Lessons for this week...

---

Everytime you travel somewhere new, there's a certain settling in period where you figure out the quirks of getting around the city. Since I didn't make it off Grafton Street for the first 5 days, I of course spent most of the 6th day wandering around lost (not a big surprise to those of you who know me well). Now, if you are planning to head over to Ireland, there are a couple of things that you'll find useful knowing ahead of time.

First off, Dublin is not a friendly place for directionally challenged people who don't have an inner compass to guide them (which happens to describe me). Dublin maps (be it the freebies at the tourist center or the fancy laminated ones from the travel shop) are more like fill in the blank puzzles rather than accurate guides. In fact, the maps are quite similar to the people really- neither ever tell you exactly how to get somewhere- they both point you in the general direction, and give you some landmarks to look for along the way. I wonder if they don't design the maps this way as a right of passage- they ensure you'll get lost, and hence you'll be forced to explore obscure streets, and stop at obscure pubs to have a nip. Most of the streets in Dublin change names one or two times in the course of a few blocks- but to keep you on your toes, the published maps usually only list one of the road names, so that the gullible tourist would assume the street name stayed the same. Silly tourists. This became evident to me after, following the directions of a taxi driver and then a barely comprehensible doorman, I wandered for about half a mile looking for a pub on a particular street, Anglesea, where this musical pub crawl was supposed to begin. When I had gone way past where Anglesea could have feasibly been (according to the maps, which I'm convinced are not drawn to scale), I walked down a block and went back, eventually running into the pub I was looking for. I looked up at the street sign, which said Bowden- it wasn't until I walked 20 paces down Bowden, past the pub, that I found the street name on the side of the building had changed to Anglesea. Sheesh. Moreover, the maps tend to skip entire streets, not even noting their existence with a blank street, but just skipping the street entirely on the map. Then there is the whole other issue of "upper" and "lower" sections of streets- I have yet to figure out a consistent pattern as to what deems one part of a street higher than another. Whoever designed these maps certainly has an Irish sense of humor.

To add to the confusion, for the first six days, I kept lamenting to Lynnsie that there were no street signs in Dublin- the only way I ever knew what street I was on was to look at the bus stop signs. If there wasn't a bus stop on the street, I was lost. As I was sharing this woe with a fellow workshop student, he gave me an odd look, pointed up and said "Didn't you know that the street signs are posted on the buildings?" Sure enough, about a story and a half up (did I mention that most all buildings are four stories tall- this is part of the "Georgian" style of the city), the first building of each block has a street name. While that did make navigating the streets considerably easier, it's still impossible to tell what the next block is until you've reached the corner- needless to say, I've done lots of backtracking-walking a block and realizing that I had walked a block-or 5 or 6- in the wrong direction.

On the upside, all this ambling around lost has allowed me to accidentally run into quite a few interesting statues and places. While their street maps aren't well-documented, they have statues, plaques and memorials every other step of the city- I don't think I passed even one block in my wanderings that didn't commemorate some person, date, or event. Also, ornate artistry- often mosaics or plaster figures detailing a story or event- graces buildings, sidewalks and even lightposts throughout the city, so keeping your eyes peeled as you walk about truly is rewarding. While there are loads of rather obscure people celebrated through art, street names and, naturally, pub names, (including Molly Malone, a figure immortalized in a song) I'd say there's a two way tie between James Joyce (writer) and Daniel O'Connell (one of the liberators of Irish-Catholics from England) for most frequently commemorated.

As you travel about the city with map (and pen to edit map) in hand, another thing to have with you is, of course, an umbrella. Luckily, the rain stayed at bay, barely whisking the air for the first week of my stay. Yesterday, however, it poured, and I was oh-so-thankful to have the trusty brelly Kiri loaned me (actually, she noticed I was without one at the start of my trip, and promptly corrected that oversight). But then, cocky Californian that I am, I defied the weather and my better judgement and left the umbrella home today. After we finished a second tour of the Guinness brewery (my second time 'round this trip), this turned into a big, wet mistake- my open topped shoes were so sopping wet that I stopped and bought new sneakers. And a raincoat. In my defense, Brian, who is Irish, didn't bring a brelly either- but then, he's grown up getting wet in the rain, and walked around heedless of the downpour in his teeshirt for most the day. Besides, as he pointed out, most of the rain still gets you, as it isn't typically a downward rain, but a slanting one. I actually discovered this first hand yesterday, as I stood huddled under my umbrella, busily trying to cross-reference my map with the ever evasive street names on the buildings. I opted to leave behind the laminated map I bought in favor of the free tourist center one, because it was lighter and more clearly showed lots of landmarks. While I stayed mostly dry, my poor map was a soppy ruin in no time. Turns out we humans repel water more effectively than thin paper. Word to the wise- take the laminated map, and just draw the landmarks in yourself.

Even if you do have a big enough umbrella to ward off the water, as we did after Kiri loaned Brian and I an extra-large one from her work today, it then becomes an almost comical act trying to fit the umbrella through narrow sidewalks, where you have to either tilt the umbrella entirely to one side at the light posts every 10 paces, or take your life in hand and hop into the street for a few steps (drivers here seem to speed up when they see a pedestrian in their path). I've come to the conclusion that there is a fine art to navigating your way through a sea of umbrella weilding people- you start to perform this intricate pattern of bobbing, weaving, and raising the umbrella on high, yet still only manage to avoid hitting a quarter of the people you pass, and get jabbed by quite a few wayward umbrellas yourself. I'd bet there's quite a few umbrella-related injuries in the course of a year here. In fact, when we got to the crowded paths of Grafton today, we decided to concede the fight. We closed the umbrella, and took our chances with the downpour. Wetter, yes, but infinitely less chance of poking someone's eye out.

There's loads more to share, but it is rather late... and I'm not entirely over the side effects of last night's literary pub crawl- more about that soon. Bon nuit.

---