MacKat in Ireland

Without getting too megalomaniacal, it’s fair to say that people still look to the US for leadership, among other things.  Katherine and I don’t get to see all the campaign ads you do (well, I watch McCain’s really bad ones on YouTube) but we hear about the most recent poll numbers, voting machine problems, and most other things associated with the election just as often as you do – perhaps even more because there’s not much else to talk about here.

Today three different students and two professors asked me if I voted.  This Gallup poll shows that many Europeans have a strong interest in the election, but it doesn’t really hit home until you see everyone in class look at “the American” on the day the circus finally comes to an end.

In my ‘Ireland in the World Economy’ class we routinely look at how Ireland stacks up compared to other EU countries and the OECD (all the indistrialized nations in the world).  On everything from competitiveness to educational attainment and productivity to infrastructure investment the USA is almost always in the top five, if not the top three.  Furthermore, we spend a greater percentage of GDP on measures to improve these economic indicators than almost every other country ensuring that we’ll stay near the top for several years to come.

For all the bickering we Americans do about what’s bad and what should be improved (myself included), we’re still better off in almost every way than almost every country in the world – and will be for the next several years.

That’s good to hear once in a while.

I checked our reservations Friday night before we left for Dublin to find that I’d made them for the wrong night.  I called the place and fortunately they had plenty of space the next night.  We got up early the next morning and got to the university bus stop at 6:50 AM so we could catch the 7:30 AM bus for Dublin.

It shouldn’t have surprised me, we’ve now spent 10 weeks in Ireland, but I was still a bit dismayed that we didn’t catch the 7:30 bus.  We sat in the bus station for another hour, caught the next bus, and ran into…

SHEEP!  We’ve seen numerous “Traffic Jam in Ireland” postcards depicting sheep on the roads, but this was the first time we saw it up close and personal.  Katherine whipped out her camera in record time so you at home could see this too.

We did eventually get to Dublin.  Walking down O’Connell Street (the widest urban street in Europe) the first thing you see is the Spire of Light (the tallest sculpture on Earth).  It was built for the millenium, completed in 2003, and is meant to make people look on the bright side of things.  After all, the first thing you do upon seeing it is look up.

We dropped our bags off at the hotel and headed back downtown for our free cruise on the Liffey River.  We had some time to kill and went into a food hall to find something to eat – PB&J on the bus can only go so far.  We settled on “itsabagel” because I don’t like Korean, Thai, Mexican, Japanese.  I thought “itsabagel” had a great idea: take a bagel and put meat and cheese on it.  What more could you want?  We found out later that “baked ham” means cooked ham but not warm ham.  Anyway, I might try this myself later on.

Our cruise along the river revealed to us that Dublin is kind of like America in that it doesn’t have much history left.  Everything the guide said to us was either preceeded with “where these buildings stand now” or succeeded by “but now it’s under retail development.”  For those who like modern-looking cities, Dublin might be a place to see.  Their financial district is rife with construction cranes and glass-enclosed buildings.  In fact, U2 is building what will be known as the U2 Tower, the first building in Dublin taller than Christ Church Cathedral.

We next decided to look for truly authentic Dublin gifts in their shopping area on the south side of the river.  Some presents were purchased and some pictures were taken of street performers.  I was hoping to see live music in a real Dublin pub but none of the pubs had live music before 9 PM.  Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but the sun starts going down at 3 PM in Dublin this time of year and by 5:00 we were hungry and it was dark.  No sooner were we ready to settle for Hard Rock Cafe when Katherine discoverd The Shack.  The Shack is, contrary to its name, a pretty nice restaurant where we found not only the best steak I’ve had in a long time, but wonderful chicken enchiladas!  Chicken enchiladas and steak in a fancy Irish restaurant, it was great.  We then stepped into a pub to see some live music for a few minutes but after lots of people started staring at my laptop backpack and our lack of alcohol we decided it wasn’t quite our place.  We returned to the hotel which, similarly to all ho(s)tels we’ve stayed at, was much, much, much nicer than Kilmurry Village.

The next morning we were up in time for a wonderful breakfast and a trip to jail.  That’s right, Katherine and I spent a few moments in a jail cell together – bonding at its finest.  The Kilmainham Gaol (“Kill-mine-um jail”) was where the leaders of six revolts between 1798 and 1916 were held, among many others.  We saw the places where famous prisoners were held, shot, and hanged.  The political history of Ireland is pretty interesting and, making it even more relevant, quite recent.  You can read more here.

After seeing the jail we headed over to Trinity College and saw the Book of Kells.  We weren’t expecting the book to be that exciting, and it wasn’t.  But we had free tickets and we can now consider ourselves to be more cultured.

Sometime during the day we stopped at St. Patrick’s Cathedral where Jonathan Swift had been dean long ago.  Swift is buried inside but the cathedral was undergoing renovation and charging a stiff fee to get inside.  We opted to walk around St. Patrick’s Park, the spot where St. Patrick (who brought Christianity to Ireland) baptized lots of people.  We got our picture and got back on the bus.

We also saw Oscar Wilde’s house somewhere in there too.  Pictures are below.

Also, while we were walking down the street Sunday morning, we crossed paths with four teenagers who were riding horses down the streets of Dublin.  Drivers were obviously annoyed so the kids then rode their horses up on the sidewalk.  As the kids passsed by, many people, including us, took many pictures.  Once the horses started sliding on the sidewalk the kids got off and walked alongside the horses.  One older lady passed us on the sidewalk wearing an angry expression and I heard her mumble “this is ridiculous.”  Everything goes in Dublin.

On our way back to the bus station we passed SpongeBob Squarepants.  I wouldn’t have believed it either.