1916 and So On

We're now in Dublin, in a hotel just off O'Connell Street, near St. Mary's Pro-Cathedral. The room has wi-fi, so while Mary Joy is resting (it's 6 p.m. here, noon back in Minnesota, on Tuesday the 15th of June), I'll make our first trip posting.

There were no problems with flights or connections, except one minor one, which I'll go into later. As we were about to take off on our Southwest flight from MSP, we were suddenly serenaded over the intercom by a harmonica rendition of the racetrack call to the post, followed by "Red River Valley!" The pilot stood at the front of the cabin, playing his harmonica, then cracked jokes about how bad his playing was (though it was really pretty good). So that's how our trip started!

Chicago Transit veterans that we are, we had no trouble buying a transit card when we got to Midway Airport, and taking the Orange train to the Loop, then going downstairs at the Clark-Lake station and transferring to the Blue Line out to O'Hare airport. This took us a little longer than shuttle bus or a taxi between airports, but cost about a tenth as much.

No problems at O'Hare, or going from there to Philadelphia, except that when I had checked in online the night before, I had noticed that our seats had been changed for the Philadelphia-Dublin flight and were no longer together, but in fact were far apart. I tried calling USAirways, but couldn't get an answer. In Chicago, I asked at the gate, but the best they could do was two aisle seats, one behind the other, one on an exit row (normally, Mary Joy gets a window seat and I get the center seat next to her). When we got to Philadelphia, it became clear that a lot of other people were in the same boat. USAirways had changed to a smaller plane. People in the eliminated seats were moved elsewhere in the new plane without any attempt to keep them together with family and friends. I found myself next to a newlywed couple that had to trade seats with someone in order to get back together.

As usual, Mary Joy slept a lot on the transatlantic flight and I didn't. We got into Dublin on an extaordinarily (for Dublin) beautiful day: sunny, in the low 60's. We took the Airlink 747 bus (6 euros apiece) downtown and ended up two blocks from our hotel, which gave us a room immediately.

We hurried up to join the 11:30 "1916 Rebellion Walking Tour". The guide (picture above) had a History Ph.D from Trinity College, and had spent a school year as a researcher at Notre Dame (apparently not a good experience). We started with a short lecture in a pub basement, walked to Trinity College, then to the General Post Office (where the rebel chiefs had held out), then to City Hall, then to Dublin Castle. We learned a lot about the causes, happenings and results of the Easter Rising. There was a college group from Alabama with us, and a guy who said he was doing a travel article for "The (San Francisco?) Chronicle."

Then time for lunch (savory tarts-tomato and goat cheese for Mary Joy; red onion and potato for me) at the Queen of Tarts, which was just across the street from where we ended up. Very good.

Though beginning to flag, we went to the Irish National Museum, where we saw a lot of Bronze-Age gold jewelry. Then we returned to our hotel.