Dublin Days

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When I planned this trip, my main goal was to make a pilgrimage to James Joyce's old home and the setting for all of his works of fiction (even if he wrote many of them far from Ireland). What I had failed to take into consideration was that my school's spring break would coincide with St. Patrick's Day. So, I found myself arriving in Dublin on the eve of the big day, a city at the moment flooded with revelers from all over the world. (And it seemed all of the native Dubliners had flooded out of town.) Of course, I had prepared myself for this once I had realized the situation, but it was still a strange thing to be surrounded by French, German, Japanese, and Finnish speaking twenty-somethings all sporting "Kiss Me, I'm Irish!" paraphernalia or Viking hats in Irish national colors.

I escaped from the drunken hordes and into the relative quiet of Trinity College to make another of my Irish pilgrimages (as you will find, this trip will be full of them!): The Book of Kells. Apparently, none of the St. Patrick's tourists were of a literary bent, because I nearly had the exhibit to myself. I basked in its glow almost completely at peace. The long room of the old library, too, was mercifully open - all the better to appreciate its great expanse and all those crumbling leather tomes piled to the rafters.

To round out my first day, I tramped down the Liffey to a pub called the Cobblestone. There, sitting in a simple circle, a random collection of amateur musicians played fantastic Irish traditional music. Everyone else crowded around with frothy pints of Guinness. And at that moment, I realized I was truly, truly in Ireland. St. Patrick's Day - bring it on!

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