Dublin City and Orientation

We woke up fairly early on the morning of the fourth and drove to the train station with almost no difficulties. The 8:30 train to Dublin was running on time, so we grabbed a snack and headed to gate 5 where we encountered a rather fierce little old Irish woman (she was upset because the queue changed directions and she was at the back now, rather than the front. So she fought her way back to first, only to be passed by almost everyone getting onto the train). We found our seats and settled in to hopefully get a quick nap on the way when a group of twenty or so high school students from somewhere in Spain loaded onto the car. Needless to say the volume raised a notch or two, but we did get serenaded by one of the boys. About an hour and a half into our journey the train stopped and we were informed that we would be delayed an hour due to the death on the tracks somewhere ahead of us.

Guinness Storehouse Gate

As terrible as that news was, we were still excited to get to Dublin, though our schedule was a bit delayed. Our first stop was the Guinness Storehouse, which we took the long way getting to by accident. I just popped into the store quickly to buy some souvenirs as it was expensive to take a tour and we didn’t have the time. After the storehouse we walked through a more down-beaten portion of Dublin on our way to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The front of the cathedral was surprisingly dull, but the inside was gorgeous. There were tons of very elaborate tombs in the walls and some beautiful stained glass windows. We went to the park around the back of the church and were glad to see a much better view of the architecture. I was, however, surprised that it was not bigger.

St. Patrick's Cathedral

We were very close to the city center of Dublin at this point, so, after a stop at the Chester Beatty Library near Dublin Castle to look at some beautiful illuminated manuscripts from ancient India, we headed in that direction. City Center was probably my favorite part of Dublin as its close location to Trinity College and many shops and businesses lent it to being rather busy and full of fun things to see. We made a stop at the Avoca Handweavers shop, where they had three floors full of colorful knick-knacks and woolens, as well as a café. We also made a quick stop at the Hard Rock Café to buy some souvenirs.

Dublin Castle

Our last stop in Dublin was at the Porterhouse, a microbrewery in the Temple Bar district. Temple Bar is an area very close to the city center and Trinity College. It is, as its name would suggest, filled with pubs, but there are also restaurants, shops, and great opportunities for people watching and seeing live music. The Porterhouse had great Irish pub food and I tried a delicious cider there. I can’t remember the name off the top of my head as it is, I believe, Swedish (it might have been Kopparberg). It was strawberry lime flavored, pink, and it tasted like summertime. It is by far my favorite drink I’ve had here, the only flaw I can find is that it’s not Irish.

Our train ride back to Cork was just as eventful as the ride to Dublin. We sat in the same group of chairs (four chairs face each other around a table on these trains) as an older Irish gentleman named John and across from another, not quite so old, and certainly less gentlemanly fellow named Liam. Liam and John had both gone into Dublin from Cork to watch a rugby match, Liam, it seemed, from a pub. Liam proceeded to drink more beer that he had smuggled onto the train and regale us with tall tales, drunkenly wise advice, and Irish songs sung in a loud, deep, and very slurred voice. John helped to translate and generally balanced out Liam’s exhibitionism with a quieter sort of entertainment. He talked to us for the whole trip (including, unfortunately, another delay due to ANOTHER death on the rails. Suicides due to the recession in Ireland, according to John) and was an endless fount of stories, information on Irish culture, and jokes.

The ride was enjoyable, but the delay caused us to get back to Cork almost two hours late. The subsequent drive through Cork’s city center and confusing one way streets in the dark took another half an hour. When we got back to the hotel, exhausted, it turned out that our keys to get into our hotel room weren’t working. Once we were let in by the security guard we also found that our plugs weren’t working. I had to be up early the next day for orientation at UCC, so I went to bed rather frustrated.

Orientation yesterday went rather well. There are between forty and fifty international students all of whom seem very nice. Being in such a large group of people who I don’t know is a little stressful and uncomfortable for me, but I’ve met a couple of people and I’m living in a townhouse with seven other girls. Hopefully the situation will get better with time. We finished the day by going to a very nice restaurant in the east of County Cork where they served us wonderful food (there was a strawberry meringue pastry that was AWESOME). On the way out there we stopped at a place called Ballycotton on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and got to take some pictures of the pretty landscape and lighthouse.

More to come on classes and such later, but right now I have to get this posted and get to seminar.

Amelia