Our Travelers' Diaries
Writers, Myths, and Legends - A Journey to Ireland
Submitted by Lois

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Thursday evening we participated in a literary pub crawl through the streets of Dublin, moving around the city in the same spirit as Stephen Dedalus, J. Joyce's alterego in his masterpiece book, Ulysses. We started with dinner at the Davy Byrnes pub (see the 2 pictures; the second one includes our bus driver, Michael). This pub is the site of L. Bloom's lunch in Chap. 8 of Ulysses. We ended our tour at The Duke, also mentioned incidentally along the way in Joyce's book. An actor joined us after dinner at the Duke and explained the references to Joyce. We then walked over to Trinity College where he told this story of Oscar Wilde (the actor took on his persona and told it in the first person)--I'm not: He needed money, so contracted to go and speak to groups in the USA about "Arts and Aesthetics." Somehow or another he ended up speaking to silver miners in Colorado!!! As you can imagine, they were less than interested...and certainly not polite. They lowered Oscar with them down into a silver mine with a bottle of whiskey. They planned to drink him into stupor and leave him there. They didn't know about the Irish and their whiskey. Oscar out-drank them and was the only one able to pull them up out of the mine! At this site, you will read a slightly different version of this lore:
http://www.literarytraveler.com/ireland/literarydublin.htm

Oscar Wilde did attend Trinity College and was invited to go to Oxford from there. Only the best and brightest were given this opportunity. He participated in the sport of boxing during his college days. After each stop, we all slipped into a pub for a drink. Bill and I had Irish coffee (yes, they make it over there!) The pubs have an upbeat and fun atmosphere, and are VERY crowded with locals, even at 8:30 or 9pm on a worknight. Michael explained that Dublin workers have staggered hours. This explains why there are always MANY people on the streets, walking, driving, and using the buses. We also made a stop where our actor took on the persona of Brendan Behan, who described himself as "a drinker with a writing problem." Unfortunately, he was also a diabetic, could not control his drinking, and so died at the young age of 41. This experience was a great way to learn about the writers, the city, and mix with locals in the pubs. Another link to pub crawls:
http://www.dublinpubcrawl.com/

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