The Adventures of Team Parker

Hey all. Guess who has internet again? We’re in Chicago and are hooked up with cable and high speed internet so, yay! Also, I’m having a minor infatuation with this city. All I want to do is gush but I will lay off coz I know that if I go ahead with it, Dublin, Balbriggan, and St Patrick’s Day will be lost in time. Now, I kind of fell behind on this bit because when we were in Ireland, I was still busy trying to catch up on the last of the Davos posts, which I did but it means I haven’t blogged anything about Ireland. So I’m going to do my failsafe “Follow the pictures” technique which usually works to jog my memory and flesh things out. Here goes.

We got a RyanAir flight to Dublin and both promptly fell asleep. We woke up just before landing. When we arrived, we were in a queue with a horde of young American tourists who kept talking about all the Guinness they were going to drink while they were there. There was an EU queue and a non-EU queue. The EU people had about four people tending to them and the rest of us had one guy. So it took us about an hour to get through the queue. Not sure what was up with that but anyway. At least they were nice to us once we got there. We met Joe and Ethné met us at the airport and after hugs and hellos we hopped into a taxi to get to Balbriggan (Baile Brigan) where they stay.

It was quite cold and overcast and we spent the rest of the evening in front of the warm fake fire catching up. The next day we caught the train to Dublin. It was a DART train and was quite new and comfortable. (Chicago trains are neither of those!) Joe gave us a running comentary of the place on the way and the O’Donaghues pointed out birds that we’d only heard of before – rooks, starlings, and magpies.

Once in Dublin, we walked towards the main street in town, O’Connell Street, with it’s tall spire, the Monument of Light. Well, it didn’t show up that well on the day because it was pretty dark and overcast but I took this picture a few days later and it shows the sparkliness of it pretty well. This is both Joe and Ethné unsuccessfully attempting to hide behind Sameer.

So, then we did a bit of a walking tour of the area and ten minutes later we lost Sameer. We crossed a road towards O’Connell Bridge with a hoard of tourists. He went straight and we all turned right. And then after a brief panic, and me thinking “I bet he didn’t see us turn and just wandered straight over”, I went back to the bridge used the last of my airtime to call him, turned around and as he picked up the phone, saw him standing on the opposite end of the bridge. Here’s the lot of us looking relieved to have found Sameer again.

Then we crossed the River Liffey via the Ha’Penny Bridge (pronounced “Hay-Penny”) and went into Temple Bar, a cultural center in Dublin which has medieval cobbled streets and loads of tiny shops and restaurants. By now we were already pretty much soaked because of the constant drizzle. We popped in to a couple of comic book shops and regular book shops, looked for some memorabilia (didn’t find any we wanted to buy), and I ogled some nifty Doc Martens in a shoe shop, but didn’t buy any. In retrospect, I really really should have bought a pair! Then we had lunch at a restaurant in the area. After that we went to Trinity College for a quick look around and then moved on to Grafton Street – a busy shopping area in Dublin – and after being further soaked opted to warm up in Bewley’s Coffee Shop. I had an average tasting apple crumble pie with a divine apple tea. Strangely yummo!

Anyway, then we wandered off to St Stephen’s Park, which again, looked inviting but we were too soaked to really take it in. We resorted to doing impersonations of Derek Zoolander’s Blue Steel look.

After that headed home and immediately got into freshly tumbled dried clothes and sat back to some hot soup and general vegging out. Sheer bliss – reminded me of all those times we got soaked as kids, coming home from school, and got sent to take hot baths before getting into freshly ironed PJs, and eating soup.

The next day we did nothing much in particular. Joe suggested we go down to the beach but it was cold and overcast and we felt really lazy so we spent most of the day playing the Xbox, watching tv, surfing the internet (in my case updating my blog) and talking nonsense. Oh, and we watched the first Alien movie in the dark and I jumped out of my skin and was generally scared witless. Good movie that. Too good.

The next day was Saint Patrick’s Day and we got up and rushed off to catch the train to town. We got a late start so we were running a bit behind and just when we were starting to think we wouldn’t make the ten o’clock train, a taxi happened to pass by. So we caught that and got there in time to see all the parents and their kids in a all shades of green gathering on the platform.

When we got to Dublin we joined the flocks of people heading for O’Connell street. It was so much fun seeing all the adults and kids in their paraphernalia — green shirts, wigs, hats, antennae, painted faces, Irish sunglasses and shorts, fluffy hats big and small, and so on and so on. There was such an incredible party feeling and I kept thinking “Wow! To be a kid on St Paddy’s must be such a big deal!”

We stopped along the way to buy some Irish looking things to help us get more into the mood. Ethné got a big, floppy hat, Joe got a pair of glasses with an Irish flag painted over it, Sameer got a green hoody that said Ireland on it, and I got an aliceband with a pair of floppy green antennae attached. Here we are in our goodies.

Then we went off to look for a good spot to stand. Well, arriving an hour early turned out to be too late as there was already a crowd three rows deep there. We eventually stopped looking for a good spot and settled for an alright spot. Some experience St Paddy’s people had turned up with step ladders or climbed statues to get a good view. This might be an idea for next time. Or else turn up really early and bring a blanket and some boardgames.

Once we had a good spot, we sent the guys off to get munchies and then stood around people watching and waiting for things to start. The adults were cool to watch but again, the kids were the cutest. Some were happy to site on their parents shoulders and wave a flag, others got bored and started playing games or chasing each other around, and others fell asleep in their parents arms. For me, I think of the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade as a special treat for children, with the adults fun just being secondary.

Then the Parade started properly. There were marching bands – five or six of them from different places – police men on horses, large paper mache puppets, metallic, moving sculptures, huge floating balloons, motorized floats, people in costume, dancing people, fire blowing people, and people on stilts. It was a case of sensory overload.

After an hour, we started to get really cold and opted to break for lunch. We went off to Costa at a nearby mall and Sameer got KFC. Then I got “lost”. I prefer to think of it as a case of miscommunication and bad timing. Then Sameer and I both got lost. Then we all tried really hard not to get lost. At one point, when Sameer and I had been separated from Joe and Ethné, we came across these two strangely lifelike mannequins.

The next day, Joe and Ethné went to see their cat Sliver, who is in quarantine after relocating from SA to Ireland, so Sameer and I went off to Dublin on our own. The weather was better but it was still cold and after wandering about fairly aimlessly we ended up taking one of those City Sightseeing tours, which was a nice way to take a look at the more out of the way areas that you wouldn’t really want to walk to. When it ended we ran to the train station to catch the train to Drogheda (Dro-huh-da!), made it by the skin of our teeth, and found that the train had been cancelled. Then we tried to get some admin for our Chicago accommodation done at a nearby internet café and caught the next train. We made Sameer’s Jamie Oliver Mushroom Sarmies for dinner (drool) and then played a few cut-throat games of Munchkin, which shamefully, we lost to the O’Donoghues. Methinks we shall not live it down…

Since Joe was leaving early the next morning, we said our goodbyes. It was sad coz we realized that it would probably be years before we saw each other again. Then we packed up most of our things and went to bed.

The next morning, we had breakfast, bid Ethné goodbye and walked to the main street in Balbriggan where we had to find an internet café to print some forms and fax them off. Between the insanely slow internet and the odd owner who couldn’t fax our forms properly, this seemingly simple task took about 45 minutes. In that time we missed about three buses to the aiport. One of them drove by just as we exited the internet café. I was so mad! But it all panned out I guess coz the bus drive there was quick and uneventful and when we got there we were the first people to check in for our flight. Also, we didn’t get any hassle about our business in the UK when we touched down, unlike our racial profiling incident after our Switzerland trip.

Inspite of all the trademark Irish sogginess, we had a great time in Ireland with the O’Donaghues. Again, thanks for looking after us and letting us invade your home guys. We really appreciate it!