Could I fit anymore in?

Probably but I’d have to plan a bit better than just rocking up and see what happens.

I’m trying to be good this time round. I’m sitting in the shopping area of Terminal 3 at Heathrow (and later Terminal 1 in Helsinki). I’ve got two and a half hours to kill after having no delays with my first flight from Dublin (plus an extra 2 in Helsinki), so I’m starting this now before I forget.

My bag apparently arrived in Cowes on the ferry on Sunday and after some chasing on Monday it eventually got delivered to me at about 2215, almost exactly 3 days after I had arrived at Kate’s place. The working week was uneventful, 50% of my time was spent in meetings and training sessions which was the point of the visit (as well as an escape from Finland for mental well being). I did fit in two things that I was most grateful for.

On Tuesday night I caught the ferry over to Southampton to go climbing with Andrew (another engineer in the UK) and his wife Suzanne. We visited the local climbing gym which would have been better accessed by boat from Cowes than by car from Southampton but we got there and spent a couple of hours climbing. Cowshot is one of the biggest climbing gyms that I’ve been too and it was good to climb on some graded routes again, confirming that I’m actually not that bad after all. We did a couple of easy climbs to start with and then did a few longer lead climbs with Andrew’s rope. From memory I did a 4 and 5b on top rope and then a 5, 6c, 6a, and 6b on lead, all quite comfortably with no slips or falls which made it even more enjoyable (this is the French grading system which I’m not that familiar with so I need to check how that relates to climbing back home – but it is more relevant to me over here anyway).

On Wednesday night I went out sailing on Matt and Katia’s 707, the tide was coming in when we arrived at the boat an we had to pull it out of a little mud before we sailed off the dock and around into the Solent. We then spent an hour and a half working up the side of the island trying to stay in relatively shallow water to ensure we were making ground against the tide. Just off Gurnard there was a visibly disturbed patch of water where we launched upwind when we sailed through it, you could visibly see the change in motion of the boat as we passed through this section of water that was flowing the opposite direction to that surrounding it. After passing through this area a few times we turned around and sailed back under the kite in about 30 minutes, even though the wind was less than half the strength of what it was when we left, even sailing right into the dock.

The trip to Dublin on Thursday night was straight forward, except I missed the stop in the city I was suppose to get off at, and after going against my better judgement and following some misleading/misunderstood directions ended up on a midnight sightseeing trip of Dublin before getting to the hostel for some much needed rest.

Good Friday saw most things in Dublin Closed. I started the day with some random wandering of the streets which included going down the river half way to the port and then found some of the gardens south of the river Liffey including Merrion Square and St Stephens Green. I took in the National Gallery (from the outside before picking up a ticket for one of the Dublin City Bus tours. I sat through the whole tour where the Bus diver/tour guide advised not getting off for approximately half of the attractions as they were closed on good Friday. However this was a good way to get a better feel for the things that I would want to use my Saturday and Sunday for.

I used the remainder of the afternoon to looking through the ‘Bodies’ Exhibition which happened to be in Dublin. The exhibition is a showcase of real human bodies dissected in various creative ways in an effort to teach us how the body works. This was both incredibly interesting and unnerving at the same time. At the start of the section on circulation there are the lungs of a smoker then the lungs of a non-smoker, there is a glass case between the two which is half filled with cigarette packs. The statement above the case is un-imaginative but seemingly effective. In the evening the Hostel had a band playing in the hostel common room and some drinks with other boarders consumed the night.

Saturday I again set off on foot and visited Trinity Collage first, spending quite some time wandering the grounds thinking how inspiring it must be to study in such beautiful surroundings. I then did the guided tour of the grounds which was good to get some more insight into what I had already gone and looked at. The tour finishes with the Old Trinity Collage Library which houses the Book of Kells, as well as a few other very old copies of biblical texts. The books on display are indeed very special works of art, but I was actually more impressed with the Library building itself which is filed in a pretty illogical way given the number of books in it. Size of the book determines its position and then they are grouped in alphabetical order from floor to ceiling (over two floors). The interior of the building is dominated firstly by the full height bookshelves and then by the beautifully finished cylindrical timber ceiling. It seemed like a very easy place to be lost in time.

I also checked out the Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin’s oldest building where there are many significant Irish figures remains buried within the structure, many entombed below the place of worship among the building’s foundations.

Dublin Castle was not exactly what I expected. Still used as a state building the tour showed off some of the more luxurious rooms, which were not at all reminiscent of the ruins I was expecting to be walking through. Some of the rooms on the tour included the Former Kings bedroom, the thrown room, lady’s drawing room and a look at the foundations of the old powder tower, which was as close to the ruins that I got at the Castle.

I returned to the hostel before I set out to find some dinner and meet James (a kiwi) so we ended up getting an Irish stew at Pub in the Temple Bar area and then had a few drinks in a pub or two in the area which from all accounts was the place to go for a night out. The accounts seemed to be correct as it was incredibly busy both in all of the pubs where we were almost fighting for standing room and yelling to hear each other, and out on the street where trains of people flowing in various different directions formed only parting for taxi’s that were barely moving down the narrow cobbled streets.

On Sunday morning I visited St Patrick’s Cathedral and Park (which is right next door) and continued to enjoy the lovely weather that seemed to have blessed my Easter weekend. Sitting in a grassy park on a clear sunny morning was a real treat, although no warm by Australian standards, it was very pleasant and much warmer than my current ‘normal’ surroundings. The Cathedral is a spectacular building and I only hope that I at least managed to capture a fraction of it’s presence in my photo’s. I didn’t end up getting to look around inside as on Easter Sunday they were of course running services and although I’m sure it would have been a nice service to attend I had other things I still wanted to fit into my Sunday.

Perhaps not the most holy thing to do after visiting St Patricks (although I was in Ireland), I went to tour the Guinness Storehouse. I’d had mixed reports of Good to Great on this but on the whole it seemed that it was the most popular site visited in Dublin. The day before I was there they had over 7500 people through. I found it quite interesting and although it was not overly technical you could spend as long or as little time as you liked looking at the displays because it was a self guided tour. There are various displays on both the history Guinness itself, the brewery buildings, the ingredients and the brewing process, and various advertising campaigns from over the years are highlighted. And of course after walking and escalating up to the top of the building you get to enjoy a pint looking out over the brewery and its surrounding city of Dublin. It then seemed like the right time for lunch (even after my meal in a glass) and I ate at the restaurant a couple of floors down. Defiantly the best beef and Guinness stew I have ever had (as you would hope).

The next appropriate place to visit seemed to be the Old Jameson Distillery, so after wandering back across the river I had a guided tour of the old facility. All the Jameson that is sold now comes from a larger operation in Cork, so there is no lingering smell of barley in the air as there was at the Guinness factory. Original equipment from the distillery included a set of still’s, a mill stone, some pumps and of course the 70 year old cat called Smithy, who after many years of faithful service catching 20 mice a day was rewarded by being stuffed and kept on display for all to see. The guided tour was interesting and more technical than the information that I’d just gotten at the Guinness factory, however the tour itself was not as visually striking and 25% was done with video anyway (mainly the history part). Of course just like the Guinness tour at the end you get to sample some of the product which you’ve just learned so much about. Although in this case the bar does not have quite the spectacular view, the alternative being that 8 lucky members of the tour got to partake in a whisky tasting and compare 3 different whiskies (for which I was not selected). They almost unanimously selected Jameson as their favourite.
After this I had run out of time to get back to the gaol or visit anything else with a closing time so I went for a wander kind of aimlessly for a couple of hours. Along my travel I found a few unidentified old buildings mostly churches, The Capuchin Friary Church, St Mary’s Cathedral, a cool statue of an oversized hand opposite St Mary’s, a random statue of what appeared to be an Olympic torch in the middle of a round about, the Port of Dublin including a familiar looking Incat Ferry, the O2 building which is a recently built large music venue which on the night in question had Tina Arena playing which accounted for the very high volume of traffic (pedestrian and otherwise), and a cool building with a massive falling over glass cylinder sticking out the side.

After finding some dinner I went back to the hostel and made sure I had everything and then read a book for a while (not very exciting, but my feet were kind of sore). The trip back today has been ok, but long, which is as you would expect for 3 flights separated by a couple of hours at each airport. Hopefully, I won’t be too tired in the morning for work (yeah right!).