"I don't speak Gaelic."
So, roughly twenty-five other guys from school and I spent five days in and around Dublin, Ireland, and I returned yesterday with some very basic Irish history, though substantially more than what I had boarded the plane on Friday with. What's more, I have a grand total of 176 still pictures and 2.5 hours of digital video to share. Get some popcorn while you're at it: this is a long post.
We departed Logan International Airport at 6:30 PM and, with the time change factored in, dragged ourselves quite groggily and jet-lagged into Dublin at 5:45 in the morning. By 6:30 I had finished unpacking at the hotel, though everybody else inexplicably took an extra hour and a half to do likewise. In the meantime I spent roughly four euro (US$6) on (I'm sure Antony will be happy to hear) fully-sugared-and-caffeinated Coke to offset my two-night lack of sleep: so that I'd sleep on the plane, I decided not to sleep the night before, though I ended up staying awake on the plane anyway.
We started touring with a bus ride around Dublin. The majority of the city was built up during the Georgian era and remains so today, with the exception of additions such as the so-called "
Stiletto in the Ghetto" and various fast-food presences (translate: KFC, Burger King, McDonalds, and Domino's Pizza) that have unfortunately spread to an otherwise authentic city. What's interesting is that, with the aforementioned exceptions, new architecture in the area continues to follow the Georgian design for purposes of continuity. Windows on large buildings are sparse, with most windows having been bricked over: Ireland at one point was subject to a "daylight tax" for each window in a structure, so a number of older buildings such as the former Irish Parliament (now the headquarters of the Bank of Ireland) sport a grand total of zero windows.
Dublin Castle has an interesting history. Built during the early 13th century, the original Castle sported a medieval design complete with turrets and a central square. In 1684, following an argument between James Butler, Marquis of Ormond, and his son, Earl of Arran. Arran set fire to Ormond's bedroom, and Ormond, believing himself to be an expert in explosives, believed that he could contain the fire by setting charges in circular formation around the flames, ultimately bringing the castle structure to its knees. All that remains of the original Castle today are a turret and a church adjacent to the turret. A Georgian estate now lays where the castle once stood.
Kilmainham Gaol was originally built as a dungeon of sorts: snaking corridors and multiple detainees per straw-lined cell. The newer wing, designed in 1796, was built such that all prisoners resided on one of three levels in individual wood-and-brick cells with iron beds. Due to its consolidated layout, only ten guards were required to patrol the jail, as opposed to the twenty to thirty required in the older wing. Built atop a hill, the jail receives a crossbreeze that brought fresh air constantly into the jail. During times of disease, however, this plan backfired and actually brought disease into the prison. The concept of one prisoner per cell also fell flat on its face during famine, where over nine thousand deliberately committed crimes to gain entry to the prison solely to be fed. Kilmainham also houses two open-air yards, one of which originally served as a stonebreaker's yard and the other as an execution ground.
The Wicklow Mountains are a breathtaking sight to one used to an urban environment. Home to a number of collective farms, sheep are allowed to move free and are identified by colored markings and, in more recent years, RFID tags. The mountains also feature a natural reservoir and various crops and trees.
We visited Glendalough, a 6th-century Christian monastic settlement within the Wicklow Mountains. The Gaelic "Gleann dá Loch" literally translates to "Glen of Two Lakes", as the settlement itself is situated between two mountains to the north and south and two lakes to the east and west. The settlement contains a number of 11th-century stone-and-mortar churches, the majority of which have succumbed to time: caved-in roofs, windows bricked or missing entirely, and so forth. Though the settlement was used as a graveyard until the late 1800s, original tombstones dating back to the settlement itself are still in existence, though time and weather have worn away their engravings. Surprisingly, one of the intact churches was used to hold services up until the mid-1800s despite the fact that our group of thirty or so could barely fit inside.
The Powerscourt Estate originally served as a 13th-century castle and has since been destroyed and rebuilt a number of times. Its architecture seems to follow an effective battle strategy: at the time, Ireland was at risk of being invaded by the Vikings and Normans. Situated at the top of a hill with a large turret on its northern side, it was several orders of magnitude easier for me to bolt down the estate's stairs than it was to climb back up; in fact, I chose a dirt path off to the side rather than tackle the stairs, and ended up beating two other friends to the top by nearly a full minute. A fountain and Japanese garden now sit at the base of the hill, which are also owned by the estate.
The turret I mentioned in the last paragraph served as a personal wake-up call that I'm too much of a Legend of Zelda addict. The door to the turret was situated in the back, while ivy grew up the front of the tower. My first instinct, rather than to search for the entrance, was actually to climb the ivy. Thankfully I caught myself before doing so, since ivy grows further up more readily than it'll grow back down. A friend was gracious enough to descend the turret and its hill and take a picture of me atop it.
We had a chance to visit a number of other popular attractions as well. The Book of Kells, housed at Trinity College, was an early copy of the Bible with intricate illustrations made with rare materials exported from as far as Italy and Afghanistan. Each day, its maintainers turn a page in the Book, so if one were to visit every day for a few years he or she would be able to view each of its pages. Phoenix Park is home to the skyscraper-sized Pope's Cross and the Irish President's residence, closely resembling but built before the White House in Washington. St. Patrick's Cathedral is undergoing major renovations for the first time since the 1800s after a large grant by the Guinness family, but is still open for both services and tourism, and is home to a number of artifacts such as the Door of Reconciliation and a number of tattered British flags apparently dating back to the dawn of Imperial Britain.
I'll be sharing a good lot of pictures in the days to come. I don't have a computer on hand with Firewire connectivity, so I won't be able to share videos until my laptop returns from HP's technical support center.
On a completely unrelated note, I've acquired another old laptop: an NEC Ready 220T with a Pentium 1 clocked at 233MHz, 64 megs of memory, 13.3" LCD screen, and a 2.5GB hard drive. It may not be the best in the world, but it's plenty better than the 386 I've been using. If the battery still works, I'll definitely use this as my portable in the Compaq's stead for the time being.