Stay out late tonight? That will be a coddle....
We conclude that last night's late meal seemed to have contributed to our inability to keep our eyes open, and so an earlier start tonight might enable us to see some of Dublin's night time festivities.
As we had such a huge breakfast we are both happy about combining lunch and dinner into a mid-afternoon meal which should then leave us clear to go back to the hotel around 5pm to get ready to come back out and hit the pubs, and that way hopefully manage to stay awake past midnight.
We decide that it would be rude to wander through Temple Bar without sampling another Guiness, so we stop off in The Vat Bar (which gets its name from name from the vat house in the Guinness Brewery in St. James Gate where Guinness is stored in large copper vats). He gets very excited when he discovers 'the snug', which seats the two of us very cosily - and we happily while away an hour drinking and listening to a bizarre jukebox of diddly-diddly Irish music interspersed with 80's synthesiser hits.
Around 3.30pm we decide that we could force a meal down, and so the snug gives way to Gallagher’s Boxty House, one of those restaurants that feels so homely I honestly believe I could walk into the kitchen and find my mum cooking merrily away. (Glass of sherry in hand of course....)
After braving the icy wind between the pub and here, sitting by the crackling fire is bliss, and a glass of red wine plus a tureen-full of Murphy's Irish stew leaves me feeling warm and less able to fit into my trousers. He has the Dublin Coddle - a ham, sausage, potato and onion casserole that keeps him quiet for the best part of half an hour. We amuse ourselves by watching a middle-aged woman trying not to be embarrased by her extremely drunk and incomprehensible father, who is abusing the waiter for not having some kind of rare flan on the dessert menu.
So, we're fed and watered, and for the moment warm. Before the 'after-dinner snooze' feeling takes us over we force ourselves outside again, and head back to the hotel. On entering the reception we say hello to a man behind the desk, who informs us that we should stop off at the 'lively' and 'party-like' hotel bar before we go out again. So we do.
It's hard to tell in Ireland what people are celebrating - clothes and atmosphere seem to be the same for weddings and and for wakes. But there are a lot of people in suits in the bar - all who know each other, and all who are switching between solemnity and hilarity in alternate and somewhat disturbing turns.
We sit in the corner with our drinks, listening to how nice a room full of Irish accents sound - can't imagine sitting in a pub in Basingstoke and thinking the same thing somehow...
It is getting close to 7 o'clock, and so far our pub crawl has taken in...the hotel bar. We leave, and walk down the hill towards the city centre - stopping on route at the smallest pub in the world, and one I imagine that is usually home to regulars only. When I order a vodka and lemonade he empties a measure of Smirnoff into a glass, then gives me a litre bottle of lemonade for me to top up as and when. If he had left me the vodka bottle as well, I would see no reason to leave. Ever.
The next place is about as far away from my images of cosy Irish pubs as I could possibly have got. Large and open-plan, I am the only woman in there - not something I normally complain about - but we are the only ones under 65 as well. In my very generalising way, I imagine that the men in there have been sat with a pint of bitter in their hand since opening time, and who use the pub as a male bonding area to escape their tyrannous Irish wives who stand on doorsteps with rolling pins. Or something like that. And everyone was watching Eastenders on the television in the corner.
After spotting my favourite sign of the holiday so far (above the door to the male toilets - 'No prams allowed in here'...) we move on again. Winding our way (increasingly more unsteadily) towards Temple Bar, we stop in various pubs on route, before ending up merrily tapping our feet to an Irish band in a huge pub that still retains all the features of the bank it used to be. Prices have also obviously been kept in line with inflation as well...
We actually manage to stay out until around 1am, before we admit defeat and head back. We agree we have had a great night, but we worry that tomorrow morning won't feel as though we have really been out. Ok, so we might be able to boast a hangover, but with the smoking ban strictly in force over here, our clothes are not going to be infused with that lovely stale tobacco smell....
Breakfast with the Pope
After a comparatively comfortable sleep (the heating turned itself off and refused to come back on again, so the room felt a little like how I imagine a night in the freezer compartment of my fridge would feel; and him waking up violently around 2am thinking that an imaginary psychotic burglar was about to join us) we made our way down to breakfast in good spirits.
We discovered that it is very hard to retain those good spirits whilst trying to eat bacon and eggs to a very loud radio broadcast of the Pope's funeral. Latin prayers, liturgical ceremonies and spectator wailing are not the most cheerful way to start your day - but any whispered jokes or stifled giggles were put paid to by the fierce expression of the waitress and her insistence that we have everything on the breakfast menu. Comparisons with Father Ted's Mrs Doyle would be old hat but even still......
Still, we left feeling full, if a little depressed after the dining room soundtrack. Stepping out into the bright and sunny (and ok, bloody freezing) Irish spring weather, we set off down the hill and found the Dublin Writer's Museum (yes, the map had moved it several streets away, but we still found it) which was fascinating. As was the Old Post Office, Trinity College and all the other fantastic buildings that Dublin has to offer. Yes, yes - lovely architecture and all that, but best of all for me however, were the pedestrian crossings in the town. Display boards on the traffic lights that counted down the number of seconds until you could safely cross the road (Why? Are people really that impatient? '23 seconds until I can cross the road? Sod that for a game of soldiers, I'll stay on this side thank you very much!') and excellent beeping noise (it has an urgency to it reminiscent of the final round on a quiz show) - that was a constant source of amusement to me. I have a feeling that the novelty wore off for him quite early on, but I'll definitely be starting up a campaign to introduce them to the UK/the South of England/Dorset/Bournemouth/my road as soon as possible.
Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellipse/
A double room in the Bates Motel? Certainly Madam.
After reluctantly leaving our safe haven (why does sitting in a pub feel more like home than home sometimes?) we embark onto the adventure of finding our hotel. On my map it looks perfectly simple to find but we know now that that doesn't mean anything. And so it proves. Round the bend to the left, under the bridge, up the hill and it's on your right is what it says. After applying ourselves to the map's twisted logic we discover that it's actually round the bend to the right, nowhere near a bridge, down a hill and to the left. Still, we made it, although at this point we haven't seen the inside of the place yet.
We have a history of staying in 'interesting' hotels. In Liverpool for New Year 2004 we had a room with a door that didn't fit the frame, wooden slats on the floor that slid about when you walked on them, wardrobes with no fronts, and a huge vent between us and the next room which meant we had to spend an hour listening to the occupants crucifying a selection of Kylie hits. In London we chose one that looked like the Ritz on the website, but actually turned into a Travelodge once you were past reception. This one was my favourite, purely for the 'Welcome Brochure' that we were given on arrival. This solemnly proclaimed that guests were allowed no more than two of the bar's 'special' Bloody Marys, and were also not permitted to invite 'ladies of the night' to their rooms. Disappointingly we obeyed the rules, and did neither.
So when the Dergvale Hotel (chosen as I hoped the strange name might indicate further weirdness) turned out to be relatively normal we felt a little deflated. If we'd known then about breakfast tomorrow we needn't have worried...
After settling in (i.e. he unpacks everything he is carrying and puts it in the correct place; I figure out how the television works) we plan our big Irish craic. Partying all night, drinking the bars dry - off into the Dublin evening we go!
....................
We are getting old. We find a superb Italian restaurant (hmm, lost the Irish connection immediately there, didn't we?), eat and drink wine until his credit card refuses to pay for anything more and then find a pub for the first pint of the night. And the last as it turns out. Half past ten, and you can tell that we are both sat there hoping the other will yawn, so that we can say 'Oh dear, are you feeling tired? Well, although I was hoping to stay out longer, I really don't mind if you need to go to bed'...
Eventually I give in and admit that I really could do with going back to the hotel. He agrees, and we start walking back, having conversations that start with 'In all fairness, we have been up since 5am', or 'Travelling really does take it out of you'...
Photo credit to http://www.flickr.com/photos/dogfael/
