Thursday 23 May
After breakfast at the guest house, we had a quick look around the Franciscan abbey in Clonmel (lit a couple of candles for mum and dad as it just seems the right thing to do, admired the modern stained glass windows)
We also had a look around the Main Guard, originally the courthouse of the Ormond Palatinate (the local chief) which has been beautifully restored - though apart from a couple of lovely temporary exhibitions and one showing the restoration project, really not sure what it's used for now, but we received a very kind welcome from the two stewards at the reception!
On the road again then bound for Dublin. Much of the route was motorway, and the closer we got to the city centre, the more it felt like being on the south circular! Neil successfully navigated us to our accommodation - but we weren't quite prepared for the fact that the left turn we needed to take seemed to be no longer available unless we mounted the pavement (which we later saw the locals doing), so we turned off right instead so that we were about 150 yards away. We parked up only to find parking was chargeable, but there was no meter, so we checked with a cheery local (the kind of old timer who knows everything that's going on down his street) who told us that "they don't come down here any more, sure you'll be grand". We left the car in position for two days - though I have to confess I kept checking to make sure I hadn't been towed or clamped!
We settled into the apartment which was clean and modern - should be nice at the price we paid (damn the spike in demand caused by the Europa cup final!). And this time, the instructions on the TV were in German so we still couldn't get it to work! (To be fair, we reported it and someone came round the next day to sort it out.) We had a bite to eat, consulted the map and some leaflets and strode off purposefully into the city centre.
We'd decided on going to the GPO Museum, a key element in the 1916 Rising, and half of it's still a very beautiful functioning post office with lots of shiny wood and ceramic light fittings. In the museum (which was 15 euros for seniors), the story of the 1916 rising is told in great detail (with quite a lot of repetition!) with lots of interactive displays, video content, and replicas of contemporary posters and flyers.
It was time for Murphy's ice cream, as we had researched its whereabouts, and after a sugar hit (it gives proper gelato a run for its money, wish it was available in the UK!) we basically bimbled about. Hell, Dublin was busy, and it felt a bit of a culture shock even after Cork - lots of student groups, lots of tourists, and sadly the inevitable quota of people down on their luck, or just addicts. One of the most depressing things we witnessed was people rooting through bins for empty plastic bottles because they could return them to machines and get original deposits back. What did I expect, it's a big city, but when you're on your jollies the naive bit of you wants everything to be lovely and for the underbelly to stay out of sight.
We had a wander through Temple Bar and opted for Irish stew for an early dinner, with a melodic duo of a guitarist and fiddle play singing and playing kind of Irish versions of popular songs close enough to enjoy it but far enough away for it to be unobtrusive. Probably not very authentic, but we were flagging and not really up for standing up in a crowded pub to be deafened by the real thing. Back to the apartment for an early as we needed to be out first thing in the morning for a Guru walk.
Friday 24 May
Last full day, and sadly it dawned with drizzle which persisted until lunchtime - hey ho, but we were suitably dressed. Caught the bus part way into the city and had to walk the rest of the way to make sure we were on time for the walk, and we met the Guru guide on St Stephen's Green near the Wolfe Tone statue. A well-to-do Protestant lawyer who became an Irish revolutionary in support of Irish independence, he was sentenced to death for treason having sought help from the French, but committed a very grisly suicide.
We also stopped by a statue commemorating what we would call the Potato Famine of the 1840s, but is known in Ireland as the Hunger, reason being that because poor people owned no land, they had nothing to grow except potatoes and the blight that poisoned and destroyed the crops ensured that probably a million or more people died - the situation was made so much worse by economics. Ireland would have a much bigger population now had it not been for famine, but so many people left to seek a better life in the UK, America and even as slaves in the Caribbean, it devastated the numbers.
St Stephen's Green has been around as a park for centuries, but the rebels of the Easter Rising foolishly dug it up thinking that (as over in Belgium) laying siege to the city authorities via trench warfare was a good idea. It wasn't. Many of them were picked off by snipers on the upper floors of the nearby hotel, but the good news was that the park keeper negotiated a twice-daily ceasefire so that he could feed the ducks - it's true!
We had a full-blown history lesson or two near Lemister House (government building) and the Library (lovely building which we took a closer look at later)
and of course Trinity College. The guide suggested there might be other sights we might want to spend our money on than the Book of Kells, where for 25 euros you can stand in a small booth with gazillions of other people to look at a book with text you won't understand anyway. So we took his advice, and just had a short stroll around the Trinity courtyard, which was swarming with tourists - must be more than a bit annoying for students and academics trying to cross campus!
We walked down Grafton Street and through Temple Bar -
from the latter we went into Meeting Square which is a little cultural cul-de-sac at the back of the Ark Theatre (the roof of which can be opened up in good weather). Also there was the Irish Photo Museum - we went back there after the walk to see a small exhibition of colour photos from The Troubles in Belfast by Japanese war photographer Akhiko Okamura. They were incredible pictures, and notable because they're in colour - if you cast your mind back to any of the photos capturing Belfast from the 1970s, you'll probably remember them as exclusively monochrome. We felt as though we had come full circle, having begun our trip in Belfast.
We finished up the walk at Dublin Castle - not a castle at all, but we did learn the origins of the name Dublin (duv lin = black water, from Vikings!)
We had passed by a bank that had been turned into a pub - fairly common in London - and the guide had told us that beyond all the scaffolding on the outside, the interior was beautiful Art Nouveau - so it seemed like a good place for lunch, notwithstanding a place to warm up (soooo cold because we were damp!). It didn't disappoint - beautiful interior, and probably the best fish and chips I've ever had (who know hake could be so flaky?!)
After a bit more wandering
and seeking out a final dollop of Murphy's ice cream, my legs were just cream crackered, so we got on the tram to head up to the Hugh Lane gallery near Parnell Square. Apart from some irritatingly-placed descriptors on the top floor, we saw some lovely work by artists like Grace Henry, Manet, and Jack Butler Yeats, plus some amazing stained glass.
Even more notable at the gallery is the Kensington studio of Dublin-born Francis Bacon which has been completely transplanted and reproduced in the ground floor gallery - it's really interesting if totally chaotic (and behind glass so apologies for the lack of photgraphic evidence).
By now if legs could talk they would be screaming, so we staggered back to the aparment, I stuck my legs up the wall and watched some TV (some kind soul had come round and fixed it) with a nice cup of tea until it was time for us to go out to the Gate Theatre, for the first night of Circle, Mirror, Transformation by Annie Baker, which I'd booked a while back as I'd read the play and really liked it. The play's about small-town drama class and the real-life dramas which transpire. Niamh Cusack was in the key role of Marty, and it was performed in traverse - which didn't always work, but the performances were good - needed a bit more pace but then it was only opening night.
We had to go straight back to the apartment at the end of the show (still light!) as we had a stupidly early start for the ferry to Holyhead. Woke up an hour before the 4.30am alarm meaning I had slept around 4 hours - gah! We finished our packing, ate our remaining food, tidied up after ourselves and packed up the car for the last time - of course, the weather was heading towards glorious as we drove the short distance to the port.
After a smooth crossing and a little nap, we disembarked just before 10am drove through beautiful Snowdonia - we've resolved to go to the JLP property at Bala to enjoy it some more maybe next year. I dropped Neil off just after 5pm and got home around 6pm with a gammy knee (I swear it was RSI from constant clutch control and gear changing for nearly 1500 miles) and the cough I'd had since the beginning of the holiday.
But it was all lovely. Neil and I make good travelling companions, he's lovely company, and I'm eternally grateful he was happy to spend a fortnight with me. What sticks in the memory? The landscape, the quirkinesss, the history, Dingle gin, Murphy's ice cream, chowder, arum lilies everywhere, the cheesy Celtic souvenir shops with the Feck off you feckin eejit/gobshite mugs and above all, the warmth of the welcome from the locals - dia dhuit, as they say in Irish, or as Dave Allen used to say "May (your) god go with you". Thank you, Emerald Isle.
