The Black Lung is Carrying the Banner, Part 2: Visiting a pen pal in a foreign country fulfils at least one big childhood dream (still need to learn to play the harp and go to the moon, but it's a start)

Tuesday morning was a nice, relaxing sleeping in morning. We had an activity planned, but not until 11:30, so we could be pretty chill. We slept in and had a nice, leisurely breakfast at a cafe (overnight oats are yummy, and they make you feel like a hipster). It started raining a little bit during breakfast, but not enough to drive us inside. Then our activity of the morning was at the National Print Museum! This is the only thing we had planned that wasn't centrally located in Dublin, so it's a good thing the buses are so reliable. We also passed the Google Dublin campus, which was fun. Google is the librarian's secret weapon, after all.

I know I look like a dork, but it's because I'm eating overnight oats and protecting myself from rain. You try to maintain cuteness while doing that!

  

Google! Right there! On the street!

We showed up early for our tour, which was a good thing, because this museum was pretty randomly in a business complex, and it was tricky to find. We did find it eventually though, and it turns out it's attached to a great cafe, which will be important later. Since we had signed up for a tour ahead of time, a snack from the cafe was included, which was exciting. While we were waiting for the tour time, a couple of families came in and payed to join us, so it wasn't just the two of us doing the tour. They didn't get the treats though!

The tour took us from the invention of the printing press all the way through about the 1980s, when computer printing finally became practical enough to be the standard. Leah and I made many quiet Newsies jokes and sang many songs from the soundtrack for the rest of our trip. The museum has a replica of the Gutenberg press and originals of many other types of printing presses. We learned where upper case and lower case comes from (the capital letters were stored in the upper drawer, small letters in the lower drawers). We got to practice hand-setting type, inking up the roller, and then making our own wanted poster to take home! I'm not sure of the inflation rate, but I think we are pretty expensive! We also learned about later versions of printing presses, including one that would pour molten metal into molds as you typed which would form lines of type without you having to hand set it. That was pretty neat. After the paper or whatever was printed, the metal would all be melted down and reused. We learned a lot about apprenticeships too. They were multi year, and you had to take a big test at the end. If you made too many mistakes, you were kicked out, and since it was often a family business, you might be kicked out of the family! And then have no job skills! It was pretty harsh. It was also a men and boys only job for hundreds of years. When women were finally admitted was when the process became more mechanical and the machines were easier for people with smaller hands to operate. They would also hire little girls to basically unjam the machines with their little baby hands. Good news for them though, if they survived to adulthood with all of their fingers, they had a job waiting for them in print!

 

Working on my handsetting.

It's always nice to be wanted.

This printing press was from America! Notice the eagle counterweight on top, which makes it super easy to use, even for a noodle-arm like me.

 

This one is not meant for the noodles. I had to push with basically my whole body weight to get it to move.

 

Here's where my memory fails me somewhat-I know our guide told us about why printing was such a big deal in Ireland. But I can't really remember why! I think it was something about laws or tax rules or some such that made people send things to Ireland to be printed that would be too expensive or hard to get done elsewhere. But I'm not totally sure. Whatever the reason, they had a robust industry. There was also a giant tapestry that we somehow failed to get a picture of that celebrated a great victory for the printing union (Newsies?? Is that you again?). Their victory-being able to take a lunch break in the middle of their 14 hour work day! Still no weekends or holidays, but at least they got lunch. I feel like a real goober every time I complain about my job now. One of the coolest things they have is an original copy of the Proclamation of 1916, which is like their Declaration of Independence. Only about 30 original copies remain in the world.

This is one of the final proclamations printed. The British government had actually confiscated a bunch of typeset from Irish printing presses at this time, so the typesetters really had to improvise, using the wrong letters sometimes, or making the right ones by using wax. Since this is one of the final ones, there are more flaws than in earlier versions, because the wax was breaking down.

 

After the tour we got to go to the cafe for a dessert and a drink. We also decided to order lunch, because everything looked good and was cheap. This may have been the most delicious food I ate on the whole vacation. It was amazing! It was soup and a sandwich, which are already two of my favs, and these were exceptional. And the dessert we both chose was Brazilian carrot cake, and it's so good. It doesn't have the spices we associate with carrot cake here, and the frosting is chocolate. I want to try to make it. So tasty. I would go back to that cafe all the time if it was in Baltimore. Update-I tried to make it, and it was not as good, but I think I learned a lot from my mistakes!

While we were eating lunch, it started to rain crazy hard. And right after I said we had good weather for our trip, too. I lied a bit. This was a hard rain! But after it subsided, we headed out into Dublin again. We went past Oscar Wilde's house and the weird statue of him in the park across the street. Then we got onto the Hop-on, Hop-off bus. This is a bus that drives around to various important landmarks with the driver giving background and fun facts. You can then hop-off and see some stuff, then hop back on another bus. You can see the whole city this way, basically. We had wanted to sit on the upper deck of the bus, in the open air part, but it kept raining and ruining our plans. We did sit up top though! At some point during this trip, we got off and went into the National Library to see an exhibit about Irish involvement in WWI. This was obviously very controversial because it was about the same time as the Proclamation and revolution which was brutally put down. So a lot of people were not happy about having to fight in a war for the British, who were always so mean to them. It was very interesting, and I have a well documented interest in the history of WWI, so I enjoyed it.

 

 Listen to that rain! It was intense.

I'm not sure what Oscar Wilde is doing there behind me, but his jacket is great.

 

That might not be totally right-I can't remember us getting off the bus or back on the bus! But we definitely went there at some point. We also ended up riding the hop-on, hop-off all the way to the end of the line. A lot of the things that we passed seemed interesting, but many of them were out in the rain, which we were trying to avoid, and some of them cost $$ and advance tickets. But we still learned and had fun. True fact-more people got off the bus at the Guinness Storehouse than anywhere else, except when they made us all get off at the end. When we got to the end, we wandered around near the River Liffey for a while and then decided to go to the Leprechaun Museum!

The Leprechaun Museum is misnamed in basically every way. It's not really a museum, and it's totally not about leprechauns. It would be way more accurate to say that it's a folktale storytelling experience (which is more up my alley anyway) that is named The Leprechaun Museum as a way to draw in tourists. According to our guide, the modern idea of leprechauns stems from American pop culture, like Darby O'Gill and the Little People and Lucky Charms. Traditional leprechauns actually wore red and were not very popular or important in Irish folklore. But tourist dollars are very important, so the museum has embraced the idea of the leprechaun at least a little bit. The tour starts in a room that is actually museum like-stories, books, pop culture stuff, all related to Irish folklore and leprechauns. Then we went through to some pretty fun rooms that were decorated to look like forests and old wells and stuff like that, and in each room, our guide told us a story. Since only adults were in our group, he told a few that were extremely grim. He was an excellent storyteller. The one bummer thing about the Leprechaun Museum is that the tour is very short, only about 50 minutes. I could have listened to him for hours.

 This giant book actually hides the entrance to the bathrooms (called toilets in Ireland)

 

I myself am a wee leprechaun!

Once we left the Leprechaun Museum, we ended up going home. I was feeling kind of gross because of general travel stuff, and Leah was still sick, so we bought some chips (crisps) at a corner store and hung out in our room for the rest of the evening. I got to talk to my mom and dad over Facebook Messenger for her birthday, which was neat. I even held my phone out the window so they could see how close we were to St. Patrick's Cathedral. And then we went to bed early because we had an early morning the next day.

The next morning, we were putting to the test the other thing I learned about Dublin the first time around-going to see the Book of Kells when there are large crowds is a terrible idea! We bought advance tickets for the first time slot at 8:30 in the morning. And friends, I am here to tell you that this is the way to go! There were way fewer people than when I went with my friend Niki, and no one even tried to push me. It was great. I recommend it highly if you are going to go, and you should. Plus, the long library at Trinity College is very neat.

Trinity College early in the morning.

 

This is my dream library. I'm going to need a very big house. 

 

Look, we were both there! 

 

After we left the long library and looked at stuff we weren't going to buy for way too long in the gift shop, we finally got to meet my pen pal!!! The history of our print friendship has been chronicled on Forever Young Adult, the website that brought us together. You should read it! Meredith (yes, we are both Merediths) moved to Ireland several years ago from Boston to pursue an advanced degree in Media studies, which frankly sounds super fun. Someone pay me to watch TV please! Meredith, if you're reading this, I know that your job is hard and you don't get paid to watch TV any more than I get paid to read books. She is almost done and will hopefully get to stay in Ireland even once she's not technically a student anymore. Fingers crossed!

Meredith lives about an hour by train away from Dublin, so she very kindly rode in to meet us. We were both a little bit nervous about not recognizing each other, but we got it figured out almost immediately. We went to the Chester Beatty Library (one of her suggestions of awesome things to see while in Dublin). And since she was with us, we didn't need to GPS everywhere! She knew where things were! This was very impressive to me. After all, it's about an hour by train to Washington DC, and I still have to look at maps when I go there.  Fun facts about Chester Beatty-he was a super rich American mining magnate! He was also an avid collector, even since he was a kid, and he actually collected stuff that was worth money. Like stamps and minerals when he was younger, and all the stuff in his library when he was older. Makes my collection of toy gorillas seem kind of lame. But they're not. They're awesome.

Anyhow, Chester Beatty relocated to London after his first wife died, and then to Dublin when he was in his 70s because he thought Britain was being lame. He and his second wife had travelled the world and collected huge amounts of religious artifacts that he left to the Irish people when he died because he just loved Ireland so much. It's a great museum. The sheer range of old books, manuscripts, papyri, and works of art is incredible. If you go to Dublin, I recommend it! It's also on the grounds of the Dublin Castle, which we did not go to, but it was fun to look at it.

Dublin Castle! And me.

The Merediths, together at last!

 

After the museum, we went to lunch at Boxty, a restaurant that celebrates the delicious potato in boxty form (a potato pancake). Meredith said she goes there with visitors to Ireland a lot because it's delicious, and this was true. What I wouldn't give for some boxty fries right this second. And then it was time to say goodbye. Only about 4 hours together after 8 years of pen pal friendship, but those were 4 wonderful hours. Meredith walked with us back to our Airbnb so we could get our bags, then she had to go catch her train home and we had to go get our rental car. Take it from me though, if you can get a pen pal, then that pen pal moves to Ireland, you should totally hang out with them, even if only for a few hours. Worth it!

Waiting for the bus in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral. Soon, we will be car drivers.

 

Next time, on The Black Lung: the Black Lung starts her tour of Irish castles, and it's a lot.

The Black Lung Tries Again, Part 1: I know how this works now, Dublin, you can't scare me!

As you will recall if you are a regular reader of the Black Lung (as regular as you can be when I update every couple of years. Like a great novelist, perhaps. I'm not lazy, I'm busy working on my next brilliant work), you will know that 6 years ago, I went on a trip to the UK and Ireland with my wonderful friend Niki. You may also recall that the one place we didn't have a great time was Dublin. It was stressful and no fun. Driving was a nightmare, even though we had gotten pretty OK at driving on the left, someone full on pushed me when we tried to see the Book of Kells (someone should have reminded her that we were all trying to see a BIBLE, so maybe she should be nicer. That person wasn't going to be me though, because I pushed her back. Sorry, Bible!), and we missed our ferry. Basically very stressful.

But I liked the rest of Ireland pretty well, so when my friend Leah asked if I wanted to meet her there for a vacation, I was like, "Yes, please! I shall get time off work!" Background-Leah is my friend who lives in New Zealand, which is very far away from Ireland! Like more than 24 hours on a plane plus layovers long. So she obviously didn't want to take just a short trip. Before I got there, she spent about a week with another friend, and then I planned to meet her in Dublin so we could spend almost two weeks touring the country together.

The start of my journey was pretty stressful, not because anything went wrong, but because things have gone really wrong pretty much every time I've flown internationally before. I left Baltimore on Sunday evening, with the agenda being fly to JFK and then after a 3 hour layover, be on my way to Dublin. I was already pretty nervous about such a short layover because of the last time I went to Europe via JFK (I hope to see you someday, Venice! Unless you sink into the sea first!), but then a flight change meant that the layover would only be 1.5 hours! I did not want to miss my first day in Dublin! Only partially because we had prepaid for an activity. I was also feeling nervous because my back was doing that thing it does sometimes, where it could go out with one wrong move. Not the best way to feel when you're going to have to sleep sitting up.

On the advice of my mom, I got a blessing at church on Sunday morning, and I also prayed so much that my flight wouldn't be late and that my back would not start spasming. And you know what? It went great! My flight was totally fine (the only bummer was that my niece Abby and her husband Forrest were also in JFK that night, waiting to go through customs on their way back from Norway. We were so close, but we didn't get to see each other. 😭 Thankfully, they came out to Baltimore about 3 weeks after this, so I got to see them then). My back hurt, but in the normal way that my back always hurts, not in the terrible way that it sometimes does. And I actually kind of slept on the plane, while also watching the movie Isn't It Romantic? which was a perfect plane movie.

My plane got to Dublin at about 10 in the morning. Leah had been in the city for a couple of days already and had figured out how to get around on the bus. It is very handy to travel with someone who does mobility for a living! So she met me at the airport with my giant suitcase. That's my first bit of advice for Irish travel. If you're going to be in Dublin, don't drive! The public transportation is great (I think every bus we saw was double-decker, which is amazing), and the roads are terrible and confusing. Immediately the stress level in Dublin was lower because we didn't have a car. The one stress that it added was that we needed a place to keep our bags until we could check into our Airbnb, but luckily, we discover Bagbnb! Basically, you book online, then go to a specific store (ours seemed to be some kind of internet cafe?), and they'll hold your bag for the day for like 5 euros. It's a great idea, and whoever thought of it deserves all the money. I would have had zero fun while wheeling around my giant, slightly broken but still OK enough to not buy a new one, suitcase all day.

After that, we walked around Dublin for a bit. We saw the statue of Molly Malone, who is the subject of the song Molly Malone, and almost certainly not a real person. In the song, she's a fishmonger, but in local lore, she may have also been a prostitute? Which is probably why her statue is so busty. Her bosom is also pretty shiny from people rubbing it. We overheard a tour guide saying that some people say it's good luck to rub her chest, but he thinks those people are just pervs. Seems legit. We also stopped and got some lunch at the greatest place, called Queen of Tarts. Seriously, if you go to Dublin, you must eat there.We went twice in one day! There are many good vegetarian options, which is not always the case on vacation.

 

This seems like an impractical outfit for a fishmonger. One wrong move, Molly Malone!

Then it was time to do some more sightseeing! We went to Christ Church Cathedral, hoping to get on the tour, but it was already full, so we got tickets for the next tour and went across the street to Dublinia, which is a Viking museum. I know that it sounds cool, but it actually was probably the least fun thing we saw. I wouldn't really recommend it. But then we went across the bridge between Dublinia and the Cathedral (the two buildings are actually connected. I feel like Dublinia used to be part of the church, but now it's not). Anywho, Christ Church Cathedral is really neat. It's actually the oldest cathedral in Dublin (more than a century older than St. Patrick's Cathedral). The cathedral was originally built around 1028, although the building has obviously changed a lot since then. Things that we learned about on our tour-the tomb of Strongbow is there! He's one of the main leaders of/reasons for the Norman invasion of Ireland, which as we all know led to centuries of Irish oppression by the English. So thanks a lot, Strongbow. It also contains the heart of St. Laurence O'Toole, who is the patron saint of Dublin and was the archbishop of Dublin at the time of the Norman invasion. Fun fact-the heart was stolen in 2012 but was recovered six years later in Phoenix Park, which is a ginormous park in the city. Apparently, it wasn't super secure before, but now that they have it back, they have it on lock-down. Also, in the 1500s, part of the ceiling collapsed, and you  can see that the columns still lean noticeably. It would make me pretty uneasy if I hung out there for extended periods of time.

 

In front of Christ Church Cathedral. It was a beautiful day. We actually had great weather pretty much our whole trip.

 

Our tour guide, who had a cool Irish name I couldn't begin to spell with the heart of St. Laurence O'Toole. It's in that heart-shaped iron box!

 

This is not a crooked picture. It's a crooked building! 

 

After touring the main floor of the cathedral, we got to go up to the bell tower! The first question our guide asked was, "Is anyone afraid of heights?" then "Is anyone claustrophobic?" And of course I raised my hand for both, so he was basically like, "Eh, do your best." And we were off! Climbing very small, cramped spiral staircases! And it was scary, but spoiler for later in vacation, it got way worse at a different cathedral, so I was fine. After the first spiral, we were basically out on the roof, which was scary but also what nice views. Then up another insanely skinny and short spiral to the bell tower! It's not like what you imagine from Robin Hood the animated movie with the little church mice. You can't actually see the bells at all. You can just see all of the ropes for the bells. And you can pull them! That was super fun. When you pull on the rope, it pulls you up and kind of bounces you around. It looks like you're jumping, but you're not! The bell is doing all the work.

 

Our view over to Dublinia right before we went into the bell tower. See how high we are?

 

Each rope is for a different bell. You can unhook the one you want and get to ringing!

 

Slightly blurry action shot!

 

After the bell tower, we went down to the crypt, which is a lot more touristy than the rest of the church which is still an actual church. I'm pretty sure they don't use the crypt as an actual crypt anymore though. There are costumes from shows that have filmed there (like The Tudors and Reign, which is the one I was excited about. I loved Reign  so much). Also a gift shop, and a bunch of actual museum type stuff, like jewels and such. And the best, the mummified remains of a cat and a rat that were found in the old church organ! James Joyce even talked about them in Finnegan's Wake, which is still not the James Joyce book I had to read in school. What a slog that was.

There's that cat and rat again. I think of this every time I play the organ now.

Then it was time to eat some more desserts at Queen of Tarts, grab our bags, and head to our Airbnb. We had a great location-right down the street from St. Patrick's Cathedral, and pretty central to almost everything we wanted to see in the city. It was up a couple of flights of stairs, which was a bummer (I had that giant suitcase, you'll recall), but nice. We had to leave again immediately, which was sad because I wanted a shower so bad! I was still in my airplane outfit, and I just hope I didn't smell as gross as I felt. But it was not sad, because we were heading to our evening activity, making a silver ring with the help of actual jewelers! It's in the basement of a shop in Dublin, and we found it through Airbnb experiences. To start, everyone had to measure their finger, then the ladies cut us each a small strip of silver. We used our tools to bend the silver into mostly circular shapes, which was difficult. I was sitting next to an actual child, and I was slightly better at it than her, but only slightly. Mine was a U for way too long. After they became mostly circular, the ladies soldered them together for us (that part was too dangerous and/or hard for us to do ourselves). Then we got back to stretching and shaping our rings. I don't know the names of any of the tools, I'm not gonna lie. But it was lots of fun! We definitely had a wooden mallet and a metal hammer thing. And a mandrel (I googled the name), which looks kind of like a long skinny cone that you put the ring on to make it totally round and bigger. We had to file down the sharp edges from the soldering, and use the metal hammer to put designs in the metal. Leah and I both lost our rings during this process, as they flew off the mandrels. I found mine right away, but Leah's took about 10 minutes and pretty much everyone helping to find. We even had to move furniture. Good times. I ended up doing the pattern that's supposed to look kind of like tree bark for my ring. I think it turned out pretty good! I do wish I had made it a little bit bigger, but I think once it's winter and my hands are freezing, it will fit great. Apparently I like my rings kind of loose. The ladies then polished our rings for us (you could choose shiny or matte, and I chose shiny, because I am a crow.

Concentration face!

 

 Look, it's totally kind of a little bit circular!

Begone, jaggedy edges! I file you away!

 

I did it? I mean, I know I did it, but my face seems unsure. 

 

Then, it was finally time to go back to our Airbnb and I got to take my shower! That was a relief, let me tell you. And then it was time for bed, which was also a relief. Jet lag, man. Jet lag.

Next time, on The Black Lung: The Black Lung meets her pen pal!