(Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, Ireland)

Maybe, just maybe, the north side of Dublin wasn’t going to be as squalid as “The Commitments” made it out to be.  It certainly started out fine:  O’Connell Street is a very wide boulevard with fast food outlets and souvenir shops similar to those that you’d find in any other European capital.

My travel schedule and the Gaelic football and hurling schedules seemed to be working at cross-purposes, so I didn’t make it to a live match.  To compensate, I ventured deep (by tourist standards) into the north end of Dublin to visit the Gaelic Athletic Association Museum.  The Museum is located at Croke Park (a stadium with a capacity of 82,300 spectators that is devoted to these uniquely Irish sports – see top photo), so I would at least get to see the premier Irish sporting venue.  Even better, the Museum advertised an extensive interactive section that would allow me to try these sports for myself!

Ireland is enthusiastic about its language, music and sports.  Irish schoolchildren are presented with ample opportunities to explore each of these elements of their culture…which, in this case, meant that I had to dodge rampaging groups of schoolchildren at the Museum.  Fortunately for me, they didn’t linger too long in any one place.  While they were commandeering the interactive area, I was learning how integral these Irish sports were to the national identity…and how they also provided an excellent “cover” for discussions of independence when Ireland was still completely controlled by the U.K.

While I carefully studied the history and the artefacts in the Museum, deep inside I really wanted to kick a Gaelic football and to “hurl” something,   Finally, after much dodging, I had the interactive hurling and football zones to myself.  First up was Gaelic football and an accuracy test.

A Gaelic football is like a soccer ball that has been crossbred with a volleyball.  My soccer teammates will be amused to hear that I had some trouble with the accuracy test.  Kicking the ball from my hands (as a soccer goalkeeper would do) turns out to be much harder than kicking the ball from the ground, at least as far as accuracy is concerned.  We’ll skip my specific results.

Suitably humbled, I moved on to hurling.  Hurling is like a cross between lacrosse and field hockey:  the stick is similar to field hockey but the ball is in the air a lot more and players must wear helmets and cages due to the wildly swinging sticks and rocketing shots.  The ball looks like a stitched leather tennis ball that doesn’t keep its shape very well.

Luckily for me, the hurling test was strictly for speed:  a radar gun had been set up to measure the velocity of your “hurl”.  I am sure that my technique was terrible; I acquired callouses after only a few swings.  However, my golf/baseball/ice hockey-influenced technique yielded some decent results…including a 94 km/h effort that I photographed for posterity (not that I’m competitive or anything).  Sadly, I don’t think a hurling career is in the works for me:  the short stick would undoubtedly leave me with serious back problems if I were to devote any time to the sport.

After leaving the museum, I stopped by the stadium’s sport shop and picked up a neat souvenir:  a DVD of the national Gaelic Football championship match.  My initial impressions:  these guys are crazy!  They must get concussions every other game.  Never mind my lack of kicking accuracy; the intense collisions (like rugby, they don’t wear any padding of significance) would stop my career in very short order.

I spent more time at the GAA Museum than I had expected; I really enjoyed the opportunity to do something a little more strenuous that walking or cycling.  While I took a quick look at some other North Dublin attractions, I wanted to make sure that I made it back to the National Museum of Archaeology before it closed.  I did, and now I can say I have seen the ancient bog bodies as well as the Cong Cross and the Tara Brooch.  The bog bodies were kind of creepy: these are 2000-year-old bodies that were preserved (more or less) in bogs until their discovery in recent years.   They are not for the squeamish!

I had a nice final dinner in a Dun Laoghaire Chinese restaurant.   I went for an appetizer of “Salt Chilli Crispy Shredded Chicken” and a main course of Lemon Chicken.  As in Cashel, the Lemon Chicken was almost Schnitzelesque in its quality.  This time, however, I have a photo to prove it.

While still very much present, my cold didn’t really inhibit my final day in Dublin.   I’m happy with what I accomplished and at the same time am also ready to return to Canada.  My next post will reflect on my Irish trip and also drop some hints about my exciting next destination!