Thursday, June 29, 2023

Today is our last day in Dublin, and it’s a full and joyous one.

We start off a the Little Museum of Dublin, which is just down the street and on the other side of St. Stephen’s Green. We’re a bit too late for the 10:00 tour so we go next door to a cafe and have a quick breakfast of yogurt and muesli with coffee (for me) and tea (for Mom) before returning for the 11:00 museum visit.

The Little Museum has been described as a hidden gem, and I think that’s an accurate description. It started as a project where the founders asked Dubliners to donate any items they had that related to the city and its history, and the response was overwhelming. Today the museum houses 5,000 artifacts that tell a rich and quirky history of the city and Ireland as a whole.

There are really only five main rooms in the museum. The tour starts upstairs in a large, creaky-floored drawing room. There’s a big crowd here, and we all turn in rapt attention as our tour guide, Lisa—short, red-haired, and enthusiastic, dressed in an old-timey dress with a hat and a cane—begins telling us about some of the objects in the museum. It’s fast and humorous and I barely remember any of the actual information, except for something about a duck in St. Stephen’s Green that was spared during the fighting in the Irish Revolution. Or something. In any case, there are some ducks on top of one of the windows now.

If I thought the first room was packed, the second one is loaded. Newspaper clippings, images, posters, and all other manner of ephemera cover the walls from floor to ceiling. Lisa takes us on a wild tour through them, then, by way of parting, sings a line from the old Irish song “The Parting Glass.” She has a lovely voice, and we all applaud. I’ve definitely not been able to take in all the information she shared, but it was very entertaining. There are a couple of rooms upstairs that we take a quick spin through, and then it’s off to our next destination just down the street: Trinity College to see the Book of Kells.

…Only, I didn’t realize that you had to book tickets ahead of time, and there are none left for this next time slot that works best for us. We’ve got a reservation for a Vintage Tea Trip at 1:15, and the Guinness Storehouse at 3:45, so the next time we could do it is Trinity’s very last slot at 6:00 tonight. I book that, and we set off via bus for Temple Bar, the famed neighborhood with all sorts of pubs and eateries, where we’ll be catching our tea bus.

We’re early, so we spend a few moments popping into a couple of shops on our walk to the bus pickup. Then we turn the corner and the coolest bus I have ever seen pops into view. It’s a vintage double-decker, painted blue and yellow, with animal characters here and there on the sides. The bus reads “Vintage Tea Trips Dublin,” and inside we can see people preparing the bus for our tea tour. Mom and I are giddy with excitement.

I’m immediately so happy that we stumbled upon this when planning our trip. We take photos with the bus and then walk around a bit until they start calling people to come on board. When our names are called, we take our assigned seats on the first floor of the bus. But there’s a couple sitting farther up towards the front who want to go upstairs, so we end up getting their spot, and it’s perfect because we can see out the side and the front, whereas in our original seat we just had the one window.

On the table in front of us is a two-tiered tray with sweet treats and little finger sandwiches. We have plates and cutlery, and there’s a little brochure explaining some of the sights we’ll be passing. Oh, my god. I can’t even explain how exciting this is. It’s cute, it’s tasty, it’s twee and adorable. One of the servers comes around and takes our order for tea, then brings it back in very sturdy to-go cups with lids (“Wow,” I think, “This is really strong paper”). As soon as everyone is on board, the driver begins taking us around the city.

It’s not exactly a guided tour; the commentary isn’t constant like it is on the tour busses we’ve been on. But one of the servers, or perhaps the narrator, if you will, provides some stories as we go along. One of the first stops is Phoenix Park, the largest enclosed metropolitan park in Europe, home to both the zoo and Áras an Uachtaráin, the house of the President of Ireland. Our guide tells us about Slats the lion, who was the original lion featured in the roaring MGM logo.

The bus keeps rolling through the city, with some occasional storytelling, and we continue eating our tasty little lunch and drinking our tea. When we’re close to getting back to the dropoff point, one of the servers tells us that we can take the cups with us as they’re reusable. Mom and I gasp. What I thought was just a very strong paper cup turns out to actually be plastic. Duh! This is very exciting, and we think very hard for a minute about taking the cups that other people leave behind (what is wrong with them??), but in the end we just stick with our two.

After the tour, we buy some Vintage Tea Trips Dublin swag (“I think we wanted to get some swag” is literally what I say to the guy), including a few tea towels because we can’t decide on one design. We are loathe to get off this amazing bus, but alas, we do.

We have a little bit of time until our tour at Guinness, so we walk around Temple Bar, taking a photo of the eponymous pub with its bright red trim and flowers spilling out of every window, nook, and cranny. We pop into a few shops and galleries. In one of the galleries, the owner is extremely nice but also extremely chatty, and he starts telling me about how awesome Americans are except for one place in Texas, and he follows us out the door as we start to walk to the bus stop, but we eventually break away, take yet another bus journey, and all but sprint into the Guinness Storehouse to make it in time for our tour.

It’s just one of those things you have to do in Dublin. I like Guinness just fine, but I’m not like a superfan or anything, and Mom doesn’t even really drink, but we both loved this tour. It is a very impressive building, and the exhibit walks you through the process of crafting the beer and the history of the company and the Guinness family. There’s a section devoted to the branding of Guinness, and I think this is my favorite because I love the turtle and the toucan and all the old-timey “lovely day for a Guinness” signs. At the top there’s a bar, and you get a free drink with your admission to the Storehouse. We’re running a little short on time to make it to Trinity, so I absolutely pound my Guinness and am left feeling very woozy as we sprint to the bus stop again. But good woozy! Woozy as in “woo!”

The bus is late. Trinity’s library closes at 6:30 and it’s well after that by the time we reach our stop. I don’t think they’re going to let us in, but I run ahead anyway and ask. The first guard waves me in, then at the entrance to the library there’s another guy telling everyone that it’s closed. Ugh! So close. All of a sudden I’m frustrated, and like a tiny child sometimes I cry when I’m frustrated, and the guy sees me and takes pity a bit and asks to see my tickets so he can give me a refund. But then he says, “Oh wait, these tickets are for today at 6? Sorry, I thought they were for tomorrow. Yes, that’s fine, you can go in.” I don’t really understand the logic of this statement, but I’m not about to question it. Mom’s coming around the corner by now and I wave to signal that we can go in. We thank the guy profusely and walk into the building.

The Book of Kells is the crown jewel in Trinity’s collection. It’s a very old and extremely well-preserved illuminated manuscript that contains the four Gospels. It dates back to about 800 AD, and it’s named for the monastery in which it was created. We don’t get very long to look at it, and there’s only one page open, but just from that glimpse you can see how incredibly intricate the work is and, by how thick the volume is, how long it would have taken to create. Even just being in the presence of such a work inspires a hushed awe.

Next up is the Old Library. Picture an old wooden college library in Europe in your head, something like what you’d see at Oxford or Cambridge or somewhere in Paris. This is like that. It’s a long, tall room with dark wooden shelves forming little nooks on the sides, with marble busts of writers and thinkers at the end of each row. It’s kind of unfortunate that they’re working on a major restoration project right now, so not all the books are on the shelves, but you can still get an amazing sense of scale for how many volumes are there and what it must look like when the library is in its normal state. We only have a few minutes to take it in before we’re ushered out through the gift shop. But it was still worth it. We did it.

After that mad dash, the rest of the evening feels very peaceful. We do a little bit of shopping, picking up bits and bobs that we’ve been meaning to get before leaving Ireland. We pop into a Boots and, because I’m about to hike a trail and I want to return to my full hiker trash state, I pick up a bottle of bright yellow nail polish. For dinner we wind up at the Gourmet Burger Kitchen, where I get a chicken “burger” without the bun because I’ve been so carbohydrated recently, and it tastes lovely. Back at the apartment on Hatch Street Lower, we pack up, sadly preparing to say goodbye to this place that’s become our little home.

But Scotland is next!