TRAVEL Series
This glorious planet was made to traverse. And Rant! is here to tell you about it – the good, the bad and the ugly. It’s all marvelous irrespective!
A couple of weeks ago, I spent four brilliant days trekking around Dublin with husband, who time and time again, proves himself to be the most awesome travel partner in the universe. The amount of time we spend laughing is beyond normal. He was happy to go on a literary walk of the city with me and was most accommodating of my excitement over some historically significant literary buildings and a bunch of statues, including a reclining Oscar Wilde on a rock and a Patrick Kavanagh sitting on a bench. He did get a bit testy next to the James Joyce statue as I derided him over his apparent lack of enthusiasm about taking a quick snap with me next to the literary icon. Apparently Mr Joyce need not rely on Ulysees to provoke dissension. In fact, the guy doesn’t even need to be alive to provoke an argument. Okay, so maybe it’s not poor James Joyce’s fault. I am aware that occasionally I can be unreasonable. Husband meandered around the Dublin Writer’s Museum with me and listened to the entire audio guide tour. I may have crossed the line when I insisted on walking all the way to Dame Street to get ‘Roast in a Roll’ at Gruel, thereafter, deciding that it would be a good idea to visit the National Gallery – which we had walked past twice just an hour earlier. It was at this point that the sarcasm came spewing out of poor husband: “I know, let’s go on a walking holiday! Why don’t we walk to Dublin”. After which he told me that I had the logic of a woman – walking past something twice, walking kilometers away from it and then deciding to go back and see it. Despite the fact that my womanhood was being mocked to shit, I couldn’t stop laughing. I laughed and laughed and laughed…and laughed some more, even though it probably wasn’t all that funny to him – he was the one playing “work-horse”, as he so aptly puts it. Note: our relationship is characterised by many a happy hour spent laughing at one another’s misfortunes.
We visited the Jameson Distillery, had some Irish coffee and some Jameson and cranberry juice and a couple of shots at the whiskey tasting. And then went shopping at Tesco, which was a challenge to say the least as my decision making skills had been slightly impaired. Let’s just say…another whiskey, and I would have purchased the entire chocolate isle and every St Paddy’s Day souvenir I found. Green is so pretty. The Guinness Storehouse taught us two great lessons. Number One: Guinness is gross and disgusting. But the 360 degree view of Dublin from the Gravity Bar is amazing! It was way cool to see the city from on high. The second lesson comes in the form of a guy named Tom. Here’s the story: We were in a corner shop on Dame Street. Husband was at the till paying for a chewing gum (to break a note so that we would have change to pay for our bus trip back to the airport) and I was standing at the shop window on bus alert. That’s when a pierced sixteen or seventeen year old guy started waving at me – probably because I was staring right at him. Well it looked that way at least. Being my friendly self, I smiled and waved back. Not wanting to be thought of as rude, upon exiting the shop, I walked over to the dude let him know that I hadn’t actually been staring at him. Tom hugged me like a long lost relative and a conversation ensued, part of which went as follows: Tom, “So where are you from?” Me: “South Africa but we are living in London.” Tom, “Oh cool, I worked in Camden for a while.” Me, “Hey! I work in Camden.” Tom, “Do you know Cody?” Me, “Uh…no…where’s he from?” Tom: “He’s from South Africa – I met him in a bar once.” Me: “Dude! There are a lot of people living in South Africa.” Lesson Two: an excess of Guinness consumption is likely to destroy brain cells.
Moving further a field, we spent a beautiful morning in the coastal town of Howth. I felt like Kate Winslet at the bow of the Titanic – wind blowing in my hair as I stared out at the glorious blue ocean. Magical. After walking along the cliffs and admiring the scenery husband decided to walk along some random path and accused me of not being adventurous when I said that it didn’t look like it went anywhere. Um…did it go anywhere? No, it did not. So our little adventure involved muddying up my shoes and getting brambles stuck in my hands as I grabbed on to them to save myself from falling down the cliff to my death. So maybe not to my death…just on my ass. But it was hazardous nonetheless. I was compensated with a lovely dinner of fish and chips in a traditional Irish pub (The Quays) in the Temple Bar district. Of course we had some more Irish coffee and husband enjoyed his cider and Irish coffee all too well…luckily we had no more Tesco shopping to do.
One of my most favourite places in Dublin is Kilmainham Gaol, which oozed with atmosphere and history. I could vividly 
imagine the inhabitants of the jail lurking around two hundred years ago. The angst and terror of the prisoners was tangible. It would make a brilliant set for a horror movie, and was in fact used as the set for a most excellent Daniel Day Lewis film In the Name of the Father [A quick promo plug: watch it if you haven't seen it]. The jail was built in 1796 and was abandoned in 1924. A process of restoration commenced in 1960 by a voluntary Kilmainham Gaol Restoration Committee. Members of opposing political factions (radical republicans and conservatives) worked together with the common goal of preserving the jail as a monument of Irish nationalism. The voluntary work lasted for almost thirty years until the jail was handed over to the State in 1986. We walked on the spot where the political leaders of the 1916 Easter uprising were executed by a firing squad. In the previous centuries, executions were performed by hanging, which initially occurred above the door to the entrance of the jail. Crowds from across the city would come to watch the executions in hope of witnessing what was called the ‘Kilmainham Tango’ – dead man’s twitch. After a while, executions were moved indoors. We went into the room where the hangings were conducted. It was weird to see old photographs of people who were jailed for crimes including buggery and larceny. Theft was prominent, particularly during the famine, which lasted from 1845-1850. Prostitution was also a biggy. The history of the city and the country is most poignantly and sombrely felt in the prison.
We stood in awe of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral – the church in which Handel’s Messiah was first performed (by a combined choir from St Patrick’s and Christchurch Cathedrals). We saw the Black Church, which stands right next to a dodgy council flat North of the Liffey. We had coffee and the yummiest tarts at Queen of Tarts. We went on a tour of the magnificent Malahide Castle. We walked next to The Liffey and admired the boats, artwork and buildings and soaked in the atmosphere of the city. Dublin Castle was awesome – containing artefacts from Versailles, a passage straight out of the White House (same architect – yes, it’s true), a forgotten underground river that caused part of the Castle to collapse in the 80s, we saw the room Margaret Thatcher preferred to stay in, and the table where politicians sat whilst negotiating a peace agreement for Ireland. We came face to face with the Book of Kells preserved in the Trinity College library, which boasts rows and rows of books giving off that old, booky, leathery smell that makes me so happy.
…we breathed in history.
