Eirann Go Bragh

Ireland is the least foreign foreign country I've ever visited, which is helpful, since it's the first place I've visited alone. I didn't secure a hostel in advance (I know, I know) so I ended up staying in the last room available in the entire city (per ze internets). This was not a good way to spend my first night alone, but it was a great lesson: always plan ahead. Flying by the seat of your pants sounds sexy until you are surrounded by drunk teenagers at 4 in the morning, desperately trying to get enough sleep for next 8 hours of exploration. 

I spent the morning at the Guinness Storehouse learning how beer is made. I finally know what barley looks like (wheat) and learned that hops is a plant that grows up to 15 feet tall when strung up by growers. I also learned about coopers, the craftsmen that made waterproof wooden barrels by hand (they used steam to push the boards together) - at the end of the tour I got a pint of guinness, which tasted a little different from the guinness they serve at home (less good).

This a photo of part of the Guinness factory, which reminded me a bit of Charlie and the Chocolate factory. 

I spent the afternoon on a three hour walking tour of Dublin. The company works for tips only and only employs locals. While on the tour I noticed/learned/thought the following things: 

 Clover is everywhere. 

This church had the family coats of arms carved into the woodwork. I want to make one and have someone carve it into my front door.

This beautiful thing was built to hide the unsightly ghetto that was behind it years ago:

This is the Christ Church Cathedral. It has catacombs you can explore underneath for 6 euros. I'd like to go, but it looks like I'm going to run out of time before I get there. 

More great wall art.

It rains all of the time in Ireland. You should just suck it up and buy a ridiculously expensive, lifetime guaranteed umbrella made by some company that's been making umbrellas for the last 200 years. Maybe something made out of mahogany or ivory tusks or alligator bones. I'm now on my third cheap umbrella because I can't convince myself to follow my own advice and because I like to fill landfills and because I like to pretend I'm surprised and disappointed when my plastic piece of crap can't withstand a wee bit of wind.

Our tour guide told us about the potato famine and said that, at the time, the island was producing more than twice the food necessary to sustain its inhabitants, but that unaffected crops were mostly cash crops which were sold to England and that Soldiers were deployed to prevent islanders from eating the crops they produced, at their own peril. I haven't had time to read up on this to understand exactly what happened, but it's on my short list of things to do. 

After the tour, the rain slowed to a drizzle and the sun came out. The following three pictures do not begin to depict how beautiful it was - the light striking out through the clouds, the last few fat rain drops, the swans, and the people coming out from under the trees they'd sought shelter under - all at once. 

Then I found some good and inexpensive Indian food and took my exhausted butt home - home being a much, much nicer hostel than the night prior: 

The next day I plodded out to Kilmainham Gaol (an old prison) and saw these things along the way: 

This is the interior of Kilmainham Gaol. It was built in the late 18th century, and, according to what I found interesting and remembered from the tour, it's significant for a number of reasons: when it was built it was a state of the art facility and was one of the first prisons to separate the prisoners rather than throwing them together in a large room (to avoid violence and disease). The new idea was to reform the prisoners by ensuring silence (so they wouldn't negatively influence one another) and exposing them to the godly goodness of sunlight. Prisoners included women, men, and children as young as 5 and was also the site where many of the revolutionary leaders of 1916 were executed.  

That afternoon I caught a train to Belfast and hit the couchsurfing jackpot (beginners luck?). More on that later. Hugs, Erin