Catching up, checking in

Let’s see… so far, I have talked about….

Flying over here

The National Botanic Garden

The Glasnevin Cemetery

The Dublin Zoo

Dublin Castle and the chapel there

Christ Church Cathedral

and on my list, with albums over on Google Photos, but not blogged about yet, are….

Walking around Dublin (photo album)

The parks in Dublin (photo album)

The train from Dublin to Wexford (photo album)

Hawk and Jeanne’s house (photo album)

Walking around Wexford (photo album)

The Wexford Waterfowl Reserve (photo album)

Tintern Abbey (photo album)

….. at this rate, I’ll finish blogging about my trip to Ireland about the time I leave for my trip to Scotland in late July, haha.

I’m feeling less flummoxed, less like a big clumsy American ox who walks into doors and doesn’t know how to turn the electricity on, here at Hawk and Jeanne’s, than I did alone in Dublin. Here are some things I’ve mentioned over on Facebook but want to share here, also, and expound upon a little.

Notes while I’m sitting here an hour plus early for my train to Wexford (which sounds like, with line work, might actually be a bus to a place called Greystones and then a transfer to a train the rest of the way)…..

Hawk was right. A granny will throw down at any moment for any reason. I’ve seen grannies run tall men off the sidewalk because fucked if they were getting out of the way with their little carts of groceries. I’ve seen a granny argue over the price of Depends with the store clerk who really had this look on her face like “Ma’am, this is a Wendy’s….” (it was a Tesco Express but you get the idea). I just saw a granny almost break the window of the information booth at the train station, hitting it with her cane. Another granny was standing behind her, yelling at the empty window. Her husband was just standing there, quietly bemused.

***

The last thing you should do when swallowing your pills in the morning is think about the woman who stumbled out of the pub as you were walking by and neatly projectile vomited into the corner of the pub entrance. The two men walking in front of me at the time, I heard them say something like “oh, that’s a grand one” and I didn’t know what they were talking about for like two seconds. It was the woman throwing up, which really did make me kind of giggle a little at them sarcastically grading her barf, haha.

***

It took me an embarrassingly long time (almost a day) to realize this just means “exit” and not “emergency exit, fucking run, you fool!” I MEAN COME ON. Does that not look like you’re supposed to use that door to run out of as quickly as possible???

***

Edited to add:

Most instructional signs are primarily pictures. No words. I’m not good with just pictures, no words. Pictures are too open to interpretation (see little man running out the door comment). I need words.

When there are signs, they’re usually not facing the right way. I’ve walked past plenty of things I thought were just columns only to not find what I’m looking for, come back, walk around the column, and then helpfully facing the wall is the sign that tells me where to go.

***

I had to keep Google Maps running on my phone, with my phone in my hand, most of the day yesterday while I was walking. It would tell me “turn on this name street” but fucked if I could ever find a street sign. I spent about a third of the time I was walking, walking halfway down the wrong block until the map updated the little moving arrow.

My god. I should maybe not be allowed to travel alone. I told y’all I wasn’t a grown-up!

(I discovered, my last day in Dublin as I was leaving and was on the bus to go to the second train station – and I will get to that story – that the street signs are ON THE BUILDINGS. Where I, a short person, can not see them because they are so high…. not that I would have thought about looking on the side of a building for a street sign anyway…)

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A few more notes from the Department of, I Don’t Know, Random Shit I Wasn’t Prepared For

I already mentioned the lack of words on signs, and the lack of signs facing the right direction to see them when you need them instead of after you need them…

Did I mention the sign on the bathroom at the Dublin Zoo that said “entrance only” above the door, but then in the bathroom, the door that implied “exit” was locked? That wasn’t stressful at all, for someone who really wants to follow the rules in a different country but is thwarted and instead feels very stupid walking out the door that says it’s only an entrance. 🙄

I have since been told by Hawk, things in passing, like “see that ‘road flooded’ sign? The road hasn’t been flooded in three years. It’s just that nobody has taken the sign down” and “see that sign that says ‘lights out over bridge’? The lights haven’t been out for a couple of years, it’s just that nobody has taken the sign down.” … so I’m guessing, maybe, that it was really just that nobody had taken down the “entrance only” sign over the restrooms….? And that’s why the exit door was locked? I dunno. I’m just trying not to fall on my face!

***

I’ve only been in a couple of cafes, but none of them have been marked with “line starts here” or “order here” or any sort of sense of how you do what in what order. I have spent a LOT of time standing back and watching how people do things – where they place orders, what direction they go down the line in, how they get tickets from the pre-bought ticket machines… I feel like I’m observing and copying everything, all while trying not to do it wrong. Monkey see, monkey do, and hopefully monkey not do too badly.

Although Hawk keeps telling me that the Irish way of seeing someone do something wrong is to just say ‘ah, yer grand’ but I am SO USED to America where god forbid you do something even slightly wrong and you’ll get no end of shit for it.

***

Light switches in the States. Up is on, and down is off. Over here, it’s kind of a crap shoot, but generally when the lightswitch is off, the …. you know what? Let me take a picture.

The first picture is a lightswitch with two switches, both in the OFF position.

The third picture is a lightswitch with one switch, in the ON position.

The second picture there is a wall plug, and you can’t just plug something in and have it work. You also have to click the switch from OFF to ON. Otherwise you will come back to your power converter and wonder why your phone isn’t charging. 🙄 Figured that one out in the B&B, haha. Hah?

***

Some doors, like exterior front/back doors, you can’t just shut. You shut them, and then you have to lift the handle (as if you were opening it again, only up instead of down) and that’s what latches it. It doesn’t LOCK it, for that you need a key like any other door. But it clicks the little latch that keeps the door shut, so you don’t walk away and the door slowly swings open as if it was haunted.

***

Now, I know you can’t know EVERYTHING about a place before you travel there. And I know that experiences while traveling is what makes the travel so enriching. But some of these things are making me feel like a human who has maybe never left her house in her whole life. I can see why people think tourists are so dumb. It’s not like everything is incredibly different and I’m on another planet learning new things ever day. It’s worse. It’s like I’m just a step sideways in reality and things are just a small different that makes me doubt that I know how to do anything.

Honestly if I couldn’t walk up a staircase right now I wouldn’t be surprised.

I am having fun, don’t get me wrong! But you just … you never know what you don’t know until you’re in it. Why did so many of the travel groups I’m in spend time arguing about washcloths and flat sheets when maybe mentioning you have to turn on the power to a plug would have been actual HELPFUL information?

OK; I think I’m caught up now on how I need to catch up. Fortunately today is “sit in Hawk and Jeanne’s living room and drink coffee and cider and eat cheese and carrot cake and catch up on computer things.” It’s supposed to rain today (so of course the sun is out) and we could stay home and do lazy things or we could go out to Johnstown Castle. I very much want to see the castle, but my hip was screaming at me all day yesterday (about 20,000 steps all day, most of it hills) so taking today to rest my angry hip and Hawk’s angry foot might behoove us both.

Overall I am having fun, and learning things. I did make one change to my travel plans, but I’ll talk about that when I write my blog post about the super stressful but very lovely train from Dublin to Wexford. Meanwhile… xoxo, y’all. Thanks for reading. I wish you were all here with me, and I’m hoping I’m making you feel as if you are!