"Dear Dirty Dublin"

Hello, fair readers!  I'm back, and am most excited to tell you all about my day today, which was fairly marvelous.  We started out with a nice breakfast in the Temple Bar area, and then crossed the Liffey (the river running through Dublin):

 The oldest bridge in Dublin-- the Ha'Penny Bridge, I believe.

Then we wandered up O'Connell Street:

There are lots of monuments in the center of the boulevard, including this one-- the Parnell Memorial (Parnell was one of the leaders of the revolutionary movement).

Then we made a few wrong turns, but finally arrived at...

THE JAMES JOYCE CENTER.
*cue fanfare and cheering*

We have already established that I'm a major Joyce nerd.  I adore him.  I will be writing my senior honors thesis on Ulysses.  I am fully aware that this might indicate that I'm slightly unbalanced in the head.  But I couldn't care less.

Yep.  Just that cool.

Also, I just realized that I should probably explain the title of this post.  I'm not calling Dublin a dirty city.  In fact, most of what I've seen has been rather clean.  But it's a quote from Ulysses (one of the "newspaper headlines" in Episode 7) which pretty much sums up Joyce's opinion of Dublin very concisely, and I literally haven't been able to keep that phrase out of my head for the last two days.  The end.

So the Joyce Center.  It's pretty cool.  Very small-- maybe a two and a half room exhibit.  However, it contains some spiffy interactive terminals on which one can read about Joyce's biography and navigate one's way through Ulysses, as well as three well-done short documentaries on Joyce and his impact on Ireland, and Joyce's personal effects from his apartments in Paris and Zurich.  There were also lots of neat original posters and pictures either relating to Joyce, his work, or things mentioned in his work which lined the staircases, and a small garden outside containing a great mural of Bloom's day in Ulysses and the door to 7 Eccles Street, where Bloom lived in the novel.  The Center also houses an impressive archive; however, none of it was on display.  I'm kind of crossing my fingers that I can maybe get an internship there this summer, and do a bit of research...

7 Eccles Street.  It appears that no one is home at the moment.

The beginning of the Bloomsday mural.

After tearing myself away from the Joyce Center, Daniel and I went to the nearby Dublin Writers Museum, which was made up of two rooms full of biographies of great Irish writers and some cool artifacts, like first edition signed copies of books, typewriters, manuscripts, etc.  The museum was a bit dry though, and really didn't compare to the Joyce Center.  Oh well.

We headed back across the river and made our way to lunch at a slightly nicer restaurant, where Daniel and I had a long discussion about literary theory (strangely enough, the people at the table next to us were having a similar conversation).  And from there, we headed off to do something considerably less intellectual, but probably equally cultural-- visit the Guinness Storehouse.

The Guinness Storehouse is kind of like Disneyworld.  But with beer.  Actually, a better description is that it is like the Hershey's Factory, but aimed at adults, and instead of getting a bite-sized chocolate bar at the end of the tour, you get a pint of beer.  You can perhaps understand why it is actually the number one tourist attraction in the entire country.

The Storehouse itself is part of the 60-acre Guinness Brewery complex, and was originally where the yeast was extracted and then added to the beer.

This is just a tiny bit of the factory-- it is HUGE.

Now, it is a seven-story exhibit, advertising extravaganza, and bar, all in one!  The coolest feature: the center of the building is left open on every story, and the width varies in such a way that it is shaped like a giant pint glass.  If you look down from the top, you see black (the first floor center is black granite), and up at the top, the walls are a light tan with lots of little holes (or bubbles!) in the walls and ceiling.  Fun fact: if filled, this enormous pint would hold 14.3 million pints of Guinness.

The exhibit was mostly focused on explaining the process by which Guinness is made, with lots of reference to the history and development of the brewing machinery and techniques.  There was also some history of the company itself (fun fact #2: Arthur Guinness, the founder of the brewery, signed a 9000 year lease on the St. James' Gate property back in the 1700s), as well as a history of their advertising, which was kind of neat (there were lots of very amusing posters).  Oh, and fun fact #3: the Guinness Book of World Records is, in fact, directly connected to the Guinness Brewery!  Over lunch one day, two employees got into a debate about which was the fastest bird in the world (anyone else feeling a Monty Python reference right now?).  The argument continued for days, and by then, everyone in the factory was involved.  Finally, some smart person decided that they should create a book of this sort of information that bartenders could use to settle these sorts of debates in their bars-- and thus, the Guinness Book of World Records was born.  Today, it is the highest-selling book of all time, after the Bible and Qu'ran. 

The tour concluded with a trip to the Gravity Bar on the very top floor, where we got our complimentary pints, along with a 360 degree view of Dublin!  The glass walls of the bar were printed with quotes from Joyce novels which described each particular area that one could view (or could theoretically view) from each point around the room (which made me very, very happy inside.... though the beer probably helped).

Pouring a pint of Guinness is a science.  It has to sit for four minutes to let it settle (compare the pint on the left to the one on the right), and then it gets topped off.

Until it looks like this.

 And then you start drinking it without delay.

After safely making it through the ginormous gift shop without spending more than three euros (which was pretty impressive, I have to say), we headed back to the hotel to collapse for a little while.  Later, we wandered around town looking for a good dinner place, and on the recommendation of a homeless man, ate at a tapas restaurant which turned out to be wonderful.  We finished off the evening with a pint of Guinness (or a half-pint, in my case, because I am a lightweight) at The Stag's Head, a local institution with awesome pub decor and atmosphere-- basically, the most stereotypical Irish pub you can think of, with a bit more class.  Though I didn't feel like a local, I could certainly get the impression that if I was a local, this is exactly where I would go on a regular basis.  It was wonderful.

Only one day left in "dear dirty Dublin"!   But hey, Ulysses is evidence that an awful lot can happen in just one day... particularly in this city! :)