This is our transition day, the limbo day between, well, being in Ireland and going home. So we’ve taken it fairly easy and not pushed ourselves. I had read of a shopping center near Stephen’s Green that we hadn’t yet visited, so we walked there mid-morning, another pleasant sunny September morning. I enjoyed passing a row of brightly painted doors in Georgian townhouses that we’d passed before, and seeing them once again in the morning sunlight, bright yellows, reds, blues, pinks, greens beaming in the light.
We also passed the Irish government buildings on Merrion Street, with their attractive black ironwork fences featuring shamrocks, and amusing topiaries on the lawn inside the fence. I took a number of photos of these sights.
When we finally got to the shopping center, it was quite a disappointment — lots of tourist tat, overpriced “authentic Irish gifts” shops, American chains (including knock-offs with clever names like T.K. Maxx), and so on. The shopping center itself, a large, vaulted, enclosed space with filigree ironwork around and across its three balconies and skylights, was very nice to see. We took the escalators up to the top stories, walked around all three floors, then when we’d gotten back down to floor two, we found no escalator to take us down, so hoofing the stairs was the only option.
It felt good to be back outside in the fresh morning air, though by the time we’d made our rounds inside, something, either the glinting of sunlight on glass or my fatigue after the longish walk or a combination of both, brought on one of my retinal migraines, so I suggested that we find a coffee shop and sit and have some coffee and let the episode pass. They’re not painful, but disorienting, due to the flashing lights that inhabit the eye while it’s all transpiring.
We found a place called Insomnia nearby, evidently a Dublin chain, and had a very good caffè latte with an almond croissant, and then walked across the street to Stephen’s Green and walked through the park in the direction of the hotel. The walk was enjoyable, with the canopy of green trees arching over the walkways — and I say green, though leaves are starting to turn, and the walkway we took through the park was strewn with yellow leaves the trees had dropped.
Beside the walkway at a small distance was a pond or tiny lake with waterfowl including seagulls. When we entered the park, a gull was perched amusingly right on top of a memorial monument to Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, a big block of granite with carvings. As we exited the park at the Merrion Street exit (or a Merrion Street exit), there was a memorial to the Famine by Edward Delaney that I found more moving than I would have anticipated.
Maybe part of the pathos is the juxtaposition of a figures showing a starving family with one of their sheep starving with them right at the entrance-exit to a beautiful green space, the largest park in Dublin: the green island of Ireland encapsulated in a park, with a reminder that in that green and fertile space that is Ireland, people died of hunger in huge numbers at a time when Ireland was exporting food its own starving people needed, the food going to England in the draconian iron trap capitalism imposes on all of us.
Somehow, too, it was pathetic seeing the starving sheep with its starving family, a reminder that the Famine brought suffering not only to human beings but to other living beings including farm animals. As soon as one passes the Famine memorial and heads out of the park to Merrion Street, there’s a large bronze statue in memory of Theobald Wolfe Tone, perhaps deliberately placed near the Famine memorial to remind visitors that the Famine was human-constructed and not an “act of God”: it was very much a political matter that demanded a political solution which finally arrived in the form of Ireland’s independence.
Then it was back to the hotel for a long rest and to pack. Steve’s packing right this minute, in fact. We did stop at a Spar grocery store and deli on the way back and bought a chicken panini to share in the room for lunch. It was horrible. This last evening in Ireland, we may try our luck at buying a pizza. A pizza place with good reviews is directly across the street from the hotel and Steve has offered to walk over in a bit and buy a pizza to bring back to the room. He’s bought glasses of Guiness from the bar several days here, so I think he may well also bring some beer up for us to enjoy with the pizza.
Then it’s adieu to The Mont and beautiful Dublin and green, green Ireland tomorrow, as we take a taxi to the airport at 8 A.M. and wend our way home — we hope.
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