Next, a walk around the city centre with stops at St. Stephen’s Green, the poet’s walk, and Trinity College to see the Book of Kells and the Long Room (the old library). I should mention that the Irish have it right… instead of towing your car away for illegal parking, they “clamp” it, and you have to pay a fee to have it removed: how sensible! At St. Patrick’s Cathedral, we chanced upon a free Handel recital, and it was absolutely lovely to sit there in that huge, historic church and listen to some pretty darn good singing. We were approached partway through by an English gentleman who asked: “Are you girls from America?” Surprised, we corrected him, and asked what gave us away. “Oh, you’re both chewing gum in church,” he replied, and we both blushed bright red and started for the garbage bin. However, the man laughed and said he didn’t mean it that way; it was just a decidedly non-euro thing to do!
Back to the hostel to shower and clean up, and a chat with the cute French guys who liked to walk around our room clad only in boxers. They were aware of Canada’s French-speaking regions and asked if we could understand them. “Oh, but, can you understand me, that is the question”, I thought to myself. From northern France, their English was almost as broken as my French. Made for an interesting attempt at communication. I invited them out for drinks, but they were going to rest up for a long night of partying. Such is life in Dublin’s Temple Bar… a perpetual party for all of Europe.For dinner, a stop at the Bad Ass Café for some pre-beer grease. Well, not exactly... Just a good pizza and a pint of Murphy’s. I never eat like this at home so it was stellar. It also cost me $37 bucks CDN for a modest dinner. Geez.
But that night, Wednesday, was the craziest night yet (aside from my birthday). The front desk person at our hostel was kind enough to provide some recommendations for good music and good beer, so we started off at the infamous Temple Bar, Temple Bar. Of course it was full of tourists. We could barely move, but somehow that was fun… we were starting to get used to watching European football instead of hockey, and pretended to be right in there with the lingo. Go Liverpool! When the band came out, it was great. Just so many smiling, happy faces nodding along, and the odd person doing an Irish jig right in the middle of the floor. No-one was especially rowdy or intoxicated, no fights, no shouting, just a bunch of people having fun. That’s what it was like at every pub we went to in Ireland.Then we crossed the street and went to The Quays, were I was AGAIN asked my age. Geez, on my 27th birthday trip, nobody believes I’m 18! I thanked the bouncer heartily.
The Quays… Fresh and tasty Guinness and 6 EUR a pint, with Ang drinking Bulmer’s like it was going out of style. Good times! The hot blond bartender had a tie full of national flag pins, and he picked us out right away: “I’ve got one for you girls,” he said, pointing to the Canadian flag. We were stunned. How did he know? “I just know these things”, he replied, “and I could tell by your accent”. No way… we didn’t believe it! “Fine,” he admitted, “I saw your Canadian flag keychain”. We ordered all our pints from him. He even walked out into the crowd to give me mine when I forgot it on the bar.
Music was traditional Irish, mostly drinking songs. It was awesome. The old dude with his guitar was just perfect. The atmosphere was friendly and again, full of happy faces. Ang and I met two friends from England. The first guy was a Hungarian with an English accent, who artificially inseminated cows and other livestock, and his friend was a headstrong gal who spoke “the Queen’s English”, whatever that meant. Lovely people, and we had a lovely time.
The Quays closed its doors around 1:30, and I’m not sure exactly how it came about, but Ang asked the bartender where else we could go, and then it was off to Gogarty’s for the late-night crowd. The bartender joined us shortly thereafter, chugging Miller’s through a straw to reach an intoxicated state all the quicker. And so the 5 of us joined the party across the street… and what a party it was. I can’t remember when I actually started liking songs such as “Clementine”, but for some reason it was the cat’s meow to sing along at the top of my lungs with a few hundred inebriated Irish souls. I just stuck to Guinness and had a blast with my new English friends and the cute bartender from the Quays, who somehow decided to hang with the 4 of us all night.Around 3AM, Gogarty’s closed its doors too, and the bartender shooed us to the next haunt. This appeared to be a type of nightclub in the old-school Toronto fashion, and I balked. There was a cheerful, portly middle-aged guy from Scotland who was trailing me and I really wanted to lose him. Plus, I thought I had reached my alcohol saturation point, and the Quays bartender (no one’s fool, a total player) looked almost dangerously hammered. There was no way I was going in there… I dug in my heels. Dig dig dig… Scottish dude went in. Phew! Ang and the bartender went in, but Pete and Christine stayed behind with me, probably feeling almost as tired as I was. Moments later, Ang emerged, followed reluctantly by the bartender. The 4 of us agreed to call it a night, but the bartender would have none of it. He put the moves on Christine, but she laughed him away, then pointed to me and said something. Next thing I know, he calls me over. “ You playing hard to get?” His lids are drooping, he’s totally smashed. “Uh, no.” Without warning, he’s kissing me, ashtray mouth and all. Christ, why do people smoke!? And so that was unprovoked kiss number 2. I only learned his name afterwards.
The bartender, shot down by all three of us girls in turn, headed back into the nightclub: "I'll see ya when I see ya," he said to me, dejectedly (so I thought!). Ang and I walked Pete and Chris back to their hostel and we ended up taking a cab back to ours. Who knows why this made sense at the time?
We got back just after 3:30AM, detoxed with 2L of water, and got ready for bed. Ang went right to sleep, but I was sitting up on the top bunk when the French guys arrived. The tall one stripped down to his boxers right in front of me, and proceeded to ask me, in his sexy France French accent, how my night went. “Um, it was great of course, didn’t expect much else from Dublin!” I listed our plan of attack for the evening. He smiled. He didn’t seem drunk at all.
4 hours later, we awoke to yet another beautiful day. Ang and I abandoned our illicit cans of beer in the room, needing to jettison them for weight restrictions on the plane. I hope the French guys like Heineken. After a small breakfast at a nearby café, and a quick stop at a souvenir shop to pick up a Temple Bar T-Shirt (I mean, c’mon!), we headed to the Guinness factory. Nothing like more Guinness and the smell of hops to cure a hangover. The factory was great fun; I actually learned something… The tour ended with a fresh pint of Guinness at the “Sky Café” overlooking the city of Dublin. Sure beats the CN Tower…
We ran like mad to make it back to the hostel, grab our bags and head to the airport. However, for a multitude of reasons… we didn’t make it in time to catch our flight to Amsterdam. Much hand-wringing ensued at the airport. This was my nightmare come true… the next flight would cost $350 CDN each. So much for a budget holiday… we looked at other options, but the best was to continue with our original plans. So we took the bus back to Temple Bar, got another room in the Barnacles hostel, and proceeded to drown our sorrows with yet more pizza and Guinness.
We went straight to the Quays that night, where the bartender spotted us, and, in a surprising fit of annoyance, slammed his fist right down on the bar. All eyes turned to us… the other staff stared at us, and at him, quizzically. We confessed that we had missed our flight to Amsterdam. “Oh, I have a feeling that you’ll miss the next one too,” he said, both peeved and mysterious at once. He didn’t speak to us the rest of the night, and left before closing time.
Things perked up at Gogarty’s, where we met a nice fellow named Tom from Northern Ireland, and his boss. They work in the bottled water industry, with a small brand named “Classic”. That’s pretty much all I remember about that, except that Tom felt sorry for us having lost all that money on the flight, and he bought us each a few rounds. Perhaps it was because of that, I incurred my second hangover of the trip… yes, really, no kidding.
So the next day, definitely NOT wide-eyed and bushy-tailed, we make it to Dublin airport alive and on time. The flight was, er, “bouncy?” and the landing in Amsterdam was positively frightening. The lady next to me had her seat in a death-grip, knuckles white and all. I was glad to be over with that one.
