A Traveling Writer's Journey: Ireland : Week one: DUBLIN

We made it.

A whole lot of flying, transfers, airplane meals and making friends with our seat mates, sleeping sitting up, and a night that lasted only 3 hours of darkness... and we made it. The time difference is 6 hours, so it felt like the middle of the night but it was a bright morning when our plane landed in Dublin. We searched the airport for the rest of the group that was flying in from Chicago and took a coach to the place where we would spend our first week in Ireland....

Olivia in the Des Moines airport waiting for our
delayed first flight

Our home while we stayed in Dublin was Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann in Monkstown, south of the City center of Dublin. A center of Irish music and dance tradition, the Iowa State crew that takes this trip every year are the only visitors to the guest rooms that are not musicians or dancers that come to Comhaltas to perform. Comhaltas is within a couple blocks from Dublin Bay, has a pub that was filled with the sounds of traditional Irish music every night in the basement of the building, an auditorium with traditional Irish dancing lessons (called a "Ceili"), and "hosts," the owners of Comhaltas who quickly became our friends. They spent many evenings with our entire group in the pub, answering any questions we had about their culture, music, etc. and living up our time in Dublin.

Our Dublin home

JETLAG in our room in Comhaltas

Our view out our window. Homes and the ocean.

Bernard and Pat gave us a wonderful breakfast every morning, including lots of tea, coffee,

brown bread, and whiskey marmalade

Deep into Dublin. A lot like any big city in the world.

Our first few days were spent exploring the city with the help from USIT, trying out the rail system (mind the gap), sleeping off our jetlag, exploring landmarks, and eating amazing food in nearby cafes.

The second day (after much needed sleep), we started our classes with Iowa State professors Steve Pett and Deb Marquart. After breakfast each day in Dublin we had classes discussing and reading poetry aloud, discussing readings and Irish Authors and Poets, and sharing any writing prompts we were given throughout the week. We also had the assignment of writing postcards throughout the trip to each person in the group, alternating every day.

After class we headed into the city, where we attended a "lunchtime play" at Bewley's Cafe Theatre. The play was called "Break a Leg" by Peter Sheridan where he told about his career in acting, the funny, awkward, and success he experienced.

We then visited a museum. Everything in Ireland is so old compared to America. The buildings, the statues, the castles, the artifacts in the museum... everything. It blew my mind to see such history in the midst of modern life, like a castle from the 1400s a block from an office building. It was absolutely amazing.

But this exhibit was by far the oldest and grossest.

These are bog people... people, with skin, hair, teeth, nails, arm jewelry that were preserved by chemicals in bogs. They are from the single to double digit years A.D.! It was so nasty, yet so ancient.. I couldn't look away.

We then had a lovely (and free) welcome dinner in a restaurant called Odessa Restaurant.

The food was amazing.

NEWGRANGE, HILL OF TARA

Our next stop was to Newgrange, which is a man-made temple of sorts from many many many many years ago. It looks like a small insignificant hill, but when you go through the front door there is a passageway into a cave with cave etchings and a tall ceiling. There is a small opening in front of the mouth of the structure where light comes in to illuminate a particular drawing on the wall and it is believed to be an old place of worship. It was truly magical.

And the view was AMAZING.

Olivia and Me

posing..

Little Sheep are EVERYWHERE

We then ventured to the Hill of Tara. We followed the path through an old cemetery to the hill that sat beside castles and where several kings over many years had a lookout... you can see every surrounding county from this place. Plus the mysterious hills are a natural playground.

St. Patrick on his perch

Our Group

On one side of the hill there is a tree, "the wishing tree" where you must tie something that you have on you and make a wish.

There were socks, hairties, belts, bits of fabric, and what looks like a whole head of hair...

We contributed what we had..

DUBLIN

The next day we used our bus passes and, after taking a train into the city, got on the "hop on hop off" bus. Which basically means there were stops everywhere and we could go wherever we wanted while being close to our bus.

We went to one of my very favorite places from our Dublin trip. The library at Trinity college... I couldn't help but imagine all the people that read these books and spent hours in this library. I wanted to climb the winding staircase and find a place to hide and read... unfortunately it was all blocked off to preserve history and all that but still. Even behind the ropes it felt like Hogwarts and the library from Beauty and the Beast and Mr. Darcy's library at Pemberly that him and Elizabeth most definitely had to have and even a thousand times better than that because you could smell the book smell too and it was real life...

At the end of the old library tour we also got to see a museum exhibit where the Book of Kells (which is illuminated manuscripts handwritten and intricately hand illustrated by monks around the year 800 during Viking raids. They are the four gospels copied and hidden by the monks.) Since Olivia and I had learned about this artwork in Art History class our Freshman year, this was especially exciting.

I didn't take any photos because it wasn't allowed, but here is one piece:

More photos in Dublin:

St. Patrick's Cathedral

The Guinness Factory

Our next stop was the historic Kilmainham Jail. The jail has a massive history from the Irish Civil War, as well as during the potato famine, where even children were put in jail for months for stealing bread because they were starving to death. I cannot describe how powerful being there, hearing the history, the stories, and seeing where it all happened was. Before our trip we were required to read A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle, which is a fictional story set in the time of war, but is full of so much history from that time. There are many parts of the book that talk and take place in the jail, which made our experience there even more powerful.

The inside courtyard where many cells were located

The Stone breaker's yard was the most powerful. The leading men from the revolution in 1916 who stood up for Irish independence that led to Ireland's freedom were shot against this wall for their rebellion. Crosses and flowers line the walls of the courtyard to pay gratitude to the men that won Ireland their freedom.

That evening we participated in a Literary Pub Crawl where we visited famous pubs around Dublin and watched live performances of Irish plays and poems. We started in a pub that is hundreds of years old. The bartenders wore suits and the whole atmosphere was sophisticated. We also toured other pubs that are hundreds of years old and famous in Dublin. The Guinness in Ireland is smooth and delicious!

CO. WICKLOW AND GLENDALOUGH

The next day we journeyed to the nearby County Wicklow, a beautiful countryside with green hills, trees, sheep, small thatch roofed homes, and beauty. We learned that the movie P.S. I Love You was filmed in this area!

We also explored the Monastic settlement of Glendalough, which was founded in the 6th century. We learned that many monasteries we visited seemed to be in the middle of nowhere and settled in beautiful areas. It was an exquisite place where we all took our time exploring and slowly taking in the entirety of it.

That evening we attended the Dublin Writer's Festival where we heard modern Irish authors read segments of their books and then answer questions for aspiring writers. The authors were Roddy Doyle (we read his book for this class), John Banville, and Anne Enright.

After they spoke we had the opportunity to meet Roddy Doyle and have our books signed if we wanted to. It was very laid back.

That evening we returned to Comhaltas. The pub was empty so our entire group and the owners, Bernard and Pat, spent many hours drinking Guinness and playing card games while listening to Irish music. Afterwards it's only 4 flights of stairs up to our beds.

DUBLIN

The next day we had the opportunity to have a workshop with the modern Irish poet, Moya Cannon. We had been studying some of her poetry and we were able to sit down with her. She read some of her poetry aloud and answered our questions about how she came to be a poet and what we can do.

We then toured the James Joyce Center and stumbled upon a street where they were filming a TV show! We blended in with the extras for a little bit and snuck views of the filming..

We also got to go to Sweney's Pharmacy, which is the pharmacy that James Joyce writes about in his story Ulysses. The pharmacy is preserved in the state it was in when the book was written. We all were given tea and took turns reading bits of Ulysses.

That afternoon, a couple of us got tattoos at a tattoo parlor in Dublin. Though this wasn't part of the trip, the ones who got the tattoos are adults and were able to use our own discretion. Olivia and I have wanted to get tattoos together and since we always dreamed about going to Ireland together it seemed like the perfect time.

My dream catcher on the back of my arm

LAST DAY

On our last day in Dublin, we decided to walk a couple of blocks down to Dublin Bay before breakfast... we were all feeling very sad to be leaving

We had some free time on our last day and spent it shopping at all of our favorite (and inexpensive) store we found called Penneys and exploring parts of the city we had missed.

We all joined up at the end of the night at the Gate Theater to see the play, "Enemy of the People." It was wonderful.

We all had a secret plan for the end of the night when we would get back to Comhaltas. It is Steve Pett's last year leading the trip after many years of doing it (Deb is taking over), and so we wanted to all do something special for him. We had a talent show/thanks Steve night planned and we all prepared something. An Irish dancer who was staying there came down and danced, there was guitar playing, singing, and Olivia and I read a poem that we wrote for him. We all jokingly called him "dad" and he was always laid back about everything so we called our poem "Dad's not mad"