The next morning was Sunday. The kids were all due at a place called Hurly Burly, which is apparently a large indoor playground. Shalva had a birthday to attend there, and Michael was nice enough to take Simon and Sydney there to play, so we had Rachel to ourselves. She took us on a walking tour of Dublin, and we couldn’t have asked for a more informed guide.
Our first stop was Trinity Dublin -- one of the isles’ oldest Universities, which is on par with Oxford or Cambridge. Our aim was to see the Book of Cells (pronounced “Kells,” but I’m not sure I’m spelling it right), an illuminated medieval manuscript. In the end, however, we ended up seeing the line to go see the Book of Cells, and the gift shop that it lead to. We decided that we didn’t want to waste our time standing around, so after a brief walk around the campus (which was appropriately dotted with gothic architecture and ivy covered walls) we hit the streets again.
Our next destination was Marion Square, one of the few surviving Georgian Squares in Europe. Deborah and I were particularly interested in it because it contained the birthplace of Oscar Wilde. We spent some time gazing reverently at the plaque that was hung outside his birth house before heading across the street to the park, which contained an Oscar Wilde monument consisting of a garish statue of Oscar in a green suit seated on a rock facing to pillars inscribed with his witticisms. My favorite tribute to Oscar Wilde is a couplet by Dorothy Parker that goes: “If I want to try my hand at epigram, but don’t want to take the credit/ We will all assume that Oscar said it.” How apt.
Our heads full of
fin de siecle witticisms, we walked away towards a block filled with museums. At my insistence we stopped off at the Dublin Art museum and spent some time looking at the paintings. I was surprised to see a Vermeer in the museum, along with a painting of David beheading Goliath by Orazio Gentileschi that I had studied but never seen in the flesh. I didn’t know it was in Dublin, and was completely taken off guard by it. It was amazing to see.
After the art we headed next door to the Natural History museum, which Rachel referred to as “the Dead Zoo.” I can see why. The building was filled with three stories of stuffed animal carcasses, some of which were quite exotic. There was the requisite wall of deer heads, but also stuffed manatees and tapirs and elephants. Deborah found the whole thing a little creepy, and I can’t say I blame her, but I loved the museum because it was like stepping into a history book. The museum itself was this fabulous old Victorian building, complete with narrow wooden staircases and a bright yellowy orange interior. There was something so old fashioned about the idea of a museum filled with nothing but stuffed animal carcasses that despite the general creepiness of being stared at by hundreds of glass eyes the entire thing was so quaint that I fell in love.
By this time we were getting a little museumed out, and slightly fatigued, so we walked through Dublin’s shopping district to Bewley’s -- a famous old Irish café where various Irish writers used to sip coffee and write masterpieces. It took us a while to get served our coffees and buns, but Rachel told us that Bewley’s is famous for letting you sit as long as you want without ordering or rushing you. The café was a little too crowded for comfortable sitting, however, so we paid up and headed out.
The Dublin shopping district was surprisingly posh. According to Rachel, the stores were more expensive than the stores on the Champs d’elysee in Paris. There was nothing to stop us from browsing, however, so we window-shopped our way down the street. I was on the look out for the statue of Molly Malone that was supposed to be in that district. “Molly Malone” is the most polished song in my dad’s extremely limited repertory at the piano, and I grew up listening to him hammer out the tale of the Irish fishmonger who died of a fever. The song has little to recommend it other than a simple chord structure, but I took a picture any way because of the sentimental associations. Rachel told us that Dubliners are notorious for their lack of respect to public monuments and the statue of Molly Malone was more colloquially known as “the tart with the cart,” but after seeing her bronze cleavage I would say that that is an apt title.
We went for a quick bite at a food pavilion, and then spent the rest of the day shopping for souvenirs and roaming the streets. After a while it grew dark, and we had a plane to catch so we started to walk back. Rachel, at her most Jewish motherly, decided that it was crucial we eat before going on the plane, so we stopped at a pub that was serving a Sunday carvery. Apparently the pub was the same pub Bill Clinton had eaten at when he visited Dublin, and they had preserved the glass that he drank from and hung it over the bar. If the place was good enough for the last decent person to govern America, it was good enough for us, and despite having eaten a late lunch only an hour or so before, we were served a heaping plate of meat, potatoes and veggies. Stuffed, we tottered back to Rachel’s and got our luggage together. Rachel said that there were many attractions that we missed -- Saint Valentine’s collar bone was supposed to be in Dublin, along with the church that saw the first performance of Handel’s Messiah, but we had a plane to catch, so we had to content ourselves with Rachel’s stories.
When we had said our goodbyes to the kids and given our thanks to Rachel and Michael we were driven to the airport. I had had a lot of work due the next week, and papers coming up that I need to start research for, so I was a little wary about taking the weekend off to fly to Dublin. In the end, though, I’m really glad I did. Not only did I get to see a fantastic city, but I got to catch up with a branch of the family that I never see. There’s a lot to be said for traveling when you study abroad, but even more to be said when traveling abroad feels like coming home.
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