lunch date with Dublin

on Tuesday last, I landed in Ireland at something like half eight in the morning (also known as half three in the wee hours of what could almost still count as Monday five timezones back). I'd only slept a little on the plane, but since my flight from Dublin to Paris did not leave until six o'clock that evening, I had nine hours for adventuring. plenty of time.

friendly Irish airport staff pointed me toward the city, handed me maps and bus routes, and made recommendations. I sat sleepily on the top level of the bus, relishing so much green, wondering what I would find exploring Dublin.

first I walked around Trinity College.

there were beautiful, chained off grassy spaces and whimsically fat trees. I wanted to climb them, but: fences.

I saw this sign propped up against a wall, and big green ribbons tied around the columns of buildings. I guess it was green week, though I don't know what that means here. green as in College Green? green as in sustainable and eco-friendly? green as in Irish and St. Patrick and luck? not sure.

doesn't that look like the most glorious tree for climbing? in a few months, when (or is it more like if at this point?) summer returns to Indiana I will designate a 'tree climbing week' for myself.

I felt both like a student (like any other student) and not like a student. I am, of course, endlessly a student. an endless student. but I am not a student at Trinity College. that makes perhaps more difference than it seems to.

then I got hungry and made my way to the Temple Bar district for food. I peered at menus outside cafe after cafe until this one on Essex Street caught my imagination. Brick Alley Cafe in dark shabby slab serifs over the door, window-menus boasting dozens and dozens of hot chocolate varieties, a long narrow bar above which stood a really neat clock, tables covered with local indie-looking zines and cards and such--I should've stayed there all day reading the Aristotle I'm supposed to be reading.

this is the lovely white chocolate with marshmallow the shy-seeming barista served me. not pictured: an even-more-delicious-cuz-I-was-so-hungry-by-then tomato and cheese ciabatta sandwich.

I did not sit all day in the cafe reading Aristotle. I walked across and along and around the River Liffey, people watching and looking into shops every once in a while. I bought a few postcards.

I took lots of photographs.

I browsed a few awesome bookshops, considered buying a magnet with Oscar Wilde's quote "Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong" on it, decided against that idea, and then had a berry scone with butter on it while I wandered back to the bus stop on Dame Street.

I was no less sleepy on the top of this double decker bus. the sun was setting out there behind the reflected bus-innards. it kept setting as I skipped through short security lines to wait by the windows for our gate to open, and it kept setting as I found my window seat, and it kept setting as we took off for Paris.

I'll have to write about Paris some other time.