rather frigid and windy, not to mention a slight stinging rain was falling to complement the surging ocean spray that dashed its way over the walls every 15 seconds like clockwork. In a dark sort of way, it was beautiful. You could see through the eyes of Joyce and Burns and realize what made them write as they did about the Irish coastline as you took in the shushing crash of the Atlantic against the rocks and the blowing goldenrod that grew tangled and wicked up the hillsides. Even though spring had not yet fully awakened, it was still breathtaking to walk to the tops of the hills and cliffs above the eastern shores of Dublin and see something as chillingly beautiful as this was. Upon our descent, most of us descended upon the Guinness factory and toured the brewery, receiving a trophy in the form of a freshly pulled pint at our journey's end in the Gravity Bar overlooking Dublin. The domination of Guinness in the region reminded me of a Shaw play called Major Barbara, where a munitions factory does the same with a town and rules the town with a gentle fist. We did some souvenir shopping afterward, then grabbed a quick dinner in Temple Bar before walking around the city some more. By that point, we hadn't sat down for more than (not over, this is quantity we're talking about) three minutes, so Luke and I decided to head back to the hotel before going out again. We ended up reading for two hours and by the time someone called us to go out, it was 11:30 at night and there was no way we could go and still have energy left.

Sunday was another walk with Bill, charged with the same energy that the entire weekend had been filled with...oy vey. It began to rain around 10:30 and kept on going through the early afternoon, so by the time that we had hiked from "night town" (their red light district, where James Joyce hung out as a teen and where Bill ended our walk) back to Temple Bar. Greg, Luke, me and our friend Sam went to the Irish Film Institute, which was actually really cool and filled with Irish cinema, obviously, but a good amount of British, as well. We ate lunch there and finished souvenir shopping. As much as Ireland was an amazing trip, by far the best ICLC trip we've taken, I hope never to see that much green in one store ever again. The country is ridiculously commercialized...probably worse than Rome, in fact! (Zing! European insult!) We wandered a bit more and then took the DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) back to our hotel, where we headed back to the hotel, got our luggage and went to the airport to head back to London.

And now I raise a toast for Ireland, land of my mother's ancestors, well known for its drink, love of green and redheads, and famed beautiful countrysides featuring sheep, verdant hills and the occasional poop-filled cobblestone street. Huzzah for Eire!

Pictures from this weekend:
Sláinte! - Dublin