Day Seventy-Four - 23/11/2012 - Dublin

     Today was off to a less than brilliant start.  After missing a 0300 bus to Dublin by about twenty seconds, we finally caught the next one, and made it to the city just in time to watch the sun rise.  From here it was another bus ride to the Belgian embassy for Meng's visa application.  Due to some very confusing (and partially mistranslated) instructions, Meng was denied her visa application and told to reapply in the country in which she was planning to stay the longest, which was Germany.  Of course, an appointment had to be made for the German embassy, which would take at least a week, and then it was doubtful if the visa would have time to approved at all.  Needless to say, this made for a rather dampened morning.
     On the bus back to Trinity College in the city centre, I ringed Butler's Chocolate as they give tours of the chocolate making facility, but alas, they had filled every spot for tours that day.  Determined not to let a sunny (but ironically still freezing) day go to waste, I pulled my last trick out of my sleeve: the Cake Cafe.
     Guided only by a rudimentary map I had downloaded from the internet and Meng's partially active location services, and the rather helpful signage in the city of Dublin, we departed the bus at what appeared to be St. Stephen's Green.  Keeping with the flavour of the day, this park proved to be Merrion Park, just north of St. Stephen's Green.  We wandered the streets, making it to the aforementioned green, and taking a nice morning stroll through it's swan-filled sidewalks.  From St. Stephen's, we walked down Harcourt street, lined with houses and shops, and then took a side alley named Camden Place to cut across to Pleasants Place, where the cafe was located.  Pleasants Place did not live up to its name, and I was beginning to think this was a very bad decision.  Thankfully, I quickly located the sign for the cafe, which appeared to be broken, and walked up to what appeared to be an abandoned industrial park.
     With great relief, I walked through the gate to find myself in a tranquil tree-lined patio, hosting tables and chairs and the cafe's menu.  Meng and I elected to dine inside due to the temperature, and we got seated at a nice, but very cozy table in the small cafe.  We both tried different types of teas and cakes and made a lovely time of the rather bleak morning.  A bit of trivia about the Cake Cafe: their toilets run  on rainwater which they collect, which can lead to the (sometimes alarming) brown appearance of their pre-flushed toilets.  All in all the cafe was a paradise just off of a dingy Dublin alley.
     With plenty of light left to escort our passage back to Harcourt street, we walked in the general direction of Dublin castle.  As we passed Temple Bar, we passed a huge Dunnes, adorned with a larger-than-life poster of Carolyn Donnelly, a designer.  Both Meng and I saw a woman of remarkably similar appearance (and hair) enter the store, dwarfed by her hanging portrait, as we walked past.
     We finally made it to Dublin Castle, and explored the area surrounding it.  Sadly the estate rooms were closed to the public as there was a meeting of EU officials regarding the upcoming Presidency of Ireland within the European Union.  To compensate, they were offering free tours of the medieval undercroft, which I availed of.  There is an original wall from the Powder Tower under the standing castle today that is considered to have been built in 1100.  The fact that any part of the Powder Tower remains is impressive in itself, when you consider that it was the storehouse for gunpowder.  A few metres away and below the Powder Tower was a sealed arch that formed part of the medieval moat.  It was sealed during the time of plague, in order to keep people from trying to gain access to the castle through the moat's drains.
     The tour then exited the undercroft and brought us back to the surface, where we traversed the courtyard.  Famous writer Jonathan Swift was born behind the church in Dublin Castle, and later was evicted after he accidentally burned down his room by candlelight.  A statue of Justice stands watching over the large courtyard.  When it was put in place by the British, it had no blindfold, and it faced the castle.  In the words of one Dubliner, Justice favored the castle, and showed her arse to the nation.  During the Easter Rising, troops led by Countess Markievicz marched up to Dublin Castle only to be met with closed gates.  A British soldier fired upon the troops from above, killing one rebel and igniting the hostilities in Dublin.  After Dublin eventually came under control of the rebels, Michael Collins, another influential leader of the Easter Rising, noticed that Justice's scales tended to favor the right as they filled up with rainwater.  He remedied this by drilling small drainage holes in each scale.  The curator ended the tour by mentioning that Dublin Castle was the home of the Irish Crown Jewels, and to please keep an eye out for them.  They went missing in 1907 and nobody has seen them since.
     After the tour of the castle, Meng and I stopped at a rather dodgy pizza joint, but luckily did not get sick.  We met up with Kevin, a UC student studying at University College Dublin, who was generously allowing us to stay in his apartment with some other students from the UC system.  That night we went out with Kevin's UCD friends to an Hacienda Pub with a Spanish Flair.  The walk to the pub brought us through the streets of Dublin now decorated with wreaths and lights.  A couple of turns and sidestreets later we wound up at an inconspicuous door near the Leprechaun museum.  This pub looked very closed, but the fearless Norwegian leader of our group raised her hand confidently and knocked on the minuscule door.  We waited with bated breath in the cold dark street, until the sounds of a latch opening were heard.  This experience still stands as the strangest pub adventure of the entire trip.  We entered the cramped chamber which was decorated in some strange mixture between a homey country cottage and a Spanish restaurant.  Our group of maybe 15 students occupied three of the five tables in the place, and promptly ordered drinks.  The bar was outfitted with a gigantic TV that showed something that may have been a scene from Paranormal Activity.  A grainy, black and white image that appeared mostly static caused me much intrigue as I stood looking at it cockeyed.  It wasn't until Kevin came up and noticed the street sign that I realized it was live footage of a security camera that was filming the entrance to the establishment.  Chilling.
     We spent the rest of the night getting better acquainted with Kevin and his friends, who I later learned were all from the International Club, which explained the diversity.  Despite the bitter cold, Dublin was proving to be a hospitable place.