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Published: July 21st 2012
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Hmmmm, so I guess I did not explain the title of the last post. The son of our host, Henry, and Fea's newfound 10-year old crush, is a wealth of information, vocabulary, and trivia, rivaling only Christian in his encyclopedic knowledge (he DOES have better dance moves than Dr. Doabler, however). We learned that as part of the Irish education system, students learn Irish, so Henry and Niamh spent quite a bit of time introducing us to the pronunciation and use of the language. Pretty sure the best of us at this endeavor was Fea.
So, the day of the Bruce show started with a very enjoyable exercise of hanging out the laundry on the line. I hadn't done this in years and was pretty psyched to have clean clothes, smelling like an Irish breeze. We spent the morning at the park near the Dublin City University, waiting for Henry to finish his tennis lesson while Fifi slid down the slide and rode the swing and was generally thrilled to be in a park. After lunch and a nap, Niamh and Shawn shooed us out the door into Central Dublin, babysitting La Feef and promising to call us if she
needed us to come home. We rode the double decker bus downtown in total sunshine, checking the cell phone every 2 minutes...just in case. Needless to say, they never needed to call. The center of Dublin is kind of nutty, with narrow cobblestone alleys, all of the requisite stores for buying your Coach bags and Louis Vuitton luggage and all that crap, and then a LOT of pubs. After walking by Trinity College, our first stop was Grogan's (http://www.groganspub.ie/), a pleasant, low-ceilinged pub, and then on to....Hogan's! We were waiting for the restaurant recommended by Shawn to open, and enjoyed the downtown pub atmosphere and the shock of being on our own, together, in a pub at night.
Dinner...mmmmmm. We ended up in a French restaurant, in Ireland, strange but true, L'Gueuleton (http://www.lgueuleton.com/pages/info.html). It was lovely and paneled with dark wood and smelled divine...the server told us it was the newly made French onion soup, so we promptly ordered a bowl and were not disappointed. The broth was dark and oniony and laced with Sherry and the whole bowl was covered in toasted bread and Gruyere. We then shared a plate of Irish mussels covered in breadcrumbs and lardons
and then broiled. The centerpiece of this amazing meal was my main course...roasted pork belly on a bed of cabbage. Hank's meal was also delicious, a platter of tagliatelle with crab and chilis. We tottered out the door to find a taxi to take us to BRUCE.
The show was at the RDS arena in South Dublin. Our taxi driver informed us that he would get us as close as he could, but that we would probably have to walk a fair bit as the streets were jammed with concert goers. He then proceeded to tell us about the best holiday his family had ever taken, in Florida to Disneyworld, and the convertible he rented because his teenage daughter was so keen on riding in one. His girls are grown up now, but he has such fond memories of the trip. By the time he dropped us off, we were best pals and he refused to take a tip and gave us instructions for how to find a taxi after the show. The arena is HUGE. After you enter the gates, you are in huge open air areas with restaurants, pubs, food stands, etc. When we finally found the
actual concert venue, Bruce had already started up and the 30,000+ concert goers were ready to rock. We had tickets to the pitch, which is like general admission, and we sidled our way up behind the sound tent and listened/watched a great show for the next 3 hours. Some interesting points about our concert experience: (1) The wait for the women's toilet was INSANE. I missed Atlantic City/Because The Night while waiting for my turn to pee. (2) No matter where Hank goes, he is a magnet for some odd ducks. Case in point #1 - while watching the show, a gigantic, shaven-headed, bullshaped man turns to Hank and asks him to watch his wife while he goes to the bathroom. He was gone for quite a time, and his wife started acting like she was going to leave, but Hank told her that that was not possible, as he was in charge of keeping an eye on her. The very large man finally came back, and it tunred out that he lived in Philly for 10 years, loved it, and gave Hank a big hug of brotherly love. Case in point #2 - when Hank was returning from a
toilet run, he bumped into a guy and apologized. The man, hearing the delightful American accent, had this to say..."You know what I f***ing hate about you Yankees?? You're so happy. You know what I f***ing love about you Yankees?? You're so happy!" The crowd parted and the man disappeared into the sea of humanity. (3) The Irish authorities are apparently a little on edge, as we saw several young men dragged away in head-holds. They were certainly boisterous and having a lot of fun dancing, but nothing that we saw indicated that they deserved to be hauled away. (4) The song that got the Irish crowd the MOST het up and on their feet, a-dancing and a-singing, was "Born in the USA". Weird. (5) The music was awesome and it was super fun to see Bruce in Dublin.
After the concert, we followed the crowd through the streets of South Dublin, making our way back to the Temple Bar area. After a final wee dram before last call (12:30 am!), we hailed a taxi to take us back north. The driver was again so nice and interesting and he regaled us with stories of seeing U2 as an opening band in tiny pubs back in the day (he did NOT, however, refuse a tip). When we returned home, Shawn and Niamh were still up and we chatted into the wee hours about Bruce and concerts and music before climbing wearily into bed with our sleeping Bunny - an awesome day!
Sooooo, notice how they are no pictures of downtown Dublin?? We were afraid to take our camera to the show as they were quite direct about no cameras in the venue and then Hank's phone randomly quit taking pictures, so there you are. Hopefully you can imagine it all from the words alone. 😊
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Krista
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This post had me belly laughing from start to finish!!!!!