Dia dhuit, Conás átá tú

So I am in Ireland, Dublin to be exact. This is the homeland of peeps on my mom's side of the family (O'Riordan's from County Kerry), and possibly a few peeps on my paternal grandmother's side (MacDowell). I was told growing up that they were Scotch-Irish. I only recently learned that the Scotch-Irish were descended from Scottish and English families who moved to Ireland to work on Ulster plantations in the 17th century. Interesting.

I grew up as a Midwestern Irish Catholic, where being Irish is about your uncles drinking lots of beer, going to Catholic school, putting your kids in Irish dancing lessons, and cheering for Notre Dame. You get a bit of a slanted view on Ireland and what it means to be Irish, I think. I would actually hazard to guess that half of the Irish in the states cannot find Ireland on a map. I am headed to the history museum today to educate myself and such, maybe learn some Gaelic (not).

Anyway - right off the bat though, Dublin feels so comfortable. It reminds me a bit of Minneapolis or something. Where Londoners have an edge to their clothing and personalities at first (they are all friendly softies once you talk to them), the Dubliners are really mellow and laid back. While I think I might get bored in Dublin during a long-term stay, there seem to be cool little alleys and interesting historical sights everywhere. Today I accidentally jogged past a 17th century Huguenot cemetery. Cool right.

I have been here for 2 days and I can say there are three things I love already:

• No one we were with last night even so much as looked at their phones at dinner and at the bar afterwards. Awesome!
• Plastic grocery bags at the store cost 22 cents each - the city and waterways are NOT polluted with plastic bags as a result.
• The city has an urban housing density that allows most of Dave's coworkers to live nearby and walk to work. You really don't need a car and you don't have to spend hours on public transport each day commuting. It is amazing how freeing (and money saving) not having a stressful/long commute feels.

 
I also like the cab drivers. Our first cabbie told us this joke: What's an Irish homosexual? An Irishman who likes girls more than whiskey. Ha ha - just awful.

I mentioned our second cab driver that I assumed St. Patrick's and Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin were Catholic, they aren't! Well, I got a lesson in Oliver Cromwell and how in the past (like for the last 300 years) more that three Irishmen couldn't walk together down the street for fear of them staring a revolution. He used the term "we" quite a lot, as though he as a Catholic had been personally affected by Cromwell's reign of terror in Ireland. Interesting, I suppose that kind of violence does leave lasting scars.


Well we are off to the countryside tomorrow to see old stuff. I'll post some pics for ya'all. xoxo