craic!

Today I traveled into the city with Kelly. We should have guessed, from the long line running out of the DART station, that it would be quite a day. Somehow, I’d forgotten that it was the first rugby match of the season – the game was held in Croke Park, Dublin – and the trip in was a crush of green-adorned rugby fans. I don’t know how we all managed to fit into the carriage, but we did, and everybody was extremely good-natured about having to share a very close space with a bunch of strangers. In fact, we nearly missed our stop because we were having such a good conversation with the fellow next to us, who was going in to watch the match with his young son.

We, however, did not go to see the match. We went into town to visit the National Gallery and perhaps get free movie tickets for an event that the Irish Film Institute was putting on.

Galleries are always difficult because there’s so much to see – and I could stare at one painting all day. This gallery is really large, with four floors and many many rooms full of paintings and sculptures. I wrote down my favorites, which were “The Wave”, by Nathaniel Hone (sadly, that website doesn't show you a picture of the painting, but it's good to see some of his other work), Walter Osborne's plein-air painting, "In a Dublin Park", Francis Danby's "The Opening of the Sixth Seal" and especially Chaim Soutine's "Landscape with a Flight of Stairs."

Back at the Irish Film Institute we got tickets for the only show not sold out, which was a look back at travel films about Ireland from the early to mid 1900s. They were so campy and fabulously restored.

We spent the rest of the day walking around town and seeing the festive mood manifest itself in street performances, balloons, flags, and friendly chatting. There were a lot of Italians in the city for the match, and although Italy lost, it seems like everyone was making the most of the opportunity to be in Dublin.