Geocaching Dublin

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Well our missing roommate showed up at some point in the night but I didn’t want to appear awake so I didn’t look at my cell phone. One thing is for certain, it was no female, lol. He came stumbling in quite drunk and muttering something. I guessed him to be young and well traveled because he blurted out “fuck” in very good English and something about “gravity works” when he dropped something on the floor. I tossed and turned quite a bit last night again, I hate sleeping in a strange bed. The alarm on my cell phone went off at 4:45am and I made sure Billie and Matt were awake. I reset my alarm for 8am and went right back to sleep. I didn’t even hear them leave so they must have been really quiet or I was really tired. (Billie, I hope you made it home safely!!) (Divas, I think I have a new recruit for the group, Billie will need to scrap her first international vacation after all and she lives in Myrtle, down by Grants Pass.)

Our drunken roommate is covered in body art, tattoos that is. He was quite friendly when he woke up and told us good morning. The thing that has got me thinking is this; I don’t think English is his first language and yet, he was babbling in English while stumbling around drunk and then he speaks English this morning while he was half-asleep. Perhaps I am just way off but when I peeked at the name on his luggage tags, it said something like Dani Romonoski or something like that. I know that I occasionally dream in Spanish but I don’t think I speak it when I’m drunk but I do blurt out curse words so those around me don’t know what I’m saying, lol.

We braved the community showers downstairs. They are located in the basement of the hostel and I hear that the female showers are cleaner than the males. This can most likely be contributed to the fact that there are less females in the hostel than male. I am just making an educated assumption here since most young, single travelers are male. There were only three stalls in the room and I learned another unique feature of the Irish shower. The nozzle came down from the floor so you couldn’t adjust the angle. Much like a bathroom faucet where you push down to get a timed amount of water, the button on the shower had to be repeatedly pushed in to get hot water. I had to soap up my hair with one hand while keeping the button pushed in with the other. I can understand the concept behind it, water conservation. On the other hand, I was slightly chilled and wanted a constant stream of water. (Note to self: Why do I keep forgetting to pack shower shoes every time I leave home??)

After we dressed, we packed up our belongings in the room and brought our linens down to the front desk. We had a new clerk today who couldn’t figure out why we didn’t have a lock to turn in, only one key for the two of us, and why did we want our €20 in deposit back when he only wanted to give us €10? Autum, when you start traveling I’ll help you pack the necessities so that you can survive the hostel experience. Our parking meter still had 34 minutes remaining so we walked over to the internet café to post yesterday’s blog and check our emails.

Since our time in Dublin was running out, we decided to hit a few geocaches, drop our Irish Bride and Groom travelbugs, and see a couple sights in the area of them. We picked a parking garage in the general vicinity of the Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin Castle, and St Kevin’s Park. Our plan was to hit three caches and if that failed, we’d head for the travel bug hotel located by the Dublin airport. The travel bug hotel was our last choice because who ever dropped their travel bug there had an unfair advantage of it getting home first. The goal is for the our two travel bugs to race each other back to Oregon before the wedding in March. The winner get to say I Won, Neener neener neener.

First geocache was Vikings or Vicars located somewhere in the vicinity of the Christ Church Cathedral. It’s very funny that we should end up here because Genivieve was just asking me what Viking history I had come across yet during our Dublin adventures. Follow the link to the cache and it will explain more than I can. I’ve included a picture of the plaque laid in the ground for commemoration. There is a lot of renovation occurring on the back of the cathedral and the directions on the cache just kept confusing us and our GPS was spinning around in circles. We eventually just gave up after circling the cathedral several times and staring at anything metal.

The next geocache on the list was Castle Rock and it was located on the grounds of the Dublin Castle. By sheer luck, we ended up on the street with an open gate right near the Arthur Beatty Library and Gardens. The lawn was pretty awesome looking, they have tiled a celtic design into the grass that could be seen from any angle you looked at it. The hint led us straight to the area, a group of benches. It had a great view of the Dublin Castle and its surrounding walls. The garden was filled with beautiful mosaic art, tiles, and sculptures. There was a memorial bust for an Irish female journalist who was murdered in 1996 so I’ve got some more research to do when I get home. There was also a sculpture to commemorate the 2003 Summer Special Olympics that were held in Dublin and they had 136 plaques that honored the participants and supporters of the event, pretty awesome. We signed the log, dropped in our Irish Groom travel bug, took the Erin Bear travel bug (McDonald’s beanie baby bear Erin, the Irish bear), and headed for the next one.

Our last one almost kicked our butts. It was located within St. Kevin’s Park. When we arrived the gates to the park were chained shut so I thought we should walk around the block to see if there was any other way to gain access. Yeah, that was a huge city block. When we found our way back around to the gates, we stood with our faces pressed against the wrought iron bars of the large gate and wondered how far it was to our cache, about 164 ft. So we gave up and started to walk back to the parking garage, only to discover that the little gate to the left of the large gate was now chained open, doh! The hint said that it was located behind Captain Cooke’s widow. Since there were gravestones scattered around the park, it was just a matter of finding the right one. Not as easy as it sounds since they are hard to read after so many years of weathering. And sadly enough, even a gravestone isn’t safe from the tagging of graffiti artists. We had hoped to find another travel bug in here but no luck, the last person to find it took the bug and hadn’t logged it yet. We dropped off the Irish Bride travel bug and I have my fingers crossed that she’ll find her way home first.

After that, we grabbed a bite of lunch at Subway. Here in Ireland, you don’t have as many choices, you only get one cookie instead of two, and they don’t give you very much meat. Oh well, at least I can say that I’ve eaten at Subway in Ireland. We stopped in another internet café to log our finds and mark the drop of our travel bugs. I can’t stand it when people cache and then they don’t update it so you think you’ll find something and it’s not there. We also checked the logs for the Vikings and Vicar and decided to give it another try. And what do you know, we found it! It was in the area we had been searching but the hint kept throwing us off. It was our first micro log so we just signed the little strip of paper and replaced the cache. It took us a little while to grab because there was this strange guy walking down the sidewalk and he kept laying his hands on the stone wall and inspecting the cracks in the mortar.

Then it was time to head home as we were facing another four hour drive back to our little home in Cromane. We only took one detour off the road and that was a big disappointment. There was a sign for the Brian Boru Heritage Center and by the time we wandered through a few small towns and found it, the sign in the door said that it was closed for the season to reopen in March 2007. I would have to say that this “season” has to be the hardest part of our vacation. There is no written start or stop to the season but when it hits, everything interesting closes. My next recommendation would be to come here during the month of October, after high season so it’s cheaper and before everything shuts down.

Once home, we unloaded the car and met our landlord Seamus. While we were gone, they noticed that our back door was open so they locked it up for us. We don’t have the key to it so we walked around to the front door and then he came over. The dirty clothes are in the dryer and we’re relaxing in the parlor watching scary movies. Well Robert is watching them and I’m writing this and playing Spider Solitaire. The balls of my feet are killing me so we won’t be doing much walking or hiking around tomorrow. Probably take it easy and hit a few geocaches in our area.

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Photos

Christ Church Cathedral
Here was our first stop in the search for the Vikings and Vicars geocache. An awe inspiring building and just beautiful.

Viking Plaque
A plaque to mark the Viking movement that influenced Dublin in the 11th century.

Dublin Castle
This was the site of our second geocache of the day. The castle has some really beautiful grounds!

Castle Rock
Here is the Castle Rock geocache. We dropped off the Irish Groom travel bug and picked up Erin the Irish Bear here.

The Clamp
Here is what they put on your car when you don't pay your parking fees.

St Kevin's Park
Our last geocache of the day. It was hidden behind the headstone for Captain Cooke's widow.

Waterlogged
We stopped in a little town on the River Shannon and walked down to the water. The boats seem to take on a little water during the winter. I wonder that they don't sink.

Comments

[G-]

Enjoyed history lesson
Enjoyed reading about the Dublin adventures. Checked out the geocache site on Vikings and Vicars. Very interesting. Glad you got to see a little of the Biking history.

[Debi]

Geocaching
The thing here is that I have been reading each of these entries......which by the way congrats on your dedication to it....makes us all feel like we went along but really didn't......but what I haven't figured out is....Geocaching....what in the world is it...I am beginning to think you are all some kind of treasure hunt.