The other day we decided to check out the Dublin Writers Museum (note: if you go to that link, there's a voucher for buy one, get one free through Sept 2009). Overall it was um...not so great. We did the audio tour, which made it a little less boring. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that so many of the displays had massive amounts of text on them! It's a writers museum after all! But I was pretty put out at how few women were featured extensively in the museum. I realize that the bulk of canonized Irish writers are indeed male, but jeez even the women who were mentioned were completely GLOSSED OVER. I guess they figure no one's interested. I took a couple of snapshots in there, anyways.

The entrance:


Jonathan Swift, the great writer of "A Modest Proposal"


Stained Glass Window:


The upstairs room:


Bust of Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill:


Then, having nothing else in particular going on for the day, we walked down to the Docklands to check out what's new down there. We came across this boat that I'm too lazy to look up:


I don't remember what this is, but I liked the way it looked (and sounded):


Here's a view of the walkway along the River Liffey. You can see the new bridge in the background, which is unfinished, but cool looking.


This big, weird circus-looking thing is apparently covering up some kind of Bord Gais (the gas company) apparatus:


In this view of the Grand Canal Docks sign, you can see Sugarloaf in the background:


Another view of the river:


The Sun came out:


We came across this boat that was a perfect shade of red. I don't think it's been used for a while though!




The city in the distance...


Then we walked home through this not-so-great neighborhood called East Wall. There wasn't much to photograph except this cool stencil on a broken up window:


And finally, in Fairview we noticed this statue that had been painted all along the front of the face, and graffiti painted on the base. The writing is all in Irish, so I'm not sure who it is:


We relaxed at home for a bit and then headed out for our Townie Bar tour of Dublin. But I'll write about that next time!

We began our day by brunching at Juice, a vegetarian restaurant with vegan options (note: I think their website may be slightly outdated) so Mark and I could both eat comfortably. From there we sauntered over to the Cow's Lane Market and had a gander at the stalls. Some interesting stuff, but nothing that blew my socks off. The problem with handmade goods is that to make money off it, you need to charge more, obviously, because it takes more time than a factory item. But for people to want to pay more, it has to be unique and well-made. I didn't feel that all of the vendors had the kind of quality that matched the prices they were asking. There has to be something about the item that makes the customer willing to pay more, it's that simple. My mind got to thinking...I am eager to get my sewing machine next week. But there were some cute things there, for sure!

Boy there sure are a lot of people walking around town in those ridiculous green hats. More than in Boston I'd guess, if you can imagine. It's all so undignified. I suppose I still resent St. Patrick's day for overshadowing my birthday, the much cooler, nerdier, and under-appreciated Pi day. I'm really not much for crowds, and I'm really really not much for drunken crowds, so St. Patrick's Day is definitely not one of my preferred holidays. Now, in case you are wondering, yes, I am in fact of Irish descent: my great-grandfather was from Limerick. But I'm just not all rah-rah about it. I'm also, for the record, not rah-rah about my Italian or French-Canadian, or American heritage either. I just don't fly flags, period. (And no jokes about any "freak flags" from the peanut gallery!)

Anyhoo, from there we headed to St. Stephen's Green, (a park at the top of Grafton Street, one of the big shopping areas, so I guess you could liken it to Boston Common, but much smaller and much more manicured) because I had yet to visit it. It wasn't much to write home about, but I took a couple of photos nevertheless:
A bust of Constance Markievicz:

A gift from the Germans to the Irish people after WWII:

A sculpture evoking the famine:


We decided to head over to the park over at Merrion Square, and there just happened to be a little carnival going on there! It was sort of an odd sight, and not very well attended at all. The Ferris Wheel was actually impressively large, but since it was an extremely windy day, there was no way either of us were going to get on it!

I'm not sure what this ride was, but the picture is worth a thousand words...

Ride Hollywood with all your favorite movie stars!


The park itself is nice for walking or sitting around for a picnic -- it kind of reminds me of the sculpture park in Washington, DC but less open, so the pathways make you feel like you're almost in the woods at some points. If you remember from a couple of months ago, this is the same park where I took the photo of the pyramid with the flame and the soldiers inside. On that day, I was too cold to explore. Yesterday was a fine day for checking out the sculptures and flora...or the both! We had a laugh when we came upon this bust of Michael Collins that someone had stuffed with a daffodil:

Then there was a not-so-great statue of Oscar Wilde. It made him look like a jerk, I thought:

And this sculpture, which is actually quite small but may look large in the photo. The woman looks about four months pregnant, and is about three quarters of the size of my arm:


We headed over to the Docklands, and walked around a bit before it was time to go into the Grand Canal area where we had two tickets to the free show for a performance piece called "Spheres." As we were walking, we came upon this sign in a window from someone being evicted from their house. A true "sign of the times" indeed:


We wandered back up to where the show was happening, and caught the show. It was cute. Of course we enjoyed critiquing it once it was over, as is our way. But visually, you can see they did some interesting stuff with not a lot of technical mumbojumbo:



We popped into a pub whose name escapes me now for a pint. Mark said it was in Dubliners. We enjoyed the place but decided we'd best move on if we were to keep to schedule.

And then finally we walked all the way back up to the edge of St. Stephen's Green and ate at Wagamama, and then headed over to a bar called The Lower Deck to catch a friend's band play.

The bands were all decent, actually, and I was relieved that my friend's band was the best, so I don't have to lie when I give him a compliment. Here's a photo I took of a kid's jacket. He was comically drunk, and then not so comically drunk.

When it was over we bought some snacks, walked for a bit, and then finally decided to spring for a cab home.

All in all, a very fun-filled, pleasant birthday indeed.

Yesterday I was determined to leave the house on a mission that wasn't about going to the Post Office or the Grocery Store, or on a shopping mission for something for the house. So despite the cold and the semi-slick roads, I bundled up and got on my bike. My destination was the Docklands, specifically the Grand Canal Square, because a friend of mine's wife had a hand in designing it, and it sure looked cool from the pictures.

Looking at my map, it seemed simple enough to get to. Except I didn't notice that one of the major streets I'd planned to take was actually a one-way going in the opposite direction. So as I was going along with the traffic, I was taken away from the direction I knew I wanted to go. So I pulled over next to Trinity to look at my map, to discover the error of my ways. No biggie, I thought! But biking here is still rather tricky for me, as I'm not used to this left hand side of the road business, not to mention that taking a right hand turn when you're all the way over on the left hand side on a two-lane one-way stretch of traffic is no easy task, especially when you don't know where the hell you're going. Also, it seems like the roads were always splitting when I didn't expect them to, and I was never sure which way to go. And you really have to make decisions in an instant because cars are coming as well as other bikers. So next thing I know, I'm totally lost and at Merrion Square Park, only I have no idea what or where that is, but it caught my eye, so I stopped. Here's what I saw as I biked past:


It was this pyramid shape, but you could see through the panes of glass that a real eternal flame burned inside. I hopped off my bike to take a closer look. Statues of four soldiers stood guard around the flame. I took a couple of shots, and I actually like how you can see the reflection of the trees in the photo, because that's very accurate to how it looked in person. In the second shot, you can see me in my bike helmet, which sort of mimics the solder with his hat:



My feet were starting to get really cold, so I thought if I was going to find my destination, I'd better stop exploring the park and get going. So I got back on the bike and headed for the Docklands. Although it's the home of a few well known offices like Google, the area is definitely mid-construction. It had a sort of end of the earth feeling, maybe even post-apocalyptic. I wanted to stop and take photos, but I was getting too cold and wanted to find a place to warm up. I'll have to go back again and explore the area. After overshooting it a bit, I decided to give up and turn back, when I spied just what I was looking for! But by then I couldn't feel my feet, so I locked up the bike and stopped into a cafe for a cappuccino. Once I was warm again, I ventured out. There's still construction going on, and it seems like the execution of the design of this public space could use some tweaking. From a design standpoint, it really is interesting. For example, these red poles that stick out of the ground look pretty cool, especially as it starts to get dark out, because they begin to glow. You can even see it in my photos because it was nearly dusk. Here's a photo, shot facing the water:

However, the birds absolutely LOVE these red poles. Here's a seagull sitting on one:

What you perhaps can't see in the photo is the bird droppings oozing out from the top of the pole. And on the surface below, the ground is covered in bird poop. It actually crossed my mind that I might get bombed myself while I was out there! But this problem could be easily solved by putting something on top of the poles to prevent the birds from wanting to hang out on them.

Anyways, I think this area will look pretty neat and might be an interesting events venue once construction is finished. I made a couple of collages for a more panoramic effect. As usual, they don't line up perfectly, but that's the charm of them:


Larger versions of the collages can be seen here and here.

On the way home I had an easier time finding my way, but still, I find myself getting confused in places I know I've been before!