A Visit to the Fair City

"Down this fair little street you will see a fair little statue of a fair maiden" - an actual sentence spoken by a bus driver in Dublin.

Our shipped docked early in the morning at an industrial dockyard. I don't think I've ever seen so many shipping containers in my life. We took a shuttle to the heart of the city, where we switched over to the Dublin Big Bus (I told you, we like them). We knew it would give us a lot of variety for a very reasonable price, and variety is certainly what we got. The bus traveled through the main streets of Dublin, past castles and churches, and around beautiful parks. The curve ball that I did not expect was that the routes went through many very run down areas that seemed quite depressed. In talking with some other passengers, I learned that they actually witnessed a drug deal in one such area. We saw many homeless people begging in streets and sleeping on benches. This would not be surprising to me in New York or other very urban areas I've been, but I was not expecting it at a cruise ship port. Couple this with the graffiti message I mentioned in my post about Cork, and I was starting to get a more realistic picture of the Fair City. I've had multiple friends and relatives do mission work in Ireland, but I never quite understood why. In my mind, mission work is for third world countries, and Ireland just didn't fit into that category in my mind.

It would be easy to miss the brokenness. The city has a chronic celebratory mood, the castles are incredibly impressive, the Guinness factory and storehouse is successful and iconic, the pubs boast amazing corned beef and vegetables (I can attest), but I couldn't quite put the other things I'd seen out of my mind. To top it off, a local was telling me that the cruiselines will not be docking in Dublin anymore starting in a couple of years due to the inconvenient dockyard situation. He explained that this will hurt the city quite a bit because tourism is a primary industry for them.

Of course, Ireland is no stranger to hardship. The constant struggle with the British who intended to subdue them, the Great Famine, and the massive slavery struggle are great examples of the dark past Ireland is still trying to emerge from. Regarding the first, Northern Ireland eventually became subject to the crown of England and is now subject to the fear of the economic struggles about to be created by Brexit. Regarding the second, the population numbers of Ireland have still not recovered. Regarding the third, Irish hearts still feel the pain of the 100,000+ locals that were sold to Barbados and Jamaica and the hundreds of children that were sold to America long before African slaves were ever even touched.

I have learned that a trip is not an expedition unless it includes the good, the bad, and the ugly - the joys of the tourist and the struggles of the local. I never want to have one without the other. I never want to be blind to either. I hope you see it that way too.

From: The Expeditioner