Various adventures + DUBLIN!

If failing to update ones blog in a timely fashion were a punishable offense, Abby and I would both have been served with consecutive life sentences by this point. We do apologize, but the reason for the delay is that we’re out having adventures faster than we’re able to write them down! (Plus there’s that whole silly matter of school.) So there you have my justification for attempting to consolidate a month and a half worth’s of activities and journeys into a readable space… hope you’re sitting comfortably.

I’ll begin around mid-March, a week or two after I returned from Inverness, with my trip to the London Zoo. Having grown up around zoos, I’m definitely a huge fan, so I was really excited to see what London had to offer in the zoo department. I went with a British friend of mine who I met a few years ago on a trip to Honduras; she’s currently living in Northampton, about an hour north of London. To digress for a moment in order to briefly relate another of my March exploits – I later visited her there, and together we visited one of the town’s main attractions, its shoe museum! As most of you reading this blog probably know, I’m an acknowledged shoe maniac, so this was quite a delight for me; here are just a couple highlights:

 

Shoes worn by Elton John in the rock opera "Tommy"!

A fetish shoe with a naked lady standing on the toe. (Not something I'D go for, but hey, it takes all types...)

Anyway, back to the zoo – the admission price was pretty steep, but we had a splendid time. There was lots to see, such as a nocturnal animal exhibit (including the Slow Loris of internet fame), an impressive aquarium, and a family of Galapagos tortoises, the oldest of which was seventy! Still, I thought the coolest part by far was their monkey exhibit. An outdoor path wound through the leafy habitat, with bare branches overhead and wire around its borders, and the monkeys were moving around freely – no glass, no fences; they were scuttling down the path alongside you, crawling through the bushes on either side, and swinging on the branches above, just as bold as you please! (A little too bold, maybe; one of them stole some lady’s chapstick…) Of course, this would only be fun if you think monkeys are adorable, like my friend and I did. I know of a certain someone who would probably deem this experience about as fun as chewing on a cactus. Still, I hope those of you with anti-monkey sentiments can stomach a few pictures, because I thought they were just precious.

Look at hiiiim <3

They congregated en masse when the keeper brought popcorn!

 Later that month, my college groupmates and I traveled to St. Ives, a delightful coastal town in Cornwall, one of England’s southwestern provinces. With its sweet, kitschy little souvenir stores, its plethora of candy shops, and its overall touristy-yet-charming character, it had much the same ambience as many of Oregon’s seaside towns. We were lucky enough to get sun that weekend, which, in combination with the soft, sandy beach and the brilliantly blue sea, made us all a little giddy with happiness. The seafood there was fantastic – I had whitebait for the first time, as well as some of the best fish and chips of my life. The Tate Museum of Modern Art also has a gallery in St. Ives, founded because many painters throughout the years have been drawn to the city by its exceptional quality of light, although the exhibition we saw there was by no means as traditional as what you might be imagining. It was called “Since 1982” by Simon Fujiwara; look it up if you’re in the mood for some seriously modern art. Speaking of, we also saw the Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Gallery while we were there – she was a famous twentieth century sculptor who lived in St. Ives for a time, and after her death, her house was turned into a museum of her work (as per her wishes). I’m always into learning more about groundbreaking and independent women artists, even though not all of her sculptures did it for me; plus she had a lot of cool things to say about her creative process.

Me with one of the sculptures

"I felt the most intense pleasure in piercing the stone in order to make an abstract form and space; quite a different sensation from that of doing it for the purpose of realism." - Barbara Hepworth

What better way to wrap up a weekend at the coast than with ice cream?

And now, friends, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Saint Patrick’s Day 2012: Dublin. …Also Balbriggan, a very small town about an hour north of Dublin, which is where Abby and I stayed for the sake of cost-effectiveness (all the reasonably priced hostels in Dublin had been sold out for months). I met her there on Friday morning, and we started out by visiting the nearby Ardgillan Castle. To be fair, “castle” is a bit of a misnomer, though it does stand on the site of an 18^th century castle; but today it more closely resembles an estate house, situated in the middle of a sprawling, beautiful plot of land next to the sea. It has a long and storied past, which we learned from our very kind tour guide, who led Abby and I through each room of the house (it was just us there, which was quite cool; we felt like VIPs getting a private tour!). He taught us lots of interesting tidbits about the history of Ireland, the family who owned the house for many generations, and the beautiful period furnishings on display – he even let me play a “Jane Austen”-era piano, which basically thrilled me to the core! (He even said he thought I was “quite good,” teehee.) He also explained to us why so often in nineteenth century portraits of children you find it hard to tell whether the child is a boy or a girl…

Well, really they just all look like girls... for example, this is "Hilda und Franzi Matsch," by Franz Matsch, 1901. Believe it or not, the blonde on the right is a boy. Not one of the paintings on exhibition at Ardgillan, but they're of a similar nature.

The reason for this is that any time a new child was born to a family with a lot of wealth or land, their more distant relations – who stood to inherit the fortune if the family should fail to produce a more immediate male heir – were of course anxious to know its gender. The more devious of these relatives, if they were to learn that the child was indeed male, might be tempted to harm him in order to keep themselves first in line for the inheritance. So, when people clamored for a portrait to be created of the new arrival, the family would dress the child in girl’s clothes regardless of its actual sex, and would continue doing so until he was old enough to watch out for himself. Quite interesting, no?

That night we supped bemusedly at an American-style rock ‘n’ roll diner, went out for a few drinks, and hit the hay in time to get plenty of rest before our early start the next morning, when we took the bus into Dublin for a day of revelry in the name of St. Patrick! We began by staking out a spot from which to watch the parade, taking time along the way to get a little festive facepaint.

Skillfully painted by some very cool art students

Just a small sample of the parade, which was great fun

After the parade and a spot of lunch (during which I was introduced to Irish soda bread and promptly fell in love with it), we went to Dublin Castle. “Castle” is again a bit of a misnomer here; it’s more aptly described as a set of stately buildings surrounding a courtyard, though again, it stands on the site of a medieval Norman castle, established by King John of England in 1204. Before that, it was a Gaelic ring fort, part of the Viking settlement called Dyflin that provided Dublin’s foundations; the city’s name derives from Dubhlinn harbor – Gaelic for “Black Pool.” Most of the surviving architecture is from the eighteenth century, but remains of the original Viking fort are still visible down underneath the courtyard (Abby and I, as a couple of ladies with Viking roots, thought this was way cool!).

Some of the fort's remains, including the moat

Inside the building, things looked much more palatial. The castle functioned as the seat of English rule in Ireland until the nation became a republic on January 16^th, 1922 – another cool item on display was the document signed by Michael Collins that declared Ireland an independent nation. From 1684 until that time, though, it served as a palace for the English viceroy, so its interior is accordingly grand and ornate.

Today, the castle is used to house the State Apartments and various government offices. (Don't know how this picture got so yellow...)

Our tour guide also taught us the reason why Ireland is associated with shamrocks and the color green – St. Patrick supposedly used the shamrock to teach the Irish about the trinity – as well as the reason why one of its prominent national symbols is the harp: one of its earliest kings used to soothe his armies before they went into battle by playing the harp for them. (“Hey guys, you’re probably about to die, but isn’t this harp music sooo nice and mellow…?”) After the tour, we briefly took in Dublin Gardens, a beautiful park next door to the castle where the flowers were just beginning to bloom. Then our next stop was St. Patrick’s Cathedral – it seemed only appropriate. We tried to line up our visit with the Mass so we wouldn’t have to pay to see the inside, but it didn’t quite work out, so we contented ourselves with the outside.

Us at Dublin Gardens

St. Patrick's cathedral

Then we decided the time had come to honor the St. Paddy’s tradition and hit the bars early! We were in and out of lots of neat pubs, including the oldest one in Dublin, and even though neither of us are big fans of dark beer, we shared a half-pint of Guinness in the spirit of the day (it definitely tasted better than Guinness in the United States). It so happened that someone had had the bright idea to schedule an England vs. Ireland rugby match that night, so the scene was pretty rowdy for the first few hours, but things calmed down a bit after the game (poor Ireland lost)… only to pick up again as people began to hit the point of drunkenness where one loses, among other things, ones volume control. Here is where the story gets a little fuzzy, not to mention somewhat not-internet-friendly. Chances are, if you’re reading this, Abby or I know you well enough to be comfortable telling you about it in some less public setting. Suffice it to say, it was the craziest night of both our lives.

So with that we skip forward to the next morning, which miraculously found Abby and I back in our hotel in Balbriggan. We took the afternoon to explore our little village a bit more; the weather was blissfully nice, so we strolled along the beach for a while and enjoyed the sunshine. While we were there, we were also chatted up by a local man who asked if we’d seen any leprechauns on our trip so far, and, when we told him we hadn’t, suggested that we could find one in his bedroom. Points for creativity, at least.

The beautiful beach!

 Then we returned to Dublin, where we saw Trinity College, walked around St. Stephen’s Green (a gorgeous park in the north of the city), and had a delicious dinner at the pub before boarding our ferry home! (This part of the journey was slightly terrible due to a long layover between the arrival of our ferry at Holyhead and the next train to London, and involved us standing around in the bathroom hitting the hand dryers repeatedly in order to stay warm, but we’re troopers; we dealt with it.)

Swans at St. Stephen's Green

I’ve had a few other wonderful London adventures since that most marvelous weekend, but soon after my return, I found to my dismay that the end of the term and the boatloads of work that accompany it was drawing near, so my free time took a bit of a dive. I’ve finished it all now, though, and am currently traveling through Europe for a few weeks before my inevitable return to the States on May 4^th. Regardless, though, I fear this post has already grown massive… so I’ll let Abby cover our recent sojourn to Lyme Park, and I’ll return soon (read: soon-ish, possibly not soon at all) with an account of my continental travels. Here’s a preview: everything so far has been AMAZING.

Ta ta for now, my loves!