Dublin Part II

Well here’s another long post as this week has been so full! Tuesday was St. Patrick’s day and it was insane! My room started off the day in a very lazy fashion, by sleeping in and sitting around missing the breakfast window downstairs. We have a great view of the street from our hostel windows so my room and a handful of people (some not even in our group, looking at you random German tourist) crowded around the window sill to watch the parade. It didn't actually get to our street near Christchurch until around 1:30 pm, and because we wanted to be prepared my legs were asleep from being perched on the sill for so long. Once the parade started I gave up and appreciated that I had a pretty awesome view outside the crowded streets below. We had mixed drinks to hype up during the parade and maybe it wasn't the best idea to drink on an empty stomach, but it certainly made the parade weirder than it already was. It was a toss-up on what was really going to come next, you had to guess American marching band, Boys and Girls clubs, or even a random dance group with a theme that didn't match all the way through! I enjoyed being able to say I saw the parade, but I have to agree with the NCAD students when they said it wasn't worth it.

The parade from our window

              After the parade, our huge group split and I stayed with a group of a 6 or so people and we ran at the chance to get food. We all went across the street to get Indian take away and went back to the hostel to quickly eat so we could go back out. We dwindled down even more to about 6 people, and walked towards a fair at Christchurch. There we found even more food that included mini donuts which I shared with my friend Hunter, whose birthday is also St. Patrick’s day. After taking that second food break we headed more uptown towards a huge shopping area near Grafton Street that ended up having great live music by a band of two girls called The Heathers. We stayed around there and then planned our attack for dinner. We had to wade through the bar district of Temple bar again which was littered with people and alcohol to make it to a Mongolian Barbeque that we had been before. After that, to get out of Temple Bar we found ourselves across the river and at a bar called Lotts where my friend Ashley had her first beer and Cosmopolitan. Needless to say, she enjoyed the Cosmo a lot more than her Carlsberg. I had a couple of drinks with the rest of the table, and when we decided we should get back we got to see how fun Ashley is when giggly. I know she is going to be very fun when she can drink.

Ashley, Me, Shari, Hunter, Christina, and Becca on St. Patty's

              Wednesday was a boring day after having fun on Tuesday. We went back to NCAD and worked on our rubber band cars. My group was struggling to really cement an idea so went through a couple of ideas and prototypes before we ended up having to accept what we had last for a trial run of all the group’s cars. The most exciting part of my day was probably seeing that Rebecca in my group has a cordless hot glue pen (which is amazing seeing as its not like a cordless glue gun because those are still huge enough that it doesn't matter and I use hot glue guns a lot at studio!), so if you find one of these let me know because I am all over that! That night we were treated dinner by my professor at a really not that great Italian place, but I appreciated the effort in getting a group of 24 into a place so I was grateful.

Bosch GluePen, consider this wishlisted

              Thursday was a day like climbing the mountain in Ballyvaughan all over again, at least with the step count. First we walked down a couple blocks to St. Patrick’s Cathedral which is amazing smashup of museum like sections, harry potter looking walls with pictures and plaques puzzled together, and an actual working church. I really enjoyed being there and looking around even though a lot of people in the group didn't seem to care since this is just another big church. Then we walked back towards our hostel through St. Patrick’s Park to meet up with the professor who will be taking over for the next 3 weeks, Dylan. Dylan decided to tag along on our big day as we made our way to The National Gallery. We were given the option of The National Gallery which is the big art museum in Dublin or the Natural History Gallery, and I chose the art. There was a cool exhibit where they paired writers with works of art that reflected or mirrored what they wrote about. I quickly found Seamus Heaney and was happy to see the art they paired him with. The National Gallery is very touchy about photography of any kind so as much as I wished to document the art, I couldn't. The best I could do what write the names down and go from there. We had very limited time there, so I had to rush through most of the galleries.

View of the cathedral from the park

Inside St. Patrick's Cathedral

              Next, we took a short walk to Trinity College to see The Book of Kells. Walking onto campus was like getting transported back in time and to a different country. I remarked to Ashley that it was walking into Italy from Dublin and she agreed immediately. We were ushered into the exhibit space, and it was so cramped with people it made it hard to read everything up to the books. And even then, when we got to the books the crowds were very pushy and I only got to see the books for a slice of time. The presentation of the books, I have to say, is a bit of a letdown. They are in a case that you have to lean over to see and the lighting is so poor the only thing you can really appreciate is how much time it took to write so elegantly in color and with the decoration. I honestly had a better time going upstairs to the Trinity College Library and seeing the collections of books, awards, and artifacts they had up there. After getting everyone through the exhibition, we had a lunch at the Trinity Dining Hall which in all honesty is actually the Great Hall in Harry Potter complete with huge benches that span the room. Our next stop was for one of the students, Joseph, to cut off his wild mane and exchange that for a Euro haircut. Really, it was on or official schedule. We all stood outside and cheered when it was done, leaving the locals confused on whether or not there was a celebrity among them.

Trinity College Library

              After a quick break, we reconvened for a walk a little bit further out of Dublin 2 to the National Museum of Ireland. We took a quick peak at the Eileen Gray exhibit, as she is one of the most influential designers of the 20^th century. With even less time I went through another exhibit called The Way We Wore, which was clothing and textiles from Ireland of the past 250 years. Last stop we had time for was a quick look at the replica of Asgard, Ireland’s first national sail-training vessel first built in 1905. The last place we visited as a large group was the Guinness Storehouse, which I did not actually know was shaped like a giant pint glass! We made it up the floors where they explain how Guinness is made, what advertising they have used, and have several places you can use your free pint voucher at. I did get to go through the taste-testing rooms, which you have to make sure your timing is right, and was taught the proper way of tasting a Guinness. You have to breathe in deeply and then while drinking you must breathe out through your nose to get all the notes of the beer. They even give you a tiny pint glass to practice. Eventually, my friend Shari and I made it to the 7^th floor, which is the Gravity bar, and where you can see the whole city from there. We were ambushed by another person in our group who told us Usher was also there (Usher the famous rapper, who really is much shorter in person)! So got our free beers and proceeded to be creepy and also try to be cool about the whole situation. We walked around and enjoyed the view while also trying to get pictures of Usher. Some people in my group even made it into Usher’s photo that he posted on Instagram, talk about cool!

Advertising sign at the Storehouse

Usher at Gravity Bar

              Friday, we returned to NCAD for the last time to finish up with the cars. My group quickly had to make design decisions on the car to figure out what mechanism we actually wanted to use. What we ended up with was a wind up where the front axle is locked into the body of the car and you wind the rubber band around the back axle which can spin freely. At 1pm, I grabbed lunch with Iziz and she told me that the students were going to protest at 1:30pm in front of the president of the school’s office. It amazed me because the students wrote out a whole page of demands and all signed it, handing it to him one at a time telling him if they didn't hear from him before Wednesday they would escalate their campaign. They had a symbol of rebellion and everything! Quickly after they had finished we had our final races, our car didn't do so hot but we didn't come in last! We did get a shout out for building the most prototypes, so there’s something. After that, we said our goodbyes and made sure to get everyone’s info so we could keep in touch.

Jon, Eihon, myself, Rebecca, and Iziz with our car

               Today has been a good day to catch up on everything, as we leave for Carlow tomorrow by train. We've been out and about today and people are also catching up on sleep. It’s one of those rare very sunny days so I think everyone is really enjoying themselves. I know I am going to enjoy the rest of my night, and I am excited that Dublin is our in-between place so we get to come back a couple of times before we go home!