Feet

Walking to the gym this morning in the early afternoon, before the inevitable afternoon downpour and after the mid-morning chill, I felt as if I could walk forever. It is not a new feeling, but it seems more poignant now that I have faith in my own two feet.

I have always been slightly self-conscious about my feet, and on the whole I do not trust them much. I like the way they look, with their high arches, proportioned toes and pink nail polish, but they tend to flop when I walk like silly appendages, the left ankle rolling grossly as I trudge down the street. I am only truly comfortable when walking in bare feet, and that is a rare thing here.

But in the last five months I have learned to walk like I have never walked before. I have taken the walk to school as a normality, down damp paths in the morning or to the café in the afternoon. The walk back from the pub has become a mere trifle, tapping the stone in heels. I have gotten used to carrying my weekly groceries back from Tesco and the Market, familiar brass plaques lying under my Converse. But more than this, I learned that I can walk. That when all else fails, I am never stuck anywhere. Distance is relative, (and the distances I have walked have been long indeed) but I have learned to walk the kilometers without fail, to continue with no thought to how far, simply knowing that I will get there. I can walk. My mobility is never compromised.

In the states I am reliant on a car, my feet placed safely on the gas and brake, never forced to move much in order to go far, but to walk is a whole new discovery. This movement is a whole body experience, a sense of complete self, independent and integrated. No frame separates you from the world and no machine leaves you to be let down. Most mornings I feel I could walk forever, around the country and back to this wonderful city, and that I need nothing but my feet and my legs going on at my own pace; an off-centered gait that may not be economical, but it gets me there all the same.

The night outside Kerry airport I took to my feet in the same way I found my way through the streets of Dublin and Edinburgh and Rome. To walk, to walk to the bus station with a pack of all your possessions on your back, or simply to the gym with a towel, it is a state of perfect independence. You are walking on your own two feet! The world cannot stop you!

And I have come to love it. The days I do not walk are marked by restlessness, a supreme feeling of waste and dissatisfaction. I have even come to love my trod; slow, but more observant. There is more time to take in the birds on the Lee or the purple flowers that cling to stone fences along College Avenue. I see the world when I walk, I see it in its own time, coming and going as it does, as I do. To walk is a feeling of freedom nothing can match. I can walk the world if I wish.

I Corcaigh in éineacht le Muintir

I received a phone call around 2.00pm, which in itself was strange since I usually get text messages rather than actual calls, to find that my parents were already lost in Cork, standing outside the Waterstone’s on Patrick Street borrowing someone’s cell phone in order to contact me. I lugged on my shoes and headed out to greet them for the first time in three months. Really, not much had changed, but I had forgotten mom’s penchant for wearing fleece jackets and dad’s grey beard.

It had been a long drive from Dublin airport that morning and hard time finding me, much less their B&B, so we found the car parked over Tesco and went in search of the small, but comfortable B&B by the train station where my parents had a room. After a much needed nap (on all sides) we finally received a call from Barbara and David who had arrived in Cork as well, after an extra night in Dingle.

We met for dinner at a place called Bully’s by the Tesco- an area ripe with small café’s and restaurants that I have to admit I have rarely explored. It was a pleasant meal as we planned the next day, repeat with Cork’s most famous sights.

In truth, Cork’s not a very touristy city, and I like this about it. Whereas in Dublin tourist busses and people with cameras are a common sight, in Cork there’s not much more than the Beamish & Crawford Brewery (which was not open for tours yet) or the Butter Museum (yes, it does exist.) So we went up to see the UCC campus, fresh and green in the coming spring, and all the things contained therein; the Honan Chapel’s famous mosaic floors and the Gluckman Gallery’s newest exhibition, the quad and the seal and the Ogham Stones that line the hall of the Alus Maximus.

Afterwards we drove back into the city to see the English Market and buy loaves of fresh bread and scones and eat lunch at the FarmGate, a café situated over on a terrace, overlooking the market fountain. It was a good meal, but to top it off I decided to show then O’Conaill Chocolatier- famous around Cork for their supurb melted hot chocolate (my favorite being the dark chocolate) complete with little chocolate-pieces and enough to fill you up even if you haven’t just eaten a full lunch. Gourmet dessert in a glass.

After an afternoon nap around the apartment, and a though cleaning of the kitchen by mom, we ate that evening at the Boqureia, a trendy little tapas place over the north river. While the seating was minimal, the wine was good, as was the food, salmon tartar and all. After dinner we took to find a pub where we could continue the evening, eventually wandering into a place a bit down the road for a final drink before we parted to get some sleep, ready for tomorrow’s journey.

While Barbara and David’s trip was over, mom and dad’s had just begun. The journey up to Galway took me back past the Cliffs of Moher and Poulnabrone on the Burren, this time the day being warm and sunny. From there we wound up to Galway where we stopped at our next B&B before heading out to dinner. It was amazing how much of the city I remembered after merely a weekend there three months before, but at the same time I had walked much of the city, again and again, and in the coming spring it was brighter, but still very much the same.

Flowers blooming at the Cliffs of Moher.

We took time in Galway to tour the Connemara, stopping at Kylemore Abbey along the way. The country was greener in the spring, although still holding on to visages of brown grass on the hillsides. At the abbey the gardens were now open, and while the plants weren’t yet at peak, it still had spots of color, the brick walls enclosing the perfectly planned grounds while beyond the mountains rose to the sky, overcast but not raining. I love the Victorian atmosphere of Kylemore, and while the glass houses are no longer standing the gardens retain much of that style. Grandiose and styled.

Purple lantern flowers at Kylemore Gardens.

We wound back around the Connemara, seeing the country, around the Twelve Bens, and back to Galway. It’s really an all-day trip, but when we returned we took a drive around the city square and went for dinner at a pub/restaurant near the shopping corner, where the same pedal-cars were available for hire as in February, and minimal crowds hung around the doors to pubs in the usual haze of cigarette-smoke and conversation. It is things like this that I will miss most about Ireland.

The next day was spent cutting across the Irish interior on the way to Dublin. New highways are a fine addition to the Irish infrastructure, but they are few and far-between, so small roads showed us the way, with minor stops to see if any of a number of minor Irish castles were open since mom had never been in one before. We stopped at two, but were out of luck thanks once again to the unopened tourist season, and while seeing them from outside was beautiful, it was not the full castle experience.

Around 2.00 we rolled into Dublin, which is quite frankly a small city all things considered- smaller even than Baltimore- but still the largest in Ireland and full of traffic. Passing the Guinness Brewery, we pulled up to the bus station I remembered so well from my previous weekend there. Managing to catch the 2.00 bus, I said goodbye to my parents and wished them well on their final two days in the country, touring Dublin city, while I took the four-hour ride back to Cork to prepare for my upcoming journey to the Continent.

Dubliner

In my most infinite wisdom I decided that, despite the fact I was obviously coming down with a sore throat, going salsa dancing the night before leaving for Dublin was a good idea and one I could not possibly pass up. This is why, after getting to bed at 2.00 the night before, I stumbled off the 8.00am Cork-Dublin bus to a sunny, crowded city, bewildered, sick, sleepless and somewhat in awe.

Dublin is large, no doubt. After hopping city-to-city, each one smaller than the last, it was a bit of a shock to be somewhere larger than Cork. It was a sunny day, sunny to the point of blinding us as we stood on the street corner unsure of where to go, turning in circles and squinting in the sunlight.

Eventually we made it to O’Connell Street, the double-wide main drag of Dublin, filled with fast food and tourist shops and monuments and people, but the most spectacular sight was the Spire (affectionately called the “Spike”) a 390 foot metal pole officially named An Túr Solais, or “the Pillar of Light,” and it is lit up at night as we learned when using it as a guide us on our drunken stumble back from the Guinness Storehouse later in the day.

After finding our room and catching a bus back out to the city, we decided to try and make the Guinness Storehouse before it closed. Tired from a five hour bus ride from Cork and another 20 minuets city bus to and from our room, as well as the fact that Erica and I were obviously coming down with something, we were determined to salvage the remains of our first day in the city. Unfortunately Dublin is large and the small-scale we are used to in Cork does not apply there. Running along the banks of the Liffey we ended up going the length of the brewery before discovering we had gone too far. In a mad dash we ran the two blocks back up to the street and down around mazes of alleyways to reach the Storehouse before tours stopped at 5 o’clock.

But we made it, and saw all the pint-shaped museum had to offer including our free taste and free pint of Guinness- a drink I do not favor, but since I worked so hard to get there I was going to drink no matter what. So we stood in the rooftop Galaxy Bar above the Storehouse and chugged our pint-glasses in record time in order to get back down to the giftshop before it closed. After what I call my first experience “drunk shopping” we were discharged back into the city by way of what appeared by all accounts to be a back door, myself being sick, tired, and more than a little tipsy. A good first day in Dublin.

Sample at the Guinness Storehouse.

On Saturday we set out to accomplish it all, hitting first the National Museum of Ireland, then the National Gallery, Christ Church Cathedral, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin Castle, and somehow even Trinity College, which we stumbled into and could not get out of.

The dome of the National Museum.

By far my favorite was Christ Church. Started in 1038 it’s one of the oldest churches in Ireland, having undergone extensive renovations around the turn of the century resulting in beautifully colored marble inlay and mosaic floors, bright colored windows, and wonderful stonework as well as a bridge over Winetavern Street to the Synod House where an exhibition called Dublinia was being shown, but this part was closed. In the crypt we found displayed the mummified remains of a cat and rat that were found trapped in the church organ, as mentioned in Finnegan’s Wake. As for myself, I found the church quite rat-free.

Mosaic on the flor of Christ Church Cathedral.

St. Patrick’s was at least twice the size of Christ Church, but somehow there was much less to see. These churches are less worship space and more museum now, with gift shops sitting right alongside marble tombs. But this does nothing to lessen the feeling of the long sanctuary and towering ceilings that echo every footstep. I love places like these.

Our tour of Dublin Castle, which is really more of a Georgian Palace, was a guided affair through a number of staterooms and bedrooms, ballrooms and throne rooms, each brightly colored and lit with high chandeliers. Among these rooms were the King’s Bedroom, where Queen Victoria slept, a large parlor room displaying a mirror taken from the Palace of Versailles, and the ballroom where every seven years the new president of Ireland is inaugurated. From here we were guided into the underbelly of the castle where ancient stonework shows the original walls of the castle joined to one of the city gates, long closed off with brick.

The mirror from Versailles.

The day was waning so we trudged back towards O’Connell Street and decided to take a detour through the gates of Trinity College, with its long greens and stonework buildings. It’s much like I though UCC would be, full of old educational edifices, stern and charming at the same time. It’s like a walled garden of knowledge from the moment you walk through the gate and the traffic fades behind the screen of buildings. Overhead the Irish sky- always churning with clouds, was moving through its evening motions. It was a wonderful end to a long day.

On Sunday, before jumping the bus back to Cork we decided to take a break from the noise of the city and see the Dublin Zoo. Our roommates had spent last Sunday there after discovering that most things in Dublin are closed on Sundays. So we caught the bus to Phoenix Park- a beautiful walking park and lake on the outskirts of the city- nest to which sits the Zoo. Small in comparison to Baltimore or Washington, it was not at all crowded thanks to the cloudy February day. The Zoo is not much more than a large lake where the primates live on islands connected to the shelters by log bridges, primates being unwilling to go into the moving water and being therefore effectively enclosed. There were almost no barriers between the visitors and the animals, to the point where I was sure a child was going to climb over and tumble into the enclosure unwittingly. Luckily many of the traditional animals; lions, tigers and elephants, had more protective barriers in place. It was a lovely time, really.

Our final sight was an exhibit called “Bodies; the Exhibition" a smaller version of the Body Worlds 2 exhibit that was in Baltimore last year. It was one of those exhibits where actual human remains are on display, showing the way in which the many systems of the body work in tandem. It was a very interesting exhibit, but I couldn’t help but get the feeling that I was touring a novelty, something that will be extinct in 30 years except for the mention of it in history books of the “Bizarre and True!” What really got me was the way human muscle looks so much like animal meat, considering meat is muscle. If I wasn’t a vegetarian before, I would be now.

Afterwards we decided to try and catch the 4.00 bus back to Cork and spend our Sunday night in recovery before setting out for our next grand trip: Edinburgh.

The sky over Trinity College.