The previous two days have felt like speed walking around a lazy river. Not because of any fast pace, though I have been walking much faster, (everyone here either crawls, or walks at one treadmill notch under jogging), but because everything is going slower, yet at the same time my mind still seems to be at normal speed (which is faster than I would like it to be). For the first time in a long while I've been able to sleep in past 6:30 or 7:00. It's nice.

I woke up two days ago to an older black man playing slow jazz on a saxophone outside my open window, which of course made it convenient to lay around for awhile (really stressing those pressing appointments). I got up around 10 and set off to explore Dublin with nothing but the clothes on my back, my camera, and a protein bar. This turned out to not be enough. 

I was determined to walk around as much as possible, really get a feel for the city, and started towards the docks as my first goal. These were reached easily enough in a few hours, with a couple of stops along interesting bridges and landmarks. After crossing through I walked aimlessly, just zig zagging along the zig zagged streets and corners (by the way, the streets here don't work in blocks the same way they do in the States, I mean, sure, you could call some of this a block, but by block you really mean some kind-of shape resembling more of a triangle or a trapezoid than a "block"), stopping at things I find interesting to grab some pictures (or a shameless self-portrait in the window of a parked car). 

Naturally, before too long I found myself in the low rent section of Dublin, something that jumps out at me via a bag of garbage being thrown out of a window by a big white woman wearing a wife beater. "Oh, 'scuse me, din't see you down there.". No, I expect she didn't. 

There were piles of trash all along the street and strange pieces of detritus that exuded poverty in dirty waves of now forgotten memories. Broken children's toys, a stroller, a bent up bicycle, all clinging to existence through some sad story of misuse and abandonment  And the small enclosed spaces, the alcoves that would have normally been a tiny garden or patio outside the window for a basement apartment, these now hold strange collections of trash and other assortments of bizarre left overs. In one, a clothesline holding old clothes covered in mildew and dirt, in the next, a series of old dusty liquor bottles line the window, what appear to be immensely overgrown houseplants overwhelm the barrier of the next. It was a bizarre collection next to obvious wealth mere blocks (figuratively) away. 

I kept walking and found myself towards sunset at the Grand Canal (I only knew this by a large, weather worn sign proclaiming itself next to the waterway). The air has that briny salty smell that you imagine would go with a small fishing village and everything seems to be succumbing slowly to the corrosive effects of a salty atmosphere. I walk down a small path next to the canal towards a large, modern stadium shaped a bit like a doughnut which has been bent slightly towards the North and South corners. It's getting up around 5:30 by now and I have walked off of my map of Dublin, finding myself quite cold (that lone t-shirt has been getting a bit thin for several hours but the dipping sunlight stands my nipples at a whole new level of attention), and I start back. 

At least, I think I start back. Before too long I enter a very nice neighborhood, filled with new cars and better dressed people. Families cross my path, easily strolling towards Church or some other Sunday night attraction. I even see two elderly women casually kicking their shiatsu ahead of them (all five of them, only two leashes interestingly though) and for the first time I see people out jogging. I get the feeling I might have seen the only classic Dodge Charger in Ireland as one roars past. 

Keeping with the zig zag of the streets, I head in what I still think is the general direction of Dublin's city center, and in turn, my hostel. At a corner I come across a small grocery store and dip in for some fruit, cheese, crackers and yogurt, still oblivious to my misdirected attempts to find Dublin's downtown. Finally, around 7:00, with the sun set and the sky finally succumbing to darkness, I start to realize just how hopelessly lost I am. Of course, I hold off to stop and ask for directions until my plight fully sets in when I walk at least a half mile down a street I am SURE is going downtown only to end up at a dead end. Next thing I know I see a sign pointing towards "City Centre". It's pointing in the opposite direction from what I've been walking in for over an hour. 

Still speed walking in the wrong direction I finally spot the lights of a convenience mart (I know there's nothing anywhere close behind me, so I might as well head forward), or a gas station, or something with those overly bright and cheerful red and yellow signs that make up small "convenient" establishments near busy intersections. I'm about to walk inside when a man strolls out carrying a few small items and I jog up to him, "Excuse me, which way should I walk to get towards the city center?". "You're walking? It's back down that way." He points the direction I just came from. It's a sad thing when signs are right. "Why don't you just hop in, I'll drop you up at the LUAS (until I actually saw a sign I thought he was saying "Louis", quite confusing). And what are you doing wearing nothing but a t-shirt?", "Being a dumb America?" 

 We talked for a bit in front of the small train station and he told me his name was Eugene, a great guy probably in his 50's or 60's and he told me which direction to take the tram in. I finally make it to the station, slightly warmer thanks to Eugene's Mercedes, and attempt to buy a ticket. Unfortunately I have no idea where to go. All of the places are labeled as sections rather than street corners or anything I can recognize from my map, and yet again I have to enlist the help of an older woman in ordering my ticket. "I thought young people were supposed to be good with these technology things!" Yea, I know, I'm an idiot, sorry?

 

Getting on the tram I take it to the last stop and hop off for Grafton street, a long row of higher end shops blocked off from traffic for the public to walk in the street. Finally something I can find on my map. A man is playing Cold Play on the side of the street with an Irish accent. Seems a little ironic. Before I know it I'm back in familiar territory and grab some cool shots of the National Bank of Ireland in traffic (hand holding long exposure times on fence posts, street signs, and building corners makes for a lot of painfully blurry shots, but a few came out O-K).

  

Yesterday dawned with an unexpected level of clarity and crispness you can only get by waking up with a warm body and cold room. After a quick shower and a short bout of being locked out of my room half naked, (you have to get your key reset every morning, turns out that takes affect at 9:30) I packed my duffel bag with a few things and, per Eugene from the night before's suggestion, headed for a train station. At the train station confusion sets in once more, none of the maps and tourist information expect you to be quite as ignorant to the area as we tourists undoubtedly are. None of the "areas" you can take the train are on my map or the map at the information kiosk, so eventually I just pick the yellow one with an all day pass for nine euro's. See where it takes me. 

I ask the attendant which trains I can get on and he says any dart or commuter, O-K, next one of those leaving, I'll hope on. My ticket gets mechanically processed in a bright yellow kiosk and two glass panels whisk away to the sides alarmingly fast. "Bray - 3 Minutes" says a small panel above the escalator, perfect. I sit on the train and write a little bit, struggling to keep my pen steady against the bounce of the train. The coastline opens up on the left side of the car and we glide past a barren expanse of browns and blues, interspersed every now and again by a rocky outcropping of an island. Several uniformed school girls get on, gossiping about boys and exams and an assortment of other middle school worth topics. Slowly the train begins to empty until it's just me and a couple of elderly passengers towards the front of the car. 

The sun has stretched out from behind the clouds and as we reach Bray, the final stop for this train, the countryside opens back up to showcase a rocky beach and a blurry mountain in the distance. I set down my bag and eat a bite for lunch and watch as business people and others, finding themselves on their lunch break I suppose, walk along a small bath bordering the ocean. 

Before long a man and his wife walk past with their dog and begin stripping down to get in the water. This water is COLD, even the air is cold, but before long they are out swimming past the breakers. The woman comes back out pretty quickly but the man stays for probably 45 minutes or an hour. Finally I pack up my stuff and take a quick stroll through Bray. A typically Irish town with close knit homes and tight streets, a pub or two and a Church being the highest building in town. 

Re-boarding the train I head North. The train begins to repopulate as we near Dublin city, and again diminishes it's population as we pass back into the countryside, this time heading towards Howth. As we pulled into Howth the ocean seemed to switch to the other side of our train, which I've figured out now is because Howth is on a protrusion of land that sticks out into the Irish Sea. Howth is a fairly dirty looking place, and I don't spend long walking around here, it's several hours back to Dublin anyways, and nearing 5:00. 

As my lack of attention would demand, I miss my stop in Dublin and am forced to jump on another train, this time getting off at another station further from my hostel. I get on St. Stephans Green, one of the few streets I think I know and stop to pick up a two liter jug of milk and a half liter of Greek yogurt. I'm walking in what appears to be the right direction on my map, only to realize soon enough that this is not the only St. Stephans Green in Dublin. In fact, there's a few of them, and they don't all run in the same direction. 

Finally getting my bearings I head back towards Grafton street. Once on Grafton street I immediately realize I've stepped into the middle of a wedding procession (along with everyone else of the street) We're (we being myself and all the other complete strangers of the street) all walking along and right next to us is a bride and groom with a chain of groomsmen, bridesmaids and a couple of photographers, all right there in with the middle of the crowd. Everyone was laughing and smiling, and my sore feet seemed a little less weary in the midst of it all. I walked on ahead and snapped a few pictures, but unfortunately hand holding at night with a crowd and my only decent flash being back at the hostel, nothing came out very good. 

So after overdosing on lactose and editing as many images as my eyes will allow, I headed to sleep. Waking up this morning I find myself refreshed and Dublin to finally be the rainy city I expected. I think I will hit a few of the museums and galleries in the area, make sure my flight info is on the up and up, and see what I can get into this last day in Ireland. I'm listening to RESPECT by Aretha Franklin and watching it rain, it's going to be a good day.

I know I like Budweiser, but these people are borderline religious fanatics about Guiness...

Over the past two days I have entertained several instances of extreme confusion, two instances of jogging through airports, and three instances of inputting inexcusably unhealthy airport food into my poor, possibly depraved body.

I find that when you wake up hung over, you, on very rare occasions, find yourself in a state of clarity that transcends the discomfort alcohol has wreaked on your body. This allows you to get some real work done and I find usually occurs when you wake up knowing you have a final project left to finish, or a five hour drive to complete, or maybe a long day of work coming up. Two days ago was not one of those days.

I woke up sluggish as hell with a throbbing headache and about as much motivation as a rock. I threw the rest of my belongings in my truck, running back and forth between the shop and my vehicle, wearing the same clothes from the night before and generally feeling that I was forgetting something very important (As of yet I haven't realized what that "something" is, but I'm sure it's waiting for the right moment to jump out for an exciting surprise). Driving to the airport was a testament to the alleviating formula that is wide open windows, public radio classical music, and traffic jams. I arrived at Charlotte International, my parents met me to drive the truck back home and stared with equal measures of doubt and horror as I decided I had packed too much and rampantly threw clothes and accouterments across the backseat, occasionally realizing I had thrown something out a bit too enthusiastically (like my camera charger) only to be forced to rummage through a rapidly rising mountain of clothes. Hurried hugs and stiff handshakes from my parents turned into speed walking through the terminal. Finally, after little sleep in several days, a lack of any substantial food since breakfast the previous morning, and pouring copious amounts of alcohol down my throat the night before with no sustenance since, well, I hit a wall. I was in line at a fast food Italian restaurant next to my gate thinking "Standing is getting a lot harder. And my hands are shaking, that's nice. Think I might projectile vomit onto this pile of bread if I have to see the guy in front of me's fat roll peek out from under his t-shirt again.".

Needless to say, I survived, and as fate would have it I somehow ended up in first class for the flight to New York! I found myself next to an insistently quite Indian woman and waited out the rest of my hangover in the midst of endless cranberry juice and miniature bags of pretzels. Five hours pass surprisingly fast as I wait for my flight to London, and within an hour of leaving I start to wonder if maybe I'm at the wrong gate. Everyone is speaking Spanish. I'm going to London, this is just, wrong. I keep checking my gate number on my tickets and, yea, 47, I'm right. Finally I'm talking to a guy charging his phone next to mine and I find out he's flying out of 47 too. To Rio. Yea, thought my flight was supposed to have started boarding five minutes ago. I walk over to the middle eastern looking attendant at the desk who proceeds to look at my boarding pass with this vacant expression, she thumbs over a large black women helping the guy next to me, "That's just wrong" she says. No? Now which direction do I need to sweat my ass off running in so I can get to London! Gate 3, opposite side of the terminal.

150 Metric Ton Rock Used as a tomb, dating back to 3000 BC

Make it just in time, slide into a seemingly empty row with the exception of one girl on the far side (four seats between us), perfect, fold up these arm rests, shut off these pesky little TVs on the back of the seats (that appear specially designed to flicker just enough to not cause seizures), this could almost be half a bed. So we take off, I flip through the channels available, aimlessly watching a movie between dozing off. The lights dim, I slip a little further into unconsciousness, then suddenly I'm violently startled awake (you know when you're half asleep and jump like a little girl? that was me) by someone trying to squeeze between my knees and the seat in front of me (all of 1/8"). "Do you mind if I sit in the middle there? My seat is soooo crowded?" I guess not? I am way too nice to people sometimes. Next thing I know I'm pulling off that awkward sleep sitting up with your head nodding forward when I wake up to this big black man slowly pushing his head onto my knee. Nope, not o-k with that. I extricate myself, lower my armrest, and proceed to lean as far into the aisle as possible.

Made it into London only to have to scramble through security and customs to my gate, making the last boarding call for flight 8175 to Dublin. Getting through customs I was asked how much money I had with me, "I don't know, $70-80 US.". "You realize this is the exit to the airport?", "I mean, I've got a debit card", "Does it work here.", "The bank said it would", "Don't run out of money!". Get to a bus and 6 euros later make it to a row of hostel's in downtown Dublin. The first two were booked solid. Lodging looking promising! Good thing I planned ahead and booked a room! Well, the next place was called the Paddy Palace, and I won't lie, the name gave me second thoughts, then there was the logo, a pixelated, stereo-typical laughing leprechaun  but what the hell, I'll check it out. Of course we have a bed, 15 euros a night, excellent! And it's actually a nice place, at least I don't think I'll have to enter into treatments for hepatitis A after my stay here!

Amy

I've met some interesting people since being here. Everyone seems dead set on these bus tours around the country, which seems so...typically tourist. I'm in Dublin till the 24th when I fly to Edinburgh. So the first day I was sitting on my bunk, contemplating jet lag and cleaning off the SD card from my camera when in pops Amy from New Zealand. She had just gotten to Dublin too and we decided to walk around the city together, it seemed better to have some company rather than give in to the sleep my body was begging for. We toured the Guiness storehouse and got to pour our own glass of beer before heading to try an Irish dinner. Guiness again and a huge plate of "fried bacon" (thick slices of ham), steamed cabbage and mashed potatoes, with some sort of cream sauce over it all. Excellent meal, way too much to eat, but I made it through, this doesn't seem like the time to be wasting calories because of something as trivial as a full stomach.



It felt like 10:30 or 11:00, but the hour hand on my watch was just crossing seven. We stumble back to the hostel (at least a mile or two) and Amy mentions a free bus tour if you book two nights here. Whatever, free tour, sure I'll come. I expected something just around Dublin, maybe a few hours at most. Next thing I know five hours have passed and we're getting on the motorway for a neighboring city, Kilkenny. Immediately upon getting on the bus you get the feeling that our bus driver might be a little prejudiced against the British. Somewhere between, "hundreds of years of oppression"  and "then they killed our rebellion leaders in 1916 so we revolted as a people!" and "they took everything they could from us, even our metals from the ground!", yea, no surprise when he asked any British on the bus to raise their hands that no one did.

We traveled past a bridge where, apparently, PS: I love you began filming, and up into some mountains where parts of Braveheart were filmed. We got to hike around several "lochs" (lakes) and saw a large lake that is shaped roughly like a glass of Guiness (the Guiness family even bought the lake and imported white sand from Florida to give it a bit of head at the top, though they have since sold it). Tiny streets and stone buildings slowly turn into a slightly more industrial style with Kilkenny, another brewing center. We stroll through the cobblestone streets and find a large castle with little old churches every few blocks and pubs everywhere. Stopped for a beer and some chowder before heading back to the bus and subsequently back to Dublin.


So here I am, drinking a beer, sitting in this hostel, feeling pretty happy about the fact that I've seen a few hundred motorcycles in the past two days and not a single one was a Harley. Tomorrow I'm hoping to get a little better feel for Dublin and figure out a small day trip for the 22nd-23rd before flying to Edinburgh.


Zack