Dublin Baile Atha Cliath

Costick67 was here

My report on this grand city on the Liffey has arrived. I am now sober.
A hearty 'Pog mo thon' to you from the verdant isle.

Language:
Dubb Linn= Black pool, or pool black (the "English" name for the town)

Baile Atha Cliath= Ford of the river
(Gaelic. because it's Ireland, they get 2 names for the place)

I spent 60 hours in the Dub. The sun came out. People fell out of the pubs, looked up at the sky and then went screaming back inside. More about the reasons for avoiding the pubs late, but I was in the main park for a whole afternoon soaking it up, smoking a cigar and enjoying the scenery.
I found the people friendly, especially when compared to London. The big L is so sour, so self-absorbed.
I'll try to make the story and photos interesting:

As I said, I was a little drunk. I got soused in London, because I was so upset at not being able to afford to get drunk in Dublin. How was I supposed to commune with their great authors if I wasn't three sheets to the wind?


The cheapest pub in town. Unfortunately, there's no ceiling and no taps. The place is derelict. Go to a pub with a roof, or a patio and you pay at least 4 european currency units for a pint, or is it a litre?

The name of the pub, Barley, goes to show you that Ireland, despite all the crying, was not a potato monoculture. Unless you think that Yeats was getting his inspiration from a bottle of ABSOLUTEly Ireland.


I actually had a hard time getting into town scaling these here town walls. Hard to do after a few beers.

Dublin is about more than drink. Here are three wild statues hinting at the consumption of rather more way-out substances, outside of a Afghan pot/heroin/halal collective.




This is the Half penny Bridge (or "Ha penny", for drunks). It used to be a toll bridge across the Liffey. If I were poor, I'da just got a free bath crossing the river below.
In modern times, it's still a toll bridge due to the number of street people and Gypsies whose begging bowls you have to walk around.

Even though I was quite sober taking this photo of the National Library, I coulda died because I had to go into the parliament compound to take it. When the staff told me, my response was "you learn something every day, if you survive long enough."

If I had been drunk, you'da read about me in the news.

Drunken Tourist Dies Clutching "Disposable Camera"

-a camouflaged explosive device?

In truth, If I'da wanted to blow up, all I had to do was spontaneously combust on potatoes, cabbage and Guinness.

Some of the best real-estate happened to be owned by the Church. This is a shrine to St. Padraigh. Try to say it after 3 pints and it'll sound like Patrick.

I went soon after the 17th of March, so I guess they found the time to remove the puke and green toilet paper from the surroundings.


Here's another site of pilgrimage. A shrine to St. Guinness of Dublin. It's the beloved brewery of 250 years.

A meal in a glass.

You'll notice the nod to ancient art over the entrance, or is that the head of Guinness' mother-in-law?


This last shrine is to lost packages everywhere, literally. It's the post office on O'Connell.

Two last sites of note. Merrion Square has a reclining statue of Oscar Wilde, well hidden in the bushes (more on that later), across the street from the house where he grew up, the son of an eye doctor and a poet. I'd hate to see what a 19th c. eye doctor did to his patients, but you get an idea how Oscar was both a man of the written word and yet how he could gouge out someone's eyes with some of his well-chosen barbs. A good artist and an even better gadfly of hypocritical Victorian society.

I did wonder however if this park was the place where he learned to chase, catch and sodomise little boys (hiding in the bushes?). But again, you can see the similarity in Wilde's treatment of his political victims.

The last place was the store-front of Sinn Fein. I went in out of curiosity to see what that was all about. They had the usual Che Guevara stuff and shirts of Bobby Sands of latter day saints. No use having a commemorative mug of a guy who died on hunger strike in prison. Though he certainly did "scale" those walls, didn't he.

WHAT I MISSED:

I was staying near the writers' museum in Parnell square, but I never got to the museum, but what did I miss? a pen, paper, an old typewriter? I'm not old enough to spend my vacations in museums and as I always say, it'll be there next time. Museums never die.

I close with an Irish toast. "May the road rise up to meet you."

By that, I don't mean having the false impression that the road is rising up to meet your falling head because your so drunk that you didn't even realise that you were passing out.

that's all. Now be off with ya!

-Costick67 (8^P