Thursday 6 August 12:40 pm – Umi Falafel
I fear I’ve been pretending to be a normal tourist – more flush, short-term. I’ve been getting coffees, eating out, paying entrance fees for museums. I’m a little scared to add it up and convert it into Australian dollars.
This morning I was meant to join a free walking tour of the city but the crowd was large and the guide too bubbly for my mood so I wandered off before we even got going.
Instead I visited the Chester Beatty Library. Admission was free and they have a pretty interesting collection of manuscripts and religious artifacts collected by … Charles Beatty.
Now I’m having lunch at this smashing falafel and hummus restaurant – this is not the same Dublin I first visited all those years ago, that’s for sure. Seriously, if you are ever in Dublin: Umi Falafel.
I’ve decided I can get through all I want to see and do in Dublin today so I’ve arranged a lift back to Kilkenny from the airport for this afternoon.
I’m thinking ahead to my return to France – I booked my ferry to Cherbourg. Right now I’m planning on turning left out of the port, follow the coast of Normandy for a bit – not worry about visiting Tom in the South of France or seeing the Vuelta Espana. I feel due for a nice long run of just being on the bicycle day after day after day.
2:35 pm – Busy Bee Cafe
When I first visited Dublin in 1988 I went looking for U2’s studio in Windmill Lane. I found it on the back streets of a drab working-class residential neighbourhood a few blocks back from the dying quayside with its little used or derelict cranes.
Fans had scrawled graffiti on the front of the building with messages for the band and notes about where they had come from to make this visit.
Seven years later, in 1995, on my next visit to Dublin, things were much the same. The graffiti had spread and the neighbourhood seemed a bit changing but all was recognizable.
I’ve just come from there now and I walked around several blocks trying to sort out where the offices had been. Windmill Lane is a construction zone – well – a destruction zone right now – Wikipedia warned me. They said the wall of graffiti has been saved. But was not, presently, on site.
The neighbourhood is now full of new apartment complexes and office buildings housing things like web designers and McCann Erickson.
I know that, on balance, this is a good thing. Good for Dublin. Good for the Irish economy. But it’s another mark of how every city becoming more and more just like every other city with old, close in districts, being remade from homes for low-wage workers in nearby jobs to homes and offices for the “creative class”.
As Paul Kelly has put it … Every Fucking City’s just the same (okay, his story isn’t really about gentrification but still …).
Dublin: I’m done.
The museums were good and some of the wandering but … cities … meh. Looking forward to riding through the countryside again.
4:50 pm – Airport
I feel like I’m just here and time is whizzing past – there’s truth in that but maybe I’m being harsh on myself as well.
Maybe I need to be a little more focused and a little less wandering. Focus on the Jewish stuff, on the learning German. These are shaping ideas. I think maybe it’s time for more shaping ideas.
What would that mean?
D-Day Beaches. Find a German course I can do. Identify Jewish sites/museums I want to visit.
Yes, maybe this needs to be a little less organic.