Westward Movement

 
My final day in Dublin was spent much like the previous three: walking around. Exploring. Most museums are closed Mondays, which I’d forgotten until Sunday at about 4:00.  When I finally got up and out of the hostel the next morning, I just took off walking again, starting with the north side, across the bridge from Trinity and up O’Connell Street, where a parade of statues commemorates the heroes of Irish independence. I ambled along the river, poking my head into little book shops, and then north and east, peering in the windows of the specialty stores that cater to Dublin’s sizable Polish population. Aside from O’Connell Street, a major shopping arterial, the area north of the Liffey is noticeably dingier. If you go even a block up from the river, the streets are grubbier, the storefronts less inviting, the activity more day-to-day and less geared for weekend visitors. All the areas that guidebooks warn women to stay away from at night--Gardiner Street, Phoenix Park--are on the north side.

Returning to the south, I finally strolled the narrow, cobbled streets of Temple Bar, a Mecca of tourist tat during the day and a Mecca of inebriation by night. Its shops are brimming with plastic trinkets and tacky Chinese-made Ireland shirts. Its pubs, old as they may be, cater so thoroughly to tourists that they feel no more genuinely Irish than the Irish pubs at home, Blarney Stone this and Tir Na Nog that. I find it unfortunate that so many visitors to this lovely city never really leave this neighborhood. But I suppose that’s true of any major city. I’m sure tourists in my hometown don’t see the same Seattle I do, just the ferry magnets and the souvenir-sized pieces of Portlock salmon, cunningly hidden in boxes which greatly exaggerate the size (and arguably the quality) of the contents.

Late in the day, at the end of my walk, I found myself at City Hall, the basement of which has been whitewashed and fitted with a relatively engaging multi-media exhibition chronicling the history of the city, from the Vikings to the Celtic Tiger. There are artifacts, swords and ceremonial garb and unearthed Viking coinage, and a series of videos which cover specific periods and events and are all incongruously narrated by Englishmen. But it was worth my 2 Euro (student price) and a decent use of my idle time. I climbed the stairs to the main entrance, where the lovingly-restored rotunda gleams above a polished marble floor.

I considered taking an afternoon bus to Galway, leaving time for the National Museum of History and Archaeology the next morning, but decided it would be best to get going. I found a bus service that runs back and forth on one route, Galway-Dublin non-stop, departing every hour most of the day, and booked the 10:15 from Georges Quay. Galway lies almost due west of Dublin, on the opposite coast, nestled along the northern edge of Galway Bay. Though it is certainly big enough to call a city, it manages to feel quite small, probably owing to its rapid growth. Thirty years ago, this was a town of 20,000--but the population has since quadrupled. Despite the recent economic troubles felt the world over, Galway’s booming tech and medical-supply industries keep it thriving.

And it may be that seaside-town feel that makes Galway so immediately welcoming. Its little center boasts a network of pedestrian-only lanes which put Dublin’s Grafton Street to shame, all dotted with brightly-colored boutique storefronts with cutesy names and carefully hand-painted signage. Of course, it also has a McDonald’s and a Domino’s and a Subway, but it can’t all be charming. I stopped in to a cathedral which I can only assume was the Protestant cathedral--it was sans-pomp, sans gold leaf bric-a-brac, sans grim Madonna and Child paintings--and spent most of my short time there looking at the local kids’ Mother’s Day art. The grotesque crayon portraits and brutally honest poetry were highlights of my day.

I returned to Kinlay House and booked coach tours for the next couple of days. I am generally not a fan of organized touring, as I like to be allowed to decide how long I spend in a particular place and not feel like I’m just being herded through the same series of photo opportunities and gift shops as everyone else. But the last time I refused to take day trips in order to avoid organized tours, I ended up spending one night here and one night there in order to see the things I wanted to see and as a consequence spent way too much time traveling between towns and booking transportation to get me from town center to monument. So this time I decided not to spend fewer than two nights anywhere and to try my best to make a base somewhere and take daytrips to minimize transportation costs and increase the number of sights I might be shuttled to by a knowledgeable local guide.

Wednesday was the Burren and the Cliffs of Moher tour, south of Galway in County Clare. I boarded a small coach with a dozen other young people, many of whom I recognized from the common rooms of the hostel, and together we wound our way through the southeastern suburbs of the city and down along the edge of the bay. Our guide, Martin, a friendly gent of 55 or 60, introduced himself and the day’s itinerary and told us he’d have to focus on the road for the next 20 minutes and then we’d turn onto a smaller road and he’d resume his narration. He also introduced the music he put on, an Irish singer-songwriter playing in a fairly traditional style. I watched the houses go by for a moment before turning my nose down into my book.

I looked up from Frank McCourt just in time to see the signs for Limerick as we turned west, following the edge of the bay. The further we drove into the countryside, the more it looked like the Ireland in my mind, the Ireland of postcards and calendars, of verdant pastures grazed by slow-moving cows and their offspring and hemmed in by dry stone walls. Zipping along the N67 we passed a school where children in matching sweaters and clean white collars ran and jumped rope in the yard. Under blue skies and great billowy clouds, donkeys lazed in the sun in front of whitewashed thatch-roof houses and crumbling stone cottages.

We rounded a corner and before us rose the Burren, a broad area just across the county line made up of huge hills of limestone, a karst area long-since exposed by millions of years of sea-floor uplift followed by glacial sculpting and centuries of wind and water. The glaciers that scraped across this landscape left the same sort of “erratics” as we have in the Pacific Northwest, the boulders that the ice picked up elsewhere and deposited in otherwise flat terrain. The little bus clattered up into the hills, providing a view back across the bay to Galway City and the countryside through which we’d just driven. Up in the rocky hills, there was a little grass and some little pink alpine flowers, but in the valley below, it was all lush grass and bright yellow gorse. We stopped in the town of Doolin for lunch, a lovely chowder full of seafood collected from the bay right across the road.

Ten minutes more brought us to the famous Cliffs of Moher. It’s easy to see why they are so popular, both with tourists and with filmmakers (Cliffs of Insanity, anyone?). The official pathway is pretty short, only offering a full cliff view from the northern end and hence lit only from behind at midday. I followed the path to its southern end, where the four-to-five-foot wall curves around and ends and two large signs on the other side warn of private property in several languages. A well-worn path continues between the signs and I could see dozens of people beyond, walking on out of view or picnicking in the grassy patches. I hesitated a moment but soon clambered over the low point in the wall where I saw people coming back the other way. My disobedience of posted ordinances was rewarded with a long sunny walk along the cliff tops and stunning views from the south. At times, the path came dangerously close to the edge, within a few feet, and I took my time. When it was that close, a second path ran in the space between enormous upright stones and the barbed-wire fence, both probably put in place by the property owner to keep his livestock from stumbling off the edge. At the cliff tops both north and south, there were herds of scruffy cows grazing and looking sideways for anyone coming too close. You’d think with the constant flow of people, they’d be used to it, but they were quite alert. All in all, I greatly enjoyed my visit to the Cliffs. The visitor center, which I didn’t get a chance to explore, is tastefully set into the hill below the path, so unobtrusive you might not notice it there if it didn’t face the carpark.

Our next stop was Poulnabrone Portal Tomb, a small dolmen (as dolmens go) with a capstone of about 5000 tons. It was interesting and all, but I found I was far more intrigued by the surrounding landscape, as this was my first chance to get out of the coach and walk around on the moonscape of limestone. The surface of the Burren is composed of a series of clints and grykes, flat or pocketed sections of limestone and the deep, water-carved crevices which created them. The grykes (also spelled with an i) can be quite deep, up to several feet, and are home to a surprising variety of plant life. A couple of years ago, while preparing for my last trip, I checked out all the DVDs I could from the library about Britain and Ireland. Though I didn’t make it to the Burren on that trip, I remembered a Rick Steves bit about it where he visited with a botanist or a geologist or some such expert who told him about all the arctic, alpine and Mediterranean flora that find a home in the limestone. It’s quite porous and also holds heat much better than other types of stone. That, combined with the warming air of the gulf stream, makes it an ideal habitat for some flowers originally from warmer climes, their seeds brought here in glacial deposits or on the wind.

Our final stop was at the underwhelming Aillwee Caves, the ½ kilometer tour of which they’re only able to stretch to 35 minutes by moving and speaking very slowly. When we left the caves, Martin popped out the Dubliners CD we’d been listening to and announced that this next one is the new album from the first artist we’d heard, the lady folksinger. I looked out the window as we made our way down out of the hills and thought back on my day. I was just wondering what my family at home were up to while I was out doing this and what song should come on but "River" by Bill Staines, as sung by Lady Irish.*  I nearly cried. A great wave of nostalgia and love of home and family welled up in my chest and in my throat and I couldn’t help but smile, turning my wet eyes west, across the bay to the Aran Islands, the only land between this coastline and North America.

Some day when the flowers are blooming still

Some day when the grass is still green

My rolling waters will ‘round me bend

And flow into the open sea

I sat there listening, marveling that I may be the only person in the entire country who would react to that song in that way, when what should come on two tracks later but "Field Behind The Plow". What a way to end my day.

* For those unfamiliar: I grew up listening to Bill Staines and Stan Rogers ("Field Behind the Plow"). Their music is some of the first I can remember hearing as a child, at home, on camping trips and driving to visit family in Oregon. "River" was the first song I learned to play on the guitar, when I was about 11.

Liftoff!

 
The night before my departure, I finished packing around midnight. I was exhausted but I couldn’t sleep; I probably got about three hours altogether. Then it was up at 5:00 and off to the airport at a quarter to six. Got through security with no fuss and had some coffee and a bagel while I waited.

Near the end of my first flight, I started feeling nauseous. Since I’ve never had any trouble with motion- or air-sickness, I wrote it off as hunger. So I got some water and some ginger ale when the little cart came bumping down the aisle and started thinking about what I might find to eat at the airport in Philadelphia during my four-and-a-half-hour layover. But when we started our descent, it got worse. By the time we touched down, I was sure I was going to need the little bag poking out of the seat pocket in front of me. As we taxied to the gate, it was all I could do not to throw up. The woman to my right eyed me nervously when I clamped my hand over my mouth. I tried to distract myself with bland, boring thoughts in hopes that they would be like mental saltines and calm my stomach. It worked well enough that I managed to keep it all down, but the first thing I did after disembarking was buy some Dramamine.

Had a little lunch and went to sit at my gate for the next few hours. The Dramamine labeling warned of “marked drowsiness” as a side effect and I didn’t want to take it if it was going to cause me to fall asleep there in the terminal. I was already pretty markedly drowsy from too little sleep and feeling ill earlier, and kind of wanted to save up all that tired and just sleep on the plane to minimize my jetlag. So I checked my e-mail and hummed a little lullaby for Eyjafjallajokull, the Icelandic volcano that has been wreaking havoc on European air travel recently. If it would just rest a bit, I wouldn’t be stuck in Philly.

I like to think it worked. We boarded on time and shortly after liftoff were greeted from the cockpit with an announcement that the flight would be a little longer than scheduled due to the volcano’s ash cloud shifting, forcing us to fly a more southerly route than usual. As I had no connection to miss in Dublin, I was happy to have the extra time to sleep. I chewed up a couple of chalky, orange-flavored Dramamine tablets but managed to stay awake long enough to eat. About an hour into the flight, we were served a little dinner, some unsurprisingly mediocre chicken accompanied by half an ounce of lettuce (with two tablespoons of dressing on the side) and a small field stone masquerading as a multi-grain dinner roll. Got about six hours of sleep, arriving in Dublin shortly before 10am, more than an hour later than scheduled. The man at passport control was skeptical when I told him I’d be in the country for two and a half months but had no intention of earning any wages. When asked what I’d be doing all that time, I said, “Vacationing. Farming.” He looked at me. “Fairmin‘? What kind of fairmin‘?” “Vegetables, animals, whatever needs doing.” “And why would you do that, work for free on someone’s farm? What do you get out of it, besides the experience?” I told him it was in exchange for room and board and he asked if I knew anyone else who had done this. I assured him it was part of a large organization, Willing Workers on Organic Farms (alternately Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms) and that I’m really only in Ireland as a stopover on my way to Nepal to volunteer in an orphanage. He shook his head a little as he stamped my passport with a 90-day entry stamp and said, “Ye’re wonderful people. Enjoy yer stay.”

Once in town, I left my larger bag in the luggage room at the hostel and took a brisk walk around the neighborhood in an attempt to wake up a bit and burn time until 2:00 check-in. I was trying so hard not to sleep at all, to just push through that first day and get on Dublin time, but once I’d settled into my room, I couldn’t resist allowing myself a one-hour nap, followed by another long walk, west along the quays in the late-afternoon sun and back down Dame St. to the hostel for supper.

The next day, I spent a long time wandering around Merrion Square and down through Georgian Dublin, with its tidy frontages, street after street of light brown brick with white trim and brightly colored doors. Many of them still have old-fashioned fixtures, centered brass doorknobs and decorative knockers. Most of these are lion’s heads or women’s faces, with a couple sleeker, simpler designs and one particularly phallic exception. Stopped in to the National Gallery, lingering over the prints on the mezzanine level and skimming over all the awkward religious allegories and painterly landscapes of Connemara that I had seen last time I was in town.

Continued my stroll east, across the canal to Beggar’s Bush, a neighborhood second only to Dolphin’s Barn as Dublin’s most amusingly-named. There I visited the National Print Museum, housed in the one large room of an old chapel, packed with old printing presses and boxes full of metal type. Inside, I could smell the ink still stuck in the crevices and serifs of the characters, the same warm, oily scent from room 210 in the Art Building at the University of Washington. I thought of Larry Sommers, the printmaking technician and my papermaking instructor in college, who passed away very suddenly last spring. I could almost hear him there, whistling to himself, shuffling slowly amongst the presses, happy to explain their history and operation to anyone curious enough to ask.

From there I found my way back to the canal and followed it north toward the river, pausing to watch stubbly men lower barges through the locks. When I stepped out of the shadows of the new Docklands high rises, the green-brown water of the Liffey brought to mind an oil painting I’d just seen at the National Gallery, of spectators watching people swimming in it. Maybe it’s because I grew up on the Duwamish, but I wouldn’t dip my big toe in that river, much less my whole self. Sure is nice for a walk, though, with its bridges and its boardwalks. Sometimes I wish our river was like that, central and social and attractively tree-lined, like the Thames or the Willamette, what I’ve seen of them. All we’ve got is Superfund status and a little park full of toxic mud, romantically named “T-107.”

While the other girls in my dorm (and the rest of the city, no doubt) were out on the town, I spent my Saturday night trying to figure out what to do with myself for the several days I have open after one of my farm-stays cancelled on me just days before my arrival in the country. I found another farm to take me for the first ten days or so, leaving me with 11 or 12 to sort out. Slept in this morning and took a leisurely stroll back to Merrion Square before visiting the Natural History Museum. Called the “dead zoo” by many, this museum was closed altogether last time I was in town due to a large staircase collapsing. My Lonely Planet book, which was printed only a couple of months ago, claims it’s closed until 2011, so I was a little irked to find it was up and running and I’d wasted the longer-opening-hours days not going because I thought I couldn’t. So I went today, Sunday, when it is open from 2-5pm and packed to the gills with small children.

Which was fine, really. If I’d been a child in Dublin, this would have been a favorite place to visit, and it was actually kind of fun to watch them squeal over the scale or strangeness of the Grizzly and the elephant, the mandrill and the pangolin. The density of taxidermied creatures and the skeletons of their brethren was quite a spectacle. Most were packed nose-to-tail in large cases, with larger specimens on stands on the creaky hardwood floor or hanging from the ceiling. From the second floor, you could see up to the third and fourth, which were closed due to the high volume of visitors and relative lack of emergency exits. The heads of various antlered animals hung around the railing above, glass-eyed and patchy-haired. Most of the collection was obviously quite old, their hides cracked from the combination of aging and antiquated preservation technology.

One more day in old familiar Dublin and it’s on to new territory, to Galway, to the rugged, wind-beaten Atlantic coast, to the true beginning of my new adventures in Ireland.

P.S. Happy Mum’s Day.