Dublin, Ireland

After arriving in Dublin a few days ago, I'm finally adjusting to life here (and to the five-hour time difference). I packed for chilly, rainy weather, but it has been sunny and cloudless every day that I've been here! A local man I met in the beautiful St. Stephen's Green park told me that this is the nicest weather he has seen in Dublin in 15 years. I'll take his word for it, as he has lived in Dublin for 71 years. On my first day in Dublin, I was so tired from traveling that I had no energy to do anything at all. Instead of going to bed in the middle of the afternoon, I went to the local movie theatre to see the new Jurassic World movie, which, let's be honest, I would have done even if I had had the energy to go to a thousand museums.

I'm staying in a hostel on the south side of the Liffey River, which is an ideal location for walking to all of my places of interest. A friend told me that Dublin was a very "walkable city" when she visited last year, so I made the executive decision not to bother with public transportation when I can easily travel by foot.

However, my visit to the Kilmainham Gaol a couple of days ago threw a wrench into these plans when I thought that two miles would take me no time at all, but I ended up having to hurriedly hail my first taxi on the wrong side of the road in order to make it in time for my sold-out tour. I didn't realize that "two miles along the river" meant "will probably take you over an hour and land you on the outskirts of the city," but I made it in time!

The Kilmainham Gaol was never part of my itinerary, but after reading reviews about it and learning its close connection with the revolt against British rule, I knew I had to visit. The jail housed hundreds of prisoners in poor conditions, and after the Easter Uprising of 1916 in central Dublin, the jail was home to several radicals who advocated for Irish independence. Only a few days after their arrests, these political prisoners were executed. These unjust executions threw the city, and the entire country, into even deeper political turmoil, but a halfway-solution would not be negotiated until 1922 with the separation of Northern and Southern Ireland, the former remaining a part of the United Kingdom and the latter claiming independence as a free state, the Republic of Ireland. I learned all of this on my tour of the jail, a cold, stony, eerie building with blood and violence as the mortar between the stones. Ireland's bloody political history is pervasive in Irish literature, not only from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries but also in contemporary works, so this tour gave me some helpful context for my research.

After my tour of the jail, I opted to walk back to central Dublin at a leisurely pace this time -- quite a lovely walk along the Liffey, which only smells a little bad when the wind blows in the wrong direction. I do like Dublin a lot so far. It's not so much a city with "sights" to see but rather a city to wander and experience. The winding cobblestone streets filled with pubs and coffee shops have a unique history that is worth unraveling.

St. Stephen's Green, a lovely park in central Dublin
where I spend a lot of my spare time.

I'm here in Dublin primarily to study the dwellings and landscapes that are immortalized in the works of my favorite Irish writers, including but not limited to James Joyce, William Butler Yeats, Elizabeth Bowen, and Samuel Beckett. Between my long walks and too-frequent coffee breaks, I do try to do some research. Yesterday I went to the Dublin Writers Museum, a small building with a two-room exhibit at the exorbitant price of 12 euro. While the museum did include a self-guided audio tour, interesting information about the evolution and revival of Irish literature, and some very old books, I think it could be much better considering the rich history of the city. I did find a beautiful copy of Joyce's Ulysses printed in 1930 by Sylvia Beach, the founder of Shakespeare & Company, which was my favorite place in Paris during my trip last year! Lots of connections being made purely by accident.

To take a break from the bustle of the city, I took a trip to the west coast of Ireland to see the beautiful Cliffs of Moher. Over a million visitors flock to see the cliffs each year, and it's not hard to see why -- towering over the Atlantic at just over 700 feet at their maximum, the Cliffs of Moher are breathtaking and exhilarating. Before we got to the cliffs, the bus let us off at a small fishing village for a quick break, and I found a couple of donkeys resting in the shade!

When we finally arrived at the Cliffs of Moher, I ventured beyond the boundary walls with the other brave tourists and tried to find the least stable cliff ledges to sit on. I can't explain how incredible it was on the top of the windy cliffs. It was such a beautiful and sunny day, and I now face the ultimate irony: my fair Irish skin was burned by the hot Irish sun. But it was absolutely worth it.

I made a new friend at the cliffs, Iya. She's from Japan, but
she has been working with horses for a year in Ireland.

Now I'm back in Dublin, and I have plenty of things planned for the next few days. Tonight, I'm seeing a production of Ulysses at the historic Abbey Theatre. I won't be doing much else, though -- a half-pint of Guinness was plenty for me for a while.