June 15th-More Wandering

Today the rest of our group arrived, which was great because we got to move into the rooms we'll be in for the rest of the time in Dublin. Liz and I are rooming together--this has already proven to be a great source of entertainment. We got some lunch at a great little cafe called the Queen of Tarts. Had I known that was the name of the place, I would have gotten a tart. But the sandwich I ordered was excellent, so I was pleased. Liz needed a nap after the flight, so I did some wandering on my own. My first quest was to find the Abbey Theater, which was a prominent part of my Irish Renaissance class. JM Synge's plays graced the stage there, and Lady Augusta Gregory was very involved as part of the literary revival in Ireland. Unfortunately, the original Abbey burned down at some point, so the Abbey Theater I saw was a very modern, shiny building. Kind of disappointing, but at least I found it. I headed further down O'Connell Street, which has a lot of history. The statue on the Liffey end actually has bullet holes in it from the Easter 1916 rebellion, and the post office is where the Irish version of the Declaration of Independence was announced. This also has bullet holes in it. I walked all the way down to the Garden of Remembrance, a memorial to all those who gave their lives for Irish independence. The garden has a great statue of the children of Lir turning into swans, an Irish myth (thank you, Irish Literature to 1880). Anyway, my next mission was to find the statue of Oscar Wilde in Marrion Square, which took me back across the Liffey and through Grafton Street. Grafton Street is probably my favorite area of Dublin, not for the shopping but for all the street performers. There's always something different. Unfortunately, my search for Oscar was deterred by me turning down the wrong street. Whoops.
Murphy took the group on a walking tour in the afternoon, which pretty much covered the areas I'd already seen, but we got to walk through Trinity College--beautiful campus. After the tour, we found a great Italian restaurant (we tried to find a pub, but they were crazy crowded). The restaurant was awesome, and even Murphy was there. We walked back to the hotel with him, and then the greatest part of the day occurred. For those of you who don't know, Murphy is one of my favorite teachers of all time, and it is literally one of my "Things To Do Before I Die" list to have a pint with him. Well, we stopped by the pub by our hotel (the Darkey Kelly, which was the name of the brothel on the same street) and Murphy treated the four or five of us to a pint while we talked about the World Cup and Irish political history and literature. I'm not much of a drinker, but it was pretty much the greatest night of my life.