Day 70, 17 March: Dublin On St. Patrick's Day

Bewleys Hotel, Dublin. Day 70. Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day

            10 AM. Left. Two eight-person taxis to London Stansted Airport. Several toiletries confiscated by security due to quantity of liquid—Mo, robbed of all his toiletries but a toothbrush. Hour flight, started Frankenstein, noticed Joseph dozing next to me.

            [For the sake of convenience and retrospective narration perspective, I travelled with basically three groups: my main group (Vinnie, Joseph, Mo, Anna Cahn, Briar, and Kat—the last three were on the Cambridge tour with me), the two girls who stayed at a hotel near Temple Bar (Alex and Lauren), and the four Australian girls who went out with us the first night and then did their own thing (Caitlin—definitely a constant visitor to the guys’ room Saturday, then Fiona, Emma, and Bella). For only the first night, Haley joined us, but unfortunately had to get back early Sunday to do an essay she had accidentally erased.]

           D u b l i n, I r e l a n d. The airport was the foreshadow: green dotted and spiralled and soared every which way, three- and four-leaf cloves all over the place, balloons of the Irish flag (orange, white, and green) hovered above hallways. Little did we know that our bus transportation to and from the city centre would make us so familiar with the airport every day that it became way too much.

            After stocking up on genii bottles for the night, we took the free shuttle from the airport to our close-by hotel—we arrived at Bewleys Hotel by 3, just missing the parade in the city. A fish bowl of real three-leaf clovers sat on the receptionist desk, next to a sign: FREE. I took one, which shrivelled up almost instantly. Oh well. We all paid Joseph at front—such a good deal: 3 nights, 4 days and the cost for each of us was €55 for accommodations. (Yes, currency change! Now into euros.) …we all spent a lot more money on this trip than we expected, though.

            Elevators of glass and scenic view took us up to the second floor (we habitually were lazy). Two hallways down we found our rooms (that is, my main Group of Awesomeness): Room 240 and 241, guys’ and girls’ room. Mo and I took the middle double bed, Joseph got the single, Vinnie the couch bed.

The Guys (Vinnie, Guinness, Joseph, Mo,  and in front, me) 

            We spent two hours getting prepped for the night, excited as all get-out. Green hairspray, green fabric for bracelets, shamrock magic-glass necklaces, green crayon for face, Kat’s excellent face-painting skills for the forehead three-leaf clovers. This last one, the face paint, stayed on the longest amidst the heat of the Dublin temples of temptation in the night.

            We headed down to the lobby and had our first Guinness of Ireland. Astounding. For those of you of an unripe age, imagine stale, black liquid—then, by the alchemist powers of Dublin’s founding Guinness brewery, change that taste to one of a beautiful black glory, its bitterness sweet, its sweetness bitter. This is the milk and honey of the land of Ireland. In seeing the pouring of it, I witnessed the liquid beginning as pale brown, the colour of milked coffee, and slowly vertical waves move down the glass and by gradations, the brown transforms into a beautiful blackness.

AIRPLANE POSE (Kat, then Joseph and Mo--or 'Mojo')

            We were ready for the night. In our first stage of enchantment, we befriended the shuttle bus driver. His name, Paddy Senior. I am not kidding. He was no ordinary bus driver of 50 years of age—no, sir. He enjoyed our loud company and at some point, and as Mo adamantly admits, he did the moonwalk down the aisle in the centre of the bus, at one of the early stops.

            During our ridiculous photo sessions on the shuttle, Vinnie swiped my camera out of Mo’s hand, accidentally bringing it to the floor. The lens apparatus took the shape of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Though frustrated, I know this was not done on purpose and Vinnie paid Karma’s price: about halfway through the city centre on the bus, he had to get off. His enchantment took a sickening turn, shortening his first night to an early bedtime and late late night fun upon our group’s return.

This captures the moment before the
camera's gravity freefall.

            After parting ways with the legend that is Paddy, Fiona and Anna magically wound up with a large Irish flag. For the rest of the trip, the flag’s name was ‘Baby Dublin’. Unfortunately, due to his bulgy nature, Anna neglected her maternal duties to the flag and left him under the counter at Temple Bar.

            Getting off the hour-long bus ride (we soon resorted to taxis on upcoming days), we saw our first sight of the heart of Dublin: a 120-metre Millennium Spire burst from the centre of the street, encircled by a roundabout. The streetlight poles stretched upwards, then spiralled a little toward the street, each hanging onto a white drooping raindrop of light. The standard neon lights of Subway, McDonalds, Burger King, and more Dublin-esque restaurants took over the block. The city was alive. This was the night of green, of Leprechaun hats and Irish luck. We followed the herds making their way to the mecca of Dublin night life, Temple Bar street. Imagine New York City on New Years—but narrow the street and embellish in green all you can possibly imagine. It took us about an hour to walk four blocks, caught in a sea of people happy and enchanted with the night airs.

            Finally, we were admitted into Temple Bar. Kat and I clinked our first Guinness of Temple Bar. A statue in one of the seven cavernous, wooden rooms had a man with arms out in victory, each of his hands grasping a genii bottle. In another room were framed autographs decorating the walls and wooden pillars: I saw Sean Connery’s, dated ’97.

            Caitlin and I ended up at the platform end of the main room, cheering from high stools near the red neon sign ‘T E M P L E   B A R’. Epic night.

            All of us guys, minus the sleeping Vinnie—and Haley—took an aircoach back to the airport before midnight. We had left for the temples of temptation around 7, but after so many hours, we felt like leaving Temple Bar and head back—the music was getting old and there was Vinnie to go see. He woke up eventually and texted us as we returned.

            On the aircoach, Mo chatted it up with two French students heading back to the airport after a night of Saint Patrick’s Day celebrations. At one point, he broke out into Arabic, and one of the girls responded. He was born in Morocco, with an almond face of perpetual sunshine and friendship, but I didn’t anticipate multilingualism. As wth any multilingual surprise (most common in college when the Spanish or Japanese mother of your roommate calls and he goes fluently out of English), I definitely admired it.

            Shining the light now on Joseph, I want to speak of his character: with a rugged face, born of the mountainous New Zealand and weathered by the storms of ages, Joseph exudes a natural spring of leadership and confidence from life experience. Since we spoke on the topic of girls and relationships, it was discovered (truly, one look can give you this accurate impression) that he is a man of integrity: a night out is not for catching all the girls. The easy target is not the desire; the girl with the sharp wit and steady charm that lasts beyond a night’s appearance is Joseph’s choice.

            We parted from Haley, now off for her flight, and headed back to Vinnie at the hotel. Hours past and the night took a fun twist when the main group and Caitlin crowded into the guys’ room and watched infomercials: ‘It’s like a spaceship cleaning my floor.’ ‘7 in 1 cleaning thing….for ONLY €100! I think it’s the built-in fog machine that sells it.’ We laughed until we fell asleep.