Within the metropolitan centre of Dublin, Ireland, charms abound lie in wait just around every knackered-up bodega. Turn right at the naked gang of squawking slag (not to be confused with the flocks of seagulls overhead)–these entities can be most easily differentiated by whose collective buttocks do more ocular damage to the Dublin street–and you might find Dublin’s Live 24-Hour Primitive Urban Performance Art Exhibit, exhibited in the wide array of detailed and thought-provoking scrawlings, or “spray-paintings,” that can be found on the various huckster dens, dungeons for cheap wares, or “storefronts,” as they are known in this region.
Turn left at the gentleman relieving the contents of his upper intestinal tract upon the easement in broad daylight, and you might catch one of the many scheduled donnybrooks at St. Stephen’s Green (access to both Marquess of Queensbury and Group Melee available), where there is also apparently the world’s first under-sixteen outdoor dance-club in perpetual operation.
If you’re in for something a bit more exciting, however, you might take a long, thoughtful, fifty-foot saunter over the elaborate and apparently famous Ha’Penny Bridge, or, if you’re a literary sort, enjoy a quiet afternoon in solitude with an iron James Joyce, located in the chaotic city-centre.
Eye contact in Dublin is, by law, a serious offense and is punishable by throw-down. Moreover, greetings that manifest in reciprocal positive social interaction have yet to be introduced here, and so it is folly to attempt communication of this kind. With regard to one’s options in local cuisine, both Pepto Bismol or Maalox are offered. These aid in the processing of the trans fats.
Now, it must be said that I am no wheeler and dealer, least of all in the art of world-navigation. But, I knew something was up, whenever I began to unanimously prefer the society of my accommodations to that of Dublin’s.
Not for me, overall.
Yet, Ireland’s “woods,” to borrow from The Bard, are “more free from peril than the envious court. Here feel we not the penalty of Adam.”
It must be made first clear that I visited no proper woods. In fact, my total experience outside of Dublin consisted of two disparate day-trips to the nearby sea-towns of Dalkey and Howth, sea-towns that helped curb the overwhelming spiritual enlightenment that I achieved in Dublin.
Dalkey is a small coastal town in County Dublin located about eight miles south of Dublin im-Proper. Its town centre is tight, stoney, and turning–and the small buildings crowd the cobbled thoroughfare, providing that slower sense of the antiquated. Killiney Hill presented a delightfully charming, compact hike comprised of the all tortuous greenery and dry-laid stone walls one might conjure. Much unlike Dublin, here there were both a touch of the mystical and a certain intimacy that leads one towards benevolent thoughts.
Howth was a bit more of a proper seafaring kind of town, where, apparently, raincoats are only to be found and purchased in precisely one golf store. It is admittedly my blunder, yes, for not packing a raincoat to Ireland. Fair enough. I was rightfully rendered a certain species of slimy and slithering sea creature for some hours before the €200 indiscretion. Anyway, the main thoroughfare was smart, and the pier was–fine. The people, despite the freezing rain, were the centre of warmth itself. And the Howth Cliff-Walk was a spectacle to rival many.
In any case, Country and Town still take the crown, and the City serves still as King of the Clowns.
I also just narrowly missed the date of my nation’s birth. Happy American Independence Day. Get Yanked.
I suppose, then, that this might be a good time to give England a go. And, I think that’s just what I’ll do.
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