Dublin: the day-trip

Well, I’m not very good about keeping my blog up to date, but rather than trying to catch up right now, I’m going to start with current things and maybe work my way backwards over the next few days. I’m also going to tell myself that I’ll post every Monday and Friday, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll actually write that often.
First off, I’m in Ireland! Cambridge has a 6-week break between terms, which is still three and a half weeks after you consider the extra week at each end that Downing provides standard housing. And rather than sit all alone in Cambridge (which gets very quiet and very lonely even when I tried it for three days) or fly all the way back across the Atlantic to my other Cambridge (which is expensive and stressful and defeats the point of experiencing another place and another culture) I decided to explore England and places near England for the vacation.
I’m staying with family friends in a quiet little part of Northern Ireland, about a half mile from the border with the Republic. Borders are invisible these days, since everything is part of the EU, and a number of shops and petrol stations in this region take either pounds or euros. I’m here from the 18th to the 27th, mostly just spending time with the family, avoiding the cold and rain, and enjoying time with small children. I had toddlers right next door all through high school, and was visiting or looking after them a few hours every week, so I’ve really missed that. But these boys are cousins to the boys back home, so I’m repeating some of my favorite parts of the high school years.
But I’ve got lots of other things to see and experience while I’m all the way over here on the East side of the pond. Today I took the train in to Dublin (all by myself!) and explored the city. The weather was warm and sunny (the first sunshine I’ve seen all week) and since it’s so close to Christmas, everyone was out shopping. If you’ve ever visited a foreign city with me, you know that I spend about half my time wandering around, looking at people and buildings and bodies of water, and taking pictures of the latter two. So that’s what I did, except I forgot to get a picture of the River Liffey. Remind me to do that next time.
The second half of my day I spent in a museum about mediaeval and Viking Dublin. Lots of history, and dioramas, some cool models of the city, and a room full of pot sherds and coins and belt buckles recovered from a construction site about 20 years ago when the excavation started breaking into the ancient wall that bounded the river. And I realised that we completely skipped Viking history in school: that whole section was all completely new to me.
The museum is connected to Christ Church Cathedral, which is even more exciting than the museum. It’s a cathedral of the “Church of Ireland, Episcopal-Anglican,” but feels nothing like an Episcopal church in the States. I guess it has a lot in common with the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, but this one is actually completed, and much older. It has the expected and beautiful stained glass: scenes of the saints around the ground floor, and crests (either important people or local towns, I’m not sure) in the clerestory. Some of these were particularly unusual: people playing musical instruments, and the Flight from Egypt. I was a little startled by the presence of a Lady Chapel: a smaller chapel behind the High Altar, with an altar of its own, and two pews. They use it for Weekday Eucharist. I’ve never seen a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary in a non-Catholic church.
The Cathedral also includes the “Leaning Wall of Dublin,” the off-kilter upper wall on the south side. Part of the roof collapsed in the 1500s, and the wall has been out of whack ever since. By 18 inches (in a section of wall about 4 metres tall) (I’m allowed to use mixed units, I’m studying in England!) The only reason it’s not instantly obvious is that the lower portion of the wall (up to what would be the top of the second floor) is completely fine. If the bottom were as tilted as the upper wall, I think people would probably walk a little crooked.
The tilty wall is pretty cool, but the best part is the crypt, which sits below the /entire/ cathedral (not just one small room at the end). It’s full of massive columns of course, but it’s big and fairly open. There are memorial plaques in the walls, and an exhibit of church silver. If it didn’t have glass cases scattered about, it would be a great place to play hide and seek. The last exhibit in the crypt is the cat and rat. Yup. A mummified cat and rat recovered from an organ pipe a number of years ago. One chased t’other in, and they got stuck, and slowly died and dried out. James Joyce mentions this incident in “Finnegan’s Wake” (according to the sign: I haven’t read it).
Dublin is fun to walk around: small like Boston, with a similar mix of logical streets and completely random ones. More people smoke here than in the States, but it’s hard to tell if that’s the natives or the Italian tourists. Every few blocks there’s a statue commemorating a politician or a writer or a republican, and there are a ton of really beautiful bank building scattered throughout the older parts of the city. There’s also a huge spire in the middle of O’Connell Street: I’ll update this when I figure out if it has any significance. I’ll be back in a few months, with friends! (and I’ll be posting pictures on Facebook sometime this week)
PS- The other thing I do in foreign cities is find the Asian district, wander into a supermarket, and buy something that tastes like home. Aloe juice with lunch!