Every blog post I’ve written for every destination was first written in my journal. Because I was only in Dublin for three days and was very social for all three of those days, I never actually had time to write about Dublin in my journal. Now, two weeks later, I have to write about it from scratch, because it certainly won’t do to not have a blog post on Dublin. I think, had I not come straight from Edinburgh, Dublin probably would have been my favourite city on my trip to Europe.
If you know me, you know I am not a drinker. I am highly suspicious of what alcohol does to me (and have in fact never explored that fully), and for that reason I only like to drink with people I know, and then especially people I trust. Now, combine that with what you know about Dublin and the Irish, and what should have happened is that I spent my days in Dublin being extremely uncomfortable. That’s what I would have thought, anyway, and because that’s kind of what drinking in Vancouver is like: if everyone else is drinking and you’re not, it’s a little harder to have a good time.
But while the Dubliners certainly appreciated their drink (I found a number of posters throughout my hostel about the best ways to get over a hangover), the drinking culture seemed different from what I’m used to in Canada. It seemed as though the Irish didn’t need to be drunk to have a good time—which was lucky for me, because as it turned out, my experience in Dublin turned out to be all about the people. I was never lonely, which explains why there was never a journal entry written in that lovely city.
My new friend Grace (hi, Grace!) is American, but you wouldn’t have thought so as we ran all over Dublin together. I wasn’t sure if I was going to write about her in this blog post, but as I say, my experience in Dublin was all about people, and since I spent a good chunk of my time in Dublin with Grace, it seems right that I talk about her a little. Extremely social and extraverted, unafraid of the drink, and redheaded to boot, travelling with Grace felt like exploring Dublin with a local.
She also enriched my visit to the Guinness Storehouse, a place I probably wouldn’t have been so keen to visit had Grace not been with me. If it turned out I didn’t have enough funds to do everything I wanted, Guinness probably would have been the first to go, but boy, am I glad I went. Other than having a fantastic view of Dublin, the Storehouse truly felt like Disneyland for beer lovers, and you don’t have to be a beer lover to recognize it.
A friend spent some time in Dublin shortly before I arrived there (hi, Xandrina!) and she said to me that the Irish were so nice, and that it seemed much more genuine than the Canadian nice. Now, I love Canada, and I had only been in England and Scotland during that point in my trip, so I didn’t like the idea that the Irish were nicer than Canadians, but the Irish are truly some of the friendliest people I’ve ever met, in addition to being some of the funniest. The Irish seem to have truly mastered the art of socializing.
What I discovered in Dublin is that there is a verifiable Irishness to the people; it was something I picked up on reading W.B. Yeats’ poetry and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest but could not quite put my finger on until I had experienced Dublin for myself. There is truly this incredible sense of belonging to a people and to a place which has not been home to the happiest of histories, but has fostered a sharp wit and easy humour. These people are as quick to laugh as they are quick to drink, and their hospitality is almost excessive and yet somehow so genuine. As I left Dublin, and eventually Europe, I read Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (a book I picked up at a bookstore by the River Liffey after having visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral, of which Swift was a dean) and was struck, again, by how strikingly Irish these writers are. I bought a book each from England, Scotland, Ireland, and France, to act as a souvenir of the place that I had visited, to help me remember the sense of Stratford-upon-Avon, Edinburgh, Dublin, or Paris. Although I didn’t get much of a sense of Dublin from Gulliver’s Travels, I got so much of a sense of the Irish people, and rightly so, because the Irish people truly are what made Dublin so great for me.