St Patrick's Day / Weekend in Dublin

There comes a point in most everyone's lives when they realize that they are no longer "young." It doesn't necessarily mean that they are "old," or that they will not inevitably revert back to being "young" on the odd occasion, but what does happen is that the lens through which certain events are viewed is irrevocably changed.

I am no longer young.

DH and I spent St Patrick's Day in Dublin, which sounds to most people like an absolute dream. I'm going to assume that it is only because most people have not been to Dublin on St Patrick's Day. The analogies I've heard/made are that is it basically an Irish Mardi Gras, or an international Frat party, and both of those are apt. I think that the thing that disappointed me most of all is that people think that they'd like to be in Dublin because of the intrinsic Irishness of the holiday, and that being in Dublin would somehow bring that to the fore. But in reality, at least from what I saw, Irishness is reduced to an unflattering caricature drawn by the non-Irish, and being in Dublin for St Patrick's Day is no different than being anywhere else in the world, and indeed perhaps even worse for the expectations.

I found Dublin to be a really tough city to figure out. There are some things that we really, really loved. The parks are gorgeous and inviting and the people are quite friendly. And maybe because it was St Patrick's Day, or maybe not, I just couldn't figure out what Dublin was about. The city reflects this kind of uncertainty about its identity, I think. There are vacant lots and ancient hovels and tenements standing next to gorgeous new modern glass and steel buildings, as if they were trying to build a new identity that overshadowed the old without really dealing with the past.

DH and I arrived on Saturday and had a low-key kind of day, meeting up with some friends who were already in the city for a short while, walking around a couple of parks and whatnot, just trying to soak in the atmosphere and get a little oriented. That night, the hotel's bar turned into a nightclub open until 3am, which basically prevented me from falling asleep until 330am. Not a happy camper. We ended up changing hotels in the end.

Sunday we did our major "sightseeing," making our way to the Guinness factory, Kilmainham Gaol, St Patricks and Christ Churches, etc. It was Sunday that we started realizing how weird Dublin is... the Guinness tour was self guided, flashy and basically interesting, but still felt a little haphazard and thrown together, like they ran out of information but still had a couple of floors on the building to fill. The Gaol too, was poorly organized for tourists, with tours that filled quickly and seemingly no way to pre-book the (required) guided tour in advance, which forced folks to go WAY out of their way twice (once to book the tour, and once to take it). Our guide was earnest, but the information ended up being muddled, the history and significance of the place in the end was not clear. Is it a symbol of British repression? Does it memorialize the martyrdom of those who fought for an independent republic?

In a way, it's funny that Monday was, for me, all about finding out my identity, in a city that seemed not to know itself. I visited the National Archives to find the only surviving census documents recording my maternal grandmother's father's family presence in Northern Ireland and I visited the General Registry Office to get copies of the registers of my great-grandfather's birth and his parents' marriage. It was an interesting exercise, to say the least, and definitely has me wanting to learn more.

Tuesday, St Patrick's Day, was the most ridiculous day of them all. DH and I stood for nearly 4 hours to wait and watch the St Patrick's Day parade, which was without a doubt the most bizarre display I've ever seen. Again, like I felt most of the weekend, I was left thinking "I don't get it." We visited Christ Church, a mish-mosh of time periods encapsulated in this single space (from Viking-era crpyts, medieval tombs, Dark ages architecture and 16th and 19th century renovations). We ate lunch in St Stephens Green, surrounded by those too young to get into pubs and families with young children (everyone else, we presume, was in a pub drinking). That night we did venture into the Temple Bar district (think Bourbon Street in New Orleans during Mardi Gras) and carefully stepped our way around broken glass, urine, and vomit to a pub for a pint, and then to a traditional Irish restaurant for dinner.

The whole experience was truly mind-boggling, and I think that if I lived in Dublin, I'd high-tail it out of town during St Patrick's Day. From what we could see on the news and in a couple of small circulars around, there were serious Irish cultural events going on as part of the celebration, but those were utterly and completely drowned out by the drunken frat boy mayhem that visitors brought with them. The presence of so many foreigners, there for seemingly the singular purpose of getting as drunk as possible, makes it really tough for me to figure out what Dublin might be like without them. I'd like to find out, but I wonder if the Dubliners themselves aren't even sure.

Pictures are here and here, and you don't need to have a Facebook account to view them.