Today was our free day. Jolie, Kristen, Sara, Randall, Harlow, and I went on a tour to see Giant’s Causeway with several stops in between our final destination. It was breathtaking, and probably some of the best things I’ve gotten to see on this entire trip. After seeing a castle for about twenty minutes, we took a two hour trip or so to get to the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge. This was my favorite stop of the day by far. The views were gorgeous, and the bridge was only half as terrifying as I thought it might be when I saw pictures of it yesterday. We got to spend time looking around, too.

After a stop for lunch, we finally made it to the Giant’s Causeway. My second picture is from there. Luckily, the weather was really great all day. Our tour guide was charming (save for the fact that he played Coldplay’s entire discography on our way to the rope bridge), and he told us funny and interesting stories about the areas around us on our way to see these attractions.

I love Belfast. I love Dublin. I love these people. I said in my first post that I thought places are usually only as good as the people in it. I wonder now, on my last night, if I would have enjoyed this as much if I were with a different group. It’s hard to imagine seeing these things alone without great people to share it all with and still feeling as happy as I do now.

Maybe it was only this good because the people I shared it with were also this good. Maybe it would have been just amazing if I saw it alone. Either way, I’m glad I had these people, and I’m glad I saw these places.

Today was one of my favorite days of the entire trip so far. The botanical gardens were beautiful. I loved the rose garden some of us visited before the museum the most of all. The museum was also fascinating because it had so many different areas to explore. The art exhibits were by far my favorite. We also had a great lunch, then Jolie and I explored the botanical gardens more. We found a field where a group of men were playing some type of bowling game, and we sat to watch them for a while. They invited us to join and we learned some of the rules, then got to try it ourselves. (Jolie might have been better than me. Whatever.)

Then, we went on our black taxi tour to learn about the troubles and the tumultuous relationship between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. The tour was really fascinating because our guide was obviously Catholic, and he said he knew some of the people who got murdered or injured throughout the years without peace. I was thinking about how little people can be reduced to when they are defending a place, or an idea like religion. Seeing all of the names of people as young as five years old memorialized because they senselessly died at the hands of a stranger of a different religion puts things more into perspective. I realize it is more complicated than merely religion, but it is difficult to imagine what else could drive people to be so reckless. It is also interesting to think about the parallels in the United States, in terms of people being so defensive about Islam. I loved getting a chance to sign the peace wall as well. Most of the signatures were accompanied by a request for peace and equality, and I wonder how achievable it really is after I learn the brutal history of these places.

Yesterday was our last full day in Dublin. We came to Belfast early this morning and immediately started a new, full day here. I was honestly a little disappointed to be leaving Dublin yesterday, because I loved it so much. I loved most of the people I met (apart from the people participating in some sort of solstice last night that Sara and I encountered), I loved the food we ate, I loved University College Dublin’s beautiful, wide campus, I loved all of the time we shared together as a class. I wasn’t sure that things would be as much fun here in Belfast as they were there, mostly because the rooming situation was changing, and we weren’t having class every morning. I also didn’t know what to expect when I got here. I don’t know much about Belfast. I knew even less about it this morning.
Thankfully, we had an amazing first meal here, then a really great tour of Belfast City Hall. I was amazed by the inside of every room. The architecture was beautiful. The windows were amazing. My favorite room we visited was where the City Council meets. It was beautiful, filled with several large portraits of important political figures in the city’s history. I also thought it was incredible that the seats we were sitting on were designed by the same designer that carved pieces for the Titanic.
After the tour, most of us went on a (long) walk to see the Titanic Museum. It was closed, but we really wanted to see the life-sized outline of the actual ship behind the building. At the end of the ship outline was a beautiful view of the River Lagan. The walk there and back had incredible sights to see, mostly of the river. I’m really glad that I didn’t judge Belfast too soon, because I really love it here.

PS I would like compliments about my Titanic reference in the title, thanks.

A few days ago we were walking along the River Liffey to get to the Samuel Beckett Bridge, and we passed the famine statues there to commemorate the Great Famine in the 19th century from 1845 to 1849. The statues were designed by Dublin sculptor Rowan Gillespie. The memorial featured a man walking with his too-skinny child draped across his back, a woman with stick legs reaching out for help, and other figures of deathly thin people in motion.

Several of the tour guides have mentioned how poorly the starving Irish people were treated by the government — how so much food was exported when the people in this country were starving to death. The memorial really moved me. There was such a defeated, broken look on the face of the woman in the photo I took. I also loved that someone had placed a bright red flower in her hand. It is such a bright contrast to the darkness of the statues.

The website for the memorial says “No event in history has had a more profound effect on Ireland and the worldwide Irish Community than that of the Great Irish Famine.” More than a million people died and many moved away from Ireland. The population fell from over 20%. We’ve seen a lot of memorials on this trip, especially of figures from the Rising or famous writers. We were only at this one briefly, but it definitely made the biggest impact on me. I can’t imagine feeling like the place you call home and take so much pride in has abandoned you.

Today, I did my reading in place in the corner of Merrion Square Park at the statue of Oscar Wilde. I chose a passage from Dorian Gray, which ended with, “Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?”

I love this quote, but I also chose it because it applies so much to this class and this place. We talk (obviously) about Irish literature, both how important it is to Irish history and how deeply ingrained it is into their culture. Words/literature are ways to attempt to control narrative in history. It is a way to make history tangible. As literature students, words are the way we make sense of the world around us. Words were how Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, and Yeats made sense of their life and the life of people around them. Words were their and our means of giving form to the seemingly formless.

I was also thinking about the Irish wanting to preserve their own language, and even the choice to make Irish the first language on road signs and maps is so deliberate and important to them. They are all just words, strung together beautifully in a novel about the history of a country or printed on a sign that has directions in English second. But they matter. There is nothing as “real as words.”

My photo is my reflection in the pillars in front of the Oscar Wilde statue today. The Wilde quotes on the pillars are copied from the personal handwriting of famous Irish people.

A group of kids probably around twelve were jumping off of a tower on a ship docked at the Liffy. They were very obviously not supposed to be there, cheering each other on to jump off of each level of the tower. We all sat and watched them for a bit, wondering what they were even doing there and where their parents were. But they were seemingly only with each other, and they looked like they were having the time of their lives. They even scaled the side of a restaurant by the river and got onto the roof before running and making the jump off of it, too.

When we’re doing tours and riding the bus through the city, sometimes it’s easy to forget that I’m in someone’s home and not just a place here for me to look at. I’m walking the streets where kids go to school. I’m crossing bridges they jump off of in the summer for fun. I’m drinking in pubs families have owned and loved for generations. I loved seeing these kids all run around in their wetsuits, jumping off of any elevated surface close enough to the water that they could find, screaming and laughing with each other. I captured this photo of two of the boys walking with their arms around one another to another bridge to jump from. They were smiling and laughing, and they looked so happy to be there. Experiences like this are such valuable ways to see the city beyond history or buildings. It seemed so authentic, like we were catching a glimpse of something exclusive.

I was also really excited about visiting Kilmainham Gaol today, especially after learning more about it and seeing it in films that I’m familiar with. I am a huge fan of The Italian Job (the original version, not the Mark Wahlberg version), so it was incredible to see where parts of it were filmed. The part of the prison with the stairs was beautiful, and I took a lot of great pictures there.

After the tour of Killmainham Gaol and a bus ride back, Alex and I went to the candlelit vigil that the University College Dublin LGBT Society was having by the lake for the victims and families of the Orlando shooting that happened yesterday. Most of the people in attendance were Irish, and several of them spoke about tolerance and how important it is for allies to stand with the LGBT community, particularly American LGBT members, right now and always. Then, a young man from America who had just gotten his Irish citizenship spoke. He got emotional and felt shameful about the situation, and it really struck me when he said, “I am mostly upset because I know that we will be having this same conversation again.”

It made me think about political and social progress. We’ve mentioned several times in class how history isn’t really that far in the past, mostly in terms of the uprising and events like Bloody Sunday. The Obergefell v. Hodges ruling wasn’t that long ago. Stonewall wasn’t that long ago. People like to talk about these things as if they are so far removed from relevance today — as if people aren’t dying every day from heinous hate crimes like the one that happened in Orlando. It is hard not to think about progress as an illusion sometimes.

I was just amazed, but not really surprised, how passionate the students all were about what happened, and what they could do to help change it. I was glad I got to be a part of it, but so deeply unhappy about the horrific circumstances it was under.

Today, during our exploration of the Hugh Lane Gallery, I found several pieces of art that stood out to me and made me genuinely excited. The first of which was the Francis Bacon Art Studio exhibit. I watched part of the film playing in the gallery, and found it interesting enough, but what I loved the most was the quotes on the wall from Francis Bacon about the art studio the gallery had imported all the way from London to Dublin. As I observed the actual studio through the glass, I heard a woman scoff and comment about how messy and disgusting it was. There was another quote from Bacon about how he had tried fancy studios and was never able to create the same way that he could in the “messy” studio that we all saw today. The quote pictured reminded me of one of our discussions about place, and how each of our perspectives are so unique. We don’t see the same things, no matter whether or not we’re looking at the same things.

I also enjoyed a painting of Lady Heath by Sir John Lavery. It was called “An Irish Pilot” and done in 1928. I didn’t know anything about Lady Heath prior to this, but I learned that she was the first person (male or female) to fly a small open-cockpit plane solo from Cape Town to London. She also helped bring women’s track and field to the Olympics. She accomplished so much in her life. The painting was part of a series from Lavery titled “Women’s Work,” and what a woman to include.

Today was all about James Joyce. We started by discussing parts of Dubliners in our class meeting this morning, then went straight to a walking tour to see important places both from his personal life and for the characters in his works. Before the tour started, we got to walk around the James Joyce Centre. After walking through the halls and seeing several photos and fun facts about Joyce and his work, I went outside to see the mural and door knocker from Number 7 Eccles Street. The mural was by far my favorite thing I saw all day. It was filled with paintings and quotes from Ulysses with all different colors and styles of art. I took a ton of pictures of individual quotes. I spent probably fifteen minutes trying to see every square inch of it because I thought it was so incredible.

After the tour, we went to Ireland’s Smallest Pub, where I met a lady named Edith from the US. She told me she was a speech therapist, and had been so overwhelmed by the year she just had that she up and bought tickets to London. She spent some time there, is here in Dublin now, then is planning on going to Barcelona. She was sitting at the bar alone and was having the time of her life talking to people and laughing. I had so much fun laughing with her. One of my favorite parts of this trip is all of the people I get to meet. I never know who I am going to sit next to or where they’ll be from.