Dublin Day One: The Holi Roller

Living out in the country can be very fast paced and overwhelming, so every once in awhile you need to head up to the largest city in the country for a bit of rest and relaxation. So that’s exactly what I did. On Thursday I hopped on a train and headed north to Dublin to see the sights and see what the city has to offer.

I was informed to stay off the first car of the train as that’s where people sell drugs and after considering it for a minute, I booked my ticket for the second car. Just close enough to the action that I can’t be considered an accessory if shit goes down but close enough to rubber neck. When booking my ticket online, much like a plane, it asks if you want to reserve a specific seat. Thinking that was the normal thing to do, I went ahead and picked what looked good and was informed that my name would be displayed over the seat. Imagine my surprise upon boarding when I noticed that I had the only seat in the entire car with a name on it, and that someone was already sitting there. Not wanting to raise a stupid fuss over what was clearly not an important matter I sat across the aisle from MY seat and just glared at the woman. I know my life is amazing but to commit identity theft right there in front of me? Unreal. This all worked out in the end though as my new seat had the better view. You’ll experience this situation a lot with me during this trip: overreacting to trivial matters that work out for the better in the end. Enjoy!

During this trip I’ve tried to keep my use of headphones to a minimum while out and about as an attempt to not necessarily listen in on people’s conversations but to kind of immerse myself into my surroundings. It’s not as pretentious as I’m making it seem. Anyways, I gave up on that rule during the train ride. By the way, Woman by Angel Olsen and Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville are perfect accompaniment to the Irish scenery of rolling hills, woods, and literally countless sheep. While I lose the chance to experience the sounds of my surroundings when I have headphones, when I do have them in I focus on what I can see around me. I study people, their faces, what they’re reading or doing, and sometimes steal a glance at their phone to see if there’s anything juicy going on (Don’t you judge me, you know you’ve done it.) For instance, sitting across from me on the train was an older well dressed gentleman and about an hour into the trek I noticed the slightest bit of a tattoo on his wrist. It was later revealed to be a rather large, fairly fresh tattoo of the Claddagh ring. The man next to him was reading a newspaper with the headline “Irish Priest Who Used Prayer in the Fight on Communism” and the man next to me spent his time reading a financial article from The Guardian on his phone. I would highly suggest that next time you have your headphones in while you travel, or just walking around your neighborhood, take some time to observe what’s going on. I also highly recommend listening to music next time you’re at an art museum. Find an album for each area of the museum that fits the mood. Patti Smith fits well with German Expressionism, the Velvet Underground surprisingly well with Renaissance and early American art, Philip Glass goes great with modern and contemporary and Madonna’s Ray of Light with Asian art. It’s something that has definitely changed my perspective on certain pieces of art and has even caused emotional reactions. Anyways, I’ve gone off on a tangent and completely forgotten what I was talking about or why so I’m just gonna skip ahead.

DUBLIN!

I got a hotel room on the south side of the city at a place called the Wilder Townhouse (Dublin loves it’s native son Oscar Wilde by the way, he is everywhere) From what i gathered on line it was a pretty cool, kind of hip spot in a very nice area. I wasn’t wrong but I was taken aback a little when I walked into the lobby and it was that super stark, bright white that gives you that super classy feeling and reception was simply a desk with a beautiful, well dressed woman which immediately made me feel under dressed. The intimidation was melted by my rooms seemingly random mix prints and inspirational quotes on the wall like “Be yourself! Everyone else is taken!” next to a botanical drawing and one print in the bathroom with a drawing of a toilet that said “Your throne is waiting” It was an odd mix that worked surprisingly well somehow.

After a quick shower and somehow wrecking the room, I headed out for my first stop: The Long Room at the old library of Trinity College. You’ve seen it before in countless listicles about the most beautiful/breathtaking/amazing libraries in the world. It’s the long one. More specifically though, it’s 213 feet long and contains 200,000 of the libraries oldest books. It also holds The Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript from the 9th century containing the four gospels of the new testament with pages of calf vellum. You’re not allowed to take any photos of the book and there’s only two pages from 2 of the four volumes on display (one to show the illustrations and the other to show the text) so I suggest looking it up so you can see intricate and detailed it all is since I can’t provide you with stunning images I took. Most people, myself included, breezed through the Book of Kells exhibit to get to the Long Room. I mostly breezed through because there were multiple tour groups coming through and I took a hard pass on being around a bunch of old people discussing religion. The Long Room is stunning, but also crowded. At one point I just held my camera above my head and started snapping randomly in hopes I’d get something good without a human in it.

Sometimes, blindly shooting over your head works out alright.

After the I left the library, I wandered the campus for a bit and stumbled into a Holi celebration being held by the Trinity Indian Society. Holi is a Hindu festival celebrating the arrival of spring as well being a time to have fun as well as forget and forgive. You may also know it as the “Festival of Color” as it’s the one where people throw brightly colored powder at each other. And if you still don’t know what I’m talking about, just think of those fun runs in which you also get colored powder thrown at you (white people, am I right?) While the celebration was beginning, a protest was at it’s height literally right next to it. So there was this peculiar air about the area filled with celebration and anger. I’m not exactly sure what they were protesting, I’ve been having trouble understanding Irish accents at a normal level but I couldn’t barely make out syllables of one being shouted into a megaphone. It was a very South Park “rabble rabble rabble” moment. I think I heard “cut funding” and “education.” So I’m going to assume (hopefully) that they were protesting cuts to education on some level. So I agree with them. For now. Until I find in a couple weeks that turn out to be the Irish Betsy DeVos.

Yes. I agree.

So Holi. As I said, it’s the festival of color. I did not participate, I would have considered it but I was wearing a white sheepskin coat that I paid $12 for at Target from the plus size women’s section and I was not about to let it go to shit. They didn’t even have any of my favorite colors anyways so it would have been pointless. I also found out yesterday that you needed a ticket and they were sold out but that favorite color thing is still a big deal breaker. When i got there, they were just starting to gather. Each person got 2 or 3 bags of powder and despite being told that the festivities weren’t going to be starting for an hour and to wait because they were very limited on powder and couldn’t give out more if you ran out, humans being the impatient beings they are started going ham as soon as they could. Even before the music turned on and the celebration kicked in, it was very joyous. People were hugging and laughing and basically just enjoying life. It looked exhausting. Once the music kicked in (some lovely European EDM), the crowd became even more energetic. They appeared to move as one up and down, hands rose above the crowd sporadically releasing clouds of bright yellow and pink. I had a smile on face watching the whole thing from a distance.

Is that what gay bars looked like when Thanos dusted half the population?

After this uplifting cultural experience, I headed over to the National Museum of Archaeology for some more cultural learning. And a bathroom. Do you guys realize how old Ireland is? Dublin celebrated its MILLENNIUM in 1988. And that’s just Dublin. Wikipedia is telling me the earliest human evidence in Ireland is from 12,500 year ago.

I’m putting this in because I didn’t take any photos in the museum.

The museum is surprisingly small considering the amount of history in the country but still interesting covering prehistoric to medieval Ireland. The most fascinating part, for me at least, were the bog bodies. These are human remains that were naturally mummified in peat bogs. I could keep you on the edge of your seat for hours on end describing the science of bogs and whole this all works but I won’t keep you. Ireland has a large of bog bodies but only a few of these are on display in the museum. They are human remains, some cut in half, so it’s a little gross but they all kind of look like leather sculptures. I rushed through the museum a bit but I’d like to go back one day and get a closer look at everything when I’m not so tired or haven’t eaten in 12 hours.

I opted for one more cultural experience for the day: Burger King. They. Are. Everywhere. They seem much more popular than McDonald’s, a thought which feels like a hug from Jesus. Now if only Wendy’s was here I’d be all set to pull up stakes and move in. Fast food is so much better here. Thanks higher quality standards set by the EU! After eating I went shopping for a bit. Fun fact: Pretty much everything in Topman is slim or skinny fit. I ended up with 2 shirts, in a stretch material, that were XXL. And they’re still a bit snug. I could have just not bought them but one of the employees followed be around the store, passive aggressively rearranging the clothes after I would browse through them. I should have just knocked something over instead of buying anything but I didn’t think of that until now. I headed back to the hotel and began to debate man’s eternal struggle: what should I do for dinner? I debated the question with Sarah for awhile and settled on Mexican food at 777.

I passed the restaurant multiple times at first. The windows are clouded over and the sign isn’t quite noticeable. Had I not seen the shadows of some people moving around inside I would’ve assumed they closed down. I went inside and was promptly ignored. The small space was packed full so I stood by the door, waiting to see if someone would approach but despite multiple moments of unbroken eye contact, nobody did. I spotted an empty seat at the bar and swooped in. At that moment, the hostess finally appeared as if out of nowhere to tell me my seat was about to go to someone else and I had to wait in the back by the kitchen. It was like a test. Like “We close in an hour so lets put him by the kitchen to wait an undetermined amount of time and see if he leaves.” They lost their bets if that was case because I grabbed a gin drink and settled in. I eventually got a seat back at the bar, ordered another drink and got some duck tostadas that were by far the. best. duck. I. ever. had. Who knew Ireland would murder the Mexican food game. They had tacos but nothing on the menu explicitly said “TACO” and instead of just asking the server I just ordered tuna tostadas and another drink. I then stopped at a Tesco on my way home and grabbed a sandwich, some chips, and a chocolate bar. All to be consumed in bed while watching the last 45 minutes of The Edge of Tomorrow.

All in all, my first day in Dublin was pretty great and set the pace for the rest of my weekend. I’ll be going through the other days in similar excruciating details over multiple posts. So stay tuned.