A Few Words About Words

St. Patrick's Day is coming up and, I know I don't usually talk about it, but my family is from Ireland.

I'll give you a moment to get over that bombshell.

I will admit that I find North American people's interpretation of St. Patrick's Day a bit comical. It's a play-by-play of every Irish stereotype wrapped up in a plastic shamrock bow. There is nothing Irish about the way we celebrate St. Patrick's Day. But it's also endearing, in it's own way: everyone in green outfits and plastic shamrocks from head-to-toe while trying out Oirish accents as they order copious pints of Guinness.

Nike decided to get on the St. Patrick's Day bandwagon this year by releasing a line of Irish beer themed shoes just in time for the big day. I, as I am want to do, had a few opinions about this.

I don't have a problem with the drink, Black and Tan, as it's not an Irish drink. People assume it is because of the standard practice of using Guinness for the top, but the drink didn't originate in Ireland and the name can be applied to any two-toned beer combination.

But the shoes. They bug me.

Never mind the fact that a Black and Tan isn't actually an Irish drink, but this is not the first time Nike has put its foot in its mouth when it comes to Ireland. Is there no one in the whole of the Nike corporation that understands how Google works?

The Black and Tans in Irish history were British military units sent to Ireland during the War of Independence. The actions of these men, many of them WWI vets suffering from shell-shock, were nothing short of horrific. Their job was to stop Irish rebels at any cost, and if they suspected that you were a rebel they took a shoot-first-ask-questions-later attitude towards handling you.

The name came from their uniforms: khaki pants left over from WWI and dark tops to denote them as members of the Irish Constabulary. You can perhaps see then why naming an article of clothing Black and Tan in a highly misguided attempted to celebrate St. Patrick's Day got my nickers in a knot.

All this leads me to a drink name I do have a problem with: the Irish Car Bomb.

In the past, I've had friends offer to buy me this drink, Hey Andrea, you're Irish. Let's have an Irish Car Bomb. Ha Ha Ha! I've always declined (and not just because of the name. Who chugs Guinness? Who ruins whiskey by mixing it with Bailey's? Or vice versa?) This is not an Irish drink and its name is offensive. You wouldn't name a drink an Afghan Roadside Bomb, so why is it okay to name one an Irish Car Bomb?

Approximately 3500 people died in Northern Ireland as a result of the Troubles, many of them from car bombs. Countless more were injured. Loyalist. Republican. Catholic. Protestant. Military. Civilian. People died and we think it's acceptable to order it as a drink. While the Troubles are officially over thanks to a bunch of politicians signing a piece of paper, car bombs are still around.

In 1998, mere months after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, a car bomb exploded in Omagh killing 29 people and injuring over 200 more. Last April, Omagh was rocked again when the bomb attached to Ronan Kerr's car killed him. Constable Kerr was a new recruit to the Police Service of Northern Ireland. He was 25 years old.

If you really want to celebrate Ireland and the Irish this St. Patrick's Day, ask your bartender for a Durty Nelly. It's the exact same drink but with a much less offensive name.

Unless you happened to be named Nelly.

CMC: Christmas Around the World

This is part of my Christmas Memory Challenge, a goal I set for myself to recall 25 things I love about Christmas. You can also check out Shannon's memories here.

Tucked away in one of my dad's boxes of Christmas decorations is an old book called Christmas Around the World which I first discovered when I eight. The book is nothing special, just a simple children's book about old traditions from around the world. Even when it was first printed in the 70's, I get the feeling a lot of these traditions were out of date. Not saying that all were (or even that they are all now), but it seemed to focus more on traditions which were apart of the countryside culture. I find it hard to believe that someone in London in the 70's was holding onto last year's yule log to start the fire for this year's log... assuming the flat even had a working fireplace.

Still, as a child, I didn't realise this. All I saw was all the ways that people different than myself celebrated Christmas and I loved it. I learned that our tradition of cutting down a Christmas tree is from Germany, poinsettias come from Mexico, and my dad is not the only person in the world (because he was out of my friend's parents) who puts a red candle in the window. I'd pour over the every year looking for new information about holiday traditions from places I had only ever seen on our gigantic map.

My obsession with this book eventually turned into a fascination with other cultures and how they celebrate holidays. Not just Christmas, but any sizable holiday. And not just the big community parts of the celebration, but the quiet things people do in their own homes. I think it also goes a long way to explain why I love the traditions of Christmas more than the actual idea of Christmas (we're celebrating the birthday of a guy who was born [probably] in September in December so it would line up with Saturnalia and entice the Romans to Christianity, and we celebrate by beating people up so they can't take the last X-Box priced at 60% off. Yeah, great idea).

Going Coastal on You!

In our original travel plans, Al and I were going to head to Belfast bright and early so we could have the better part of the day there. We’d arrive by 10:30 and then we could count it as a full day. In our original travel plans, however, we failed to account for the step-aunts wanting to do morning coffee. We finally boarded a bus in Dungannon at 11:45. If you’re keeping track and home, that’s 3.5 hours later than we anticipated. Our day in Belfast turned into an afternoon. And what a wet miserable afternoon it was!

After a wrong turn out of the bus station which almost led to us walking into Falls Rd/Shankill Rd area (which is where a lot of the troubles in Belfast were centred), we found our hostel, ditched our bags and phoned the first Black Taxi cab tour listed in our guide. The voice on the other end of the phone said he’d pick us up in 15 minutes. It was the only thing that went according to schedule that day!

Our guide, Ken Harper, was fabulous. Friendly, knowledgeable and hilarious, he kept us entertained from beginning to end. We got on well with him and our 1 hour tour actually ended up being 1.5 hours as he threw in a quick go around the city centre as well. I wish I had more pictures to share, but the rain was bucketing down on and off throughout our ride meaning a lot of the picture opportunities found Al and I just sitting in the cab because even rolling down the window for a decent shot just wasn’t worth it.

This is the part of the peace line that people sign. Ken offered us a pen; Al and I just laughed.

We could barely see the wall from the car it was raining so hard!

The rain did stop long enough for us to see the hooded gunman mural. The mural has been the centre of a lot of controversy over the years (Really? A hooded man pointing a gun in mural form in an area affected by violence has garnered controversy? No way!), but I was mostly interested in it because the gun apparently follows you as you walk.

Unfortunately when we got back in the car and drove to the other side, the rains had started up again, but I can say that the gun most definitely follows you. It’s very creepy. I know it’s just a painting but dude, it’s a gun and it follows you! There is no way I could walk past that at night!

I have a strange relationship with Belfast; I want to like it, I want to think it’s a great city, I want to believe I should encourage people to go there but I always come away feeling let down. It’s not a friendly city. I know that has a lot to do with its past and that people tend to keep much more to themselves compared to the rest of Ireland (even compared to the rest of the North), but it makes it hard for me to say that Belfast was awesome. It’s definitely worth a visit, I'm just not convinced it's worth a stay.

Still, my cousins who live there seem to love it.

We spent the night hanging out with my aunt and uncle. I chose not to stay with my aunt because she’s never been in great health and she had just had surgery on her cataracts a week before we arrived. I figured she didn’t need the stress of two girls staying with her. Well, I obviously thought wrong because all I got all night was a good old Irish-Catholic guilt trip about not staying with them. “It’s a pity you’re in a hostel when we have all these empty rooms.” “How much money would you have saved by staying with us?” “You come all the way from Canada and you don’t even stay with family.” And the parting shot as we left, “it would have been lovely to have spent more time with you, but I guess we should get you back to the hostel.”

She! Just! Had! Surgery!

Still, she poured the stiffest drink I’ve ever seen. My glass was half rum, half 7-Up! Maybe we should have stayed with her...

The next day was our tour along the Antrim Coast to Bushmills (where we’d jump off the bus and then public transit it to Derry, everyone else got driven back to Belfast). We had booked the tour on a whim the day before. We originally planned to get to Giant’s Causeway on our own but when we saw the tour company across the street from the hostel, we decided to see if it was feasible to only go the one way. Not only was it feasible, but it turned out to be one of the best decisions we made on the entire trip.

The day looked like it was going to be a washout as the rains started up as we departed Belfast. For our first stop in Carrickfergus, only half of us got off the bus to take pictures. By the time we had left Carrickfergus the sun was out. While the occasional shower would continue to show up during the course of the trip, that was the only really bad rain.

Our guide, a quick-witted Scot named Tom, had us all in stitches with his stories about the area. He had married a local girl and it was clear that he had fallen just as much in love with the country and he had with her. Of course, he still pointed out Scotland across the water every chance he got!

Driving the coast road

Stopping for a break in Carnlough

Of course, the upside to the weather was that we got a lot of rainbows.

Being on the tour meant that we stopped at Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge, something we wouldn’t have done on public transit. The 1.5km walk out to the bridge afforded us lovely views out to Rathlin Island.

That's Rathlin Island on the horizon.

Our first view of the bridge.

Once we got to the bridge, I had to pep Al up a bit. She’s not big on heights and what all these pictures fail to show is how incredibly windy it was that day.

Half-way across just before a huge gust of wind.

Al did cross and I can’t begin to explain how happy I was that she did. Even with all my ‘can do’ bravado about the bridge I had a moment of panic halfway across when a huge gust of wind started the bridge swaying. The words ‘I hate you’ may have escaped Al’s lips after we reached the other side.

That's the fishing hut which was the reason the bridge

was first put up between the island and the mainland.

After we walked to the far side of the tiny island and snapped a few pictures, we crossed back. I half expected Al to kiss the ground once we were back across but she managed to refrain herself... probably only until I wasn’t looking.

That v-shaped gap is where the bridge is.

We've crossed the bridge, Al's still smiling and she hasn't killed me.

If our friendship can survive this, it can survive anything!

The next big stop on our trip was Giant’s Causeway. When asked if the Giant's Causeway was worth seeing, Samuel Johnson one quipped, "worth seeing, yes; but not worth going to see." As Tom kindly pointed out, Johnson also travelled three days to see the Causeway so his opinion is to be taken with a grain of salt.

I'm willing to be that Johnson didn't have views of rainbows on his walk to the Causeway.

We opted to walk down to the Causeway and save ourselves the £1 and the views were worth the saved money. (Although we totally paid the £1 to take the bus back up from the Causeway.)

The Ulster Way follows much of this part of the coast.

I can't help but think what a spectacular hike it would be!

Science would have us believe that the Causeway was the result of volcanic activity and the subsequent cooling of the resulting molten basalt millions of years ago. As the basalt cooled unevenly, geometric shapes formed where the cooled areas pushed against each other. This is all a very fascinating explanation but as Tom so kindly pointed out, do you see any volcanoes in the area? No.

Legend has it that Fionn mac Cumhaill (pronounced Finn MacCool), a giant who once roamed the Irish countryside, had a beef with a giant in Scotland. After tossing insults and threats back and forth, Fionn decided enough was enough and it was time to settle the argument. He built the Causeway so the other giant, who couldn’t swim, could cross the water and the two could duke it out. Except when he got his first glimpse of the other giant, the other giant ended up being much bigger than Finn had anticipated and Finn realised he was going to lose the fight.

Fionn ran home to his wife and told her of the problem. Unbeknown to Fionn, she devised a plan. After giving Fionn a potion so he’d fall asleep, she swaddled him up like a baby. She invited the other giant in, explaining that Fionn was off working but should be home soon. When the other giant saw the baby, he figured ‘if that’s the baby, how big is his father?’ and he ran back to Scotland, smashing the Causeway as he went so that Fionn couldn’t follow him.

Doesn’t that sound a lot more plausible than volcanoes in Ireland? ;)

We finished up the day with a quick trip to Bushmills and Dunluce Castle before Tom stopped traffic to flag down our bus to Coleraine. There’s nothing really special about it except that Tom went above and beyond to get us on that bus and because we had to run, we didn’t really get a chance to thank him. Also, he's a huge Game of Thrones fan and when he found out that I was as well, he pointed out all the filming locations that we passed. All in all, he was a great tour guide and if you’re in that neck of the woods and looking for an Antrim Coast tour, I would whole-heartedly, without any hesitation, recommend getting on a tour with Tom who works for Ben Allen Tours. Seriously, the man was incredible. (Ben was a gas as well and I wish we could have chatted longer. He was cracking Al and I up.)

From Coleraine, we hopped the train to Derry. For the most part, we tried to avoid the train as it was usually very expensive unless you book well in advance but the trip from Coleraine to Derry was supposed to be spectacular as it followed the coast of Lough Foyle. It did not disappoint.

Came out of a tunnel to this view. That's Co. Donegal across the Lough.

We pulled into Derry just as the sun was setting. After a bit to eat, a quick pint, and a bit of traditional music, we called it a day and headed off to bed.

Note about the links to businesses in this post: Neither of the businesses I've linked to knew that I would be writing about them and/or linking to them. I've linked to them because I was really happy with the service they provided to a nobody. Please note that I don't even recommend the safari company I went with in Tanzania because it's owned by a friend and I don't feel comfortable sending people to him when I know that my fabulous experience was based on already having a pre-established friendship with the guide, so when I recommend these businesses, I really, really mean it.

From Dublin Culture to Culchie Culture

Obviously, the morning after a pub crawl requires one thing and one thing only: coffee. Copious, copious amounts of coffee. And who can resist when it comes in an awesome to-go cup?

Noted!

And I want these cups in Victoria.

Due to most Irish museums being closed on Mondays, our Tuesday ended up being very, very heavy on the education-front so we started with a wander through Trinity College. What better way to get our learning on than wandering through the hallowed halls of higher learning... hungover?

Perhaps I should have checked out Careers Week while we were there.

Trinity is actually part of the Pub Crawl given that so many of the writers attended school there, but it was nice to come back during the day and actually see it. Like many European universities, it's located right in the heart of Dublin and is open to just wander through the campus.

We did not bother with the Book of Kells at my suggestion. I had done the Book once before and just found it a waste of money when you consider you only get about 10 seconds to view one page of the book. The displays leading up to the Book are interesting but for the low, low price of free you can visit the Cheaster Beatty Library with books just as old and the National Museum of Ireland: Archeology and History* which has even older artifacts and bog men! That's right, BOG MEN! Four of them!

After we finished our coffees, we hit up both the Chester Beatty and NMI:A&H. Sadly, you can't take pictures inside either of them but they were both awesome. Both could easily be an entire day on their own if you're geeky enough (I totally am. Al, not so much) but two hours at either one should be more than enough time to get your fill.

A school group was leaving as we arrived at the NMI:A&H... Best. Timing. EVER!

We had an early night on Tuesday due to an early morning on Wednesday. Wednesday was when our adventure really began with a trip to the rip-roaring craziness which is Monaghan! Monaghan, of course, is where my culchie family comes from. (Culchie was originally a derogatory term for people from the country--ie. not Dublin--but there's been a bit of a reclaim on for the word. I'm doing my part to show those Jackeens that words can't hurt us!) There's not much family left there now but I always make sure I stop in to say hello to the town which I always remember fondly. Thank goodness Armagh isn't that far away so it's not usually a problem.

Perhaps not surprisingly, this is exactly how I remember Monaghan's main street.

Every trip to Monaghan involves a visit to the cemetery where granny and granddad are buried.

This is followed by a trip to the Cathedral.

 

Many a Sunday of my childhood was spent here

After I dragged Al on a whole 15 minute tour of downtown Monaghan (you think I exaggerate but I really don't. We walked the whole length of Monaghan in less than 30 minutes and that included stopping for photos), we said good bye to my uncle (and his inability to hear us) and jumped on a bus to Armagh.

Ten minutes outside of Armagh the skies opened and thundered down. Even though it stopped as quickly as it started, we kind of lost our appetite for actually seeing Armagh and instead just checked out a pub until the appointed pick up time. Hey, look at that! I sat in a pub just like I did the last time I was in Armagh!

My usual Armagh contact was out of town so stayed with the step-side of my family in Blackwater Town. I challenge you to pull out an atlas and find it on a map. No cheating and using goggle maps! To be honest, we didn't even stay in Blackwater Town. We kept driving, crossed into Co. Tyrone and spent the night in the middle of nowhere.

Apparently the middle of nowhere has an intersection!

The rains held off long enough for Al I to go for a walk around the neighbourhood farms and meet the local cows.

Shortly after I made friends with this horse, the rains returned and we had to make a beeline back home. Still, who can complain about a little rain when you're staying in a location other tourists would pay top dollar for? 

Question: Ever stayed somewhere so small and/or remote on your holidays that it's not in the guidebook? What brought you to that location?

*There are four NMI locations with different themes. They're all free and they're all worth checking out. The National Gallery and the National Library are also worth checking out but when you have limited time, you have to pick and choose :(

Graveyard Literature

I awoke Friday morning to find that the Dublin weather had turned. While it was still very warm, there was that “needs to rain” feel to the humidity. Still my plans for the day included a walk along the Grand Canal and it had to be accomplished, regardless of the weather. The Grand Canal runs south of the Liffey and through a series of locks connects the Dublin Port with the River Shannon. While the only boats that patrol its banks now are hired by holiday makers, the canal makes a lovely walk or, if you’re so inclined, a fabulous running route.

The barge is a floating restaurant. I was much more interested in the ducks.

My reasons for wandering the Canal were not for the views or a break from the bustle of the city, but because I was looking for this guy:

This is Patrick Kavanagh. Go on, ask me who the heck that is. He’s a poet who originally hails from Co. Monaghan. If you’ve ever listened to Irish folk music, you’ve probably heard his poetry. He wrote a poem called On Raglan Road which was then set to music by Luke Kelly (of the Dubliners). He’s immortalised along the banks of the Grand Canal because he often sat on these very banks and composed his works (including a poem about the Canal in which he asks to be commemorated with a bench).

"O commemorate me with no hero-courageous

Tomb - just a canal-bank seat for the passer-by."

~ Lines Written on a Seat of the Grand Canal, Dublin

But my reason for hunting down this statue is personal. Before he moved to Dublin and my dad’s family moved to Monaghan Town, Patrick Kavanagh was the occasional drinking buddy of my granddad. In fact, when they thought my aunt was going to die while being born and they wanted to make sure that she was baptized asap, it was Patrick Kavanagh that my granddad brought back with him from the pub to be her godfather.

After I took a moment to sit with Patrick and contemplate life, I headed off to find another famous Irish writer.

I encourage you to click on the photo to wilde-inate it.

The smirk on his face is awesome!

Across from the statue (if you can call it that when the sculpture is reclining), are two posts with various Oscar Wilde quotes listed on them. I was happy to see my two favourites were both on there.

Agreed!

Could you please explain this concept to my bank account? Thanks.

With my literary duties done for the day, I was off to Glasnevin Cemetery*, the dead centre of Dublin. (Um, if I need to explain that pun to you, then I don’t think we can be friends.) The Cemetery is a pretty big deal in Dublin. Before it was opened, Catholics either had to be buried in a Protestant cemetery without a Catholic service or be buried in an area that hadn’t been interred. Daniel O’Connell, an early advocate of Irish freedom from England (and noted pacifist), fought for the creation of this cemetery and it is (well, ‘was’. Good luck getting a plot in there now!) open to all faiths.

And as I previously mentioned, I like cemeteries so you know I had to go check it out! And my timing was pretty awesome: I arrived in time for a guided tour which meant I’d get to go into O’Connell’s tomb.

While the intention of the cemetery was ‘open to all’, it quickly became a bit of a Fenian hallowed ground. If you think I exaggerate, the first graves you see are nine men executed by British forces for their roles in fighting against British rule.

Tradition dictated that when you were executed inside a prison yard, you were buried in that same yard. When these bodies were exhumed from the prison yard, the families opted to have them buried together at Glasnevin. The most famous of these names is Kevin Barry, who was only 18 when he was executed, and was later immortalised in song.

In the background of that picture you can see the base of the O’Connell Round Tower.  If I had just been wandering the cemetery on my own, I would have had to content myself with just viewing the tower from the outside.

But tour groups get to go inside! (I swear I’m not a morbid person, I just find tombs kind of awesome.) They say that touching his coffin is good luck, so I stuck my hand through the holes in the side of the tomb and rubbed the well-worn wood. Our guide told us that he’s pretty sure the Dublin women come on the tour just so they can touch the coffin before they buy a lotto ticket. HA!

We were a very small tour group of six people and I was the only non-Irish person in the group. I was really appreciative of the others on this tour as they knew their Irish history and were able to answer the questions that our guide posed to us and add to his stories. They’d spot names on the grave sites and exclaim “isn’t that so-and-so?” Our two hour guided tour was almost three hours long.

We finished our tour with this grave:

Michael Collins. You might have heard of him ;)

Apparently so many people turned out for his funeral that when the procession reached Glasnevin, the end of it still hadn’t left downtown Dublin.

I could have spent another three hours walking around the cemetery but the skies were threatening to open up again (it rained for the first five minutes of our tour, but the cemetery loans out oversized umbrellas for that very possibility--seriously, love Glasnevin!) so I wandered around until I felt a few drops and then I called it a day.

"Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,

It's with O'Leary in the Grave."

~September1913, W.B. Yeats

John O'Leary's grave on the right, James Stephens' on the left.

Given the nature of the cemetery, Celtic crosses figure prominently on the graves.

Looking back at O'Connell's Tower

Glasnevin started as a 9 acre plot in 1832. Today it covers 120 acres.

Roughly 1.5 million people are buried here but there are only 200,000 headstones.

I finished by checking out Parnell’s final resting place.

Parnell was another early advocate of Irish independence. At the time that he passed away, grave robbing was very common. Knowing that his grave would be a likely target due to who he was, the decision was made to bury him in the middle of a mass grave which had been used for cholera victims a few years earlier. The plan worked and Parnell still slumbers there.

By the time I caught the bus, the heavens had opened. The rain would continue into Saturday when it came down so strong that leaving the house seemed like a ridiculous idea. As a result, Saturday was a sit-at-home-drink-tea-and-write-in-my-journal kind of day, followed by a stay-at-home-and-drink-a-few-bottles-of-wine kind of night.

*The proper name for Glasnevin is actually 'Prospect Cemetery' but given that every single person I talked to called it Glasnevin and their own books list it as Glasnevin... Glasnevin it is!

The Field (Dublin, Part Two)

I woke up on Thursday giddy with anticipation. Thursday was the day I was going to Croke Park. I hadn't been to Croker since 1996 when I last attended a hurling match. Since then, Croke Park had undergone a major renovation to become the third largest sporting pitch in Europe. No small feat when you consider that only amateur sports are played at Croker.*

But first, I took a trip to the Garden of Remembrance. The Garden was opened in 1966 to the memory of those who gave their lives for Irish freedom. A sunken garden in the middle contains a water feature in the shape of a cross while at the far end, a statue depicts the fallen turning into swans (a reference to the Irish folklore Children of Lir).

Once you walk down the steps, the sounds around you disappear and it becomes very quiet. I walked along the water feature staring at the mosaic work within the feature. Thanks to google, I now know that the mosaic shows the Celtic tradition of breaking and throwing your weapons into a river at the end of a battle. (How did we ever learn things before the internet? Oh, right. Encyclopedias!)

Overall the Garden was lovely and I was happy that I made an effort to check it out. It's only a block beyond Upper O'Connell St and with four rows of benches at one end as well as along the water feature, it would make a wonderful place to stop for lunch away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

After a serious morning, I got giddy as I headed off to Croke Park. CROKER! CROKER! CROKER! I got so giddy, in fact, that I missed a street sign and ended up walking an extra 15 minutes to the park. I didn't care. CROKER! CROKER! CROKER!

What I failed to capture on camera was that after this picture, I fell

to my knees and started screaming "I'm not worthy!"

My dad brought three hurleys with him when he emigrated from Ireland. While the family used them to flick the fuses on the fuse box which was located by the ceiling, my dad also took us down to the lower field and showed us how to use the hurley to pick up the sliotar (that's the ball). I enjoyed hurling but it wasn't until my Uncle Frank took me to a game at Croke Park that I fell in love with hurling. I've seen three games live, all at Croke Park, and I loved each of them.

I've linked to this video before, but I think now is a good time to post it again because HURLING! CROKER! HURLING! CROKER! HURLING! CROKER!

(There's also a good three part longer introduction to the sport: Part One, Part Two, Part Three.)

I started with a trip through the GAA museum. The lower floor deals with how hurling and Gaelic football play into both the Irish identity and to the struggle for independence. For the Canadians reading this, the Irish view the games as an extension of their culture much the same way we view hockey. The second floor deals with players and members of note in the hurling/Gaelic football/GAA organisation as well as an area where you get to test your hurling and football skills. Sadly, as much as I wanted to try out out hard I could hit a sliotar, I had a guided tour of the stadium I had to attend.

Sigh, just another reason to go back ;)

We began our tour with a short video about the All-Ireland Finals in September. It may have caused me a few tears of pride... and a slight regret that I voluntarily chose to come to Ireland after the season was over. C'est la vie! Next time ;)

Our guide--a kind, knowledgeable lady from Kildare--started by taking us into the players lounge. Below is the main chandelier. Made from Waterford Crystal and containing 32 footballs and over a hundred sliotars ("because it just looked a little too bare with only 32 sliotars"), the colour of the lights can be changed to a combination of the colours of any of the 32 counties. After a game the colours are always the colours of the winning team.

From the players lounge, we moved to the locker rooms. As the All-Irelands are over, the four winning teams--hurling, camogie (women's hurling), men's football, and women's football--were hung on the wall while the remaining 28 counties were hung around the room roughly grouped together by their province.

For those who care, the four jerseys are (l-r):

Cork (Women's Football) (BOO! They beat Monaghan)

 Dublin (Men's Football)

Wexford (Camogie)

Kilkenny (Hurling)

But there was only one jersey I cared about seeing:

I don't care if Monaghan is crap, they'll always be my first county.

No seriously, the men have never made the finals for hurling or football as far as I know.

We're crap... but I love them.

We moved onto the warm up area. At this point, the sound system was put on to sound like a cheering crowd. The chanting, the drumming, the clapping: it was an actual recording of the crowd at a previous game and you could tell. To the sound of the crowds delight, we moved from the warm up area, down the hallway and walked out onto the grounds of Croker.

I would like to say that I totally played this cool, but I was so giddy I skipped a couple of times.

I'M WALKING OUT ONTO THE FIELD AT CROKE PARK!!

Join me in my chant: CROKER! CROKER! CROKER!

In Gaelic sports, you get 1 point for going above the crossbar and 3 for going under.

That's why you see scores such as 2-7 to 1-11. The '2' means 2 goals (same as the 1) and the

'7' is 7 points above the bar (same as the 11). The totals of these two fake teams would be 13 to 14.

Sam or Liam sit on a platform behind the flowers.

This is the view the president of Ireland gets for the All-Ireland Championships, the lucky sod!

Also, the field is mowed by two guys using push mowers!!

From the field we headed up into the stands where people of note get to sit, checked out a company box, and took in the vertigo inducing view from the press boxes, all while hearing about the history of the GAA, Croke Park, the games themselves and the new stands.

When the tour was done, I really wanted to go again. There was just so much to see and so many stories to hear, I could have done it twice more: once just to take notes and once just to take pictures... although, I would have liked that last tour to have been just me and the guide ;-)

Outside the entrance to the museum is a wall showing all the GAA approved teams in Ireland and beyond. Pretty much anywhere you find Irish immigrants, you'll find a GAA satellite organisation. As you can see from this picture, we even have a few in Canada. The season runs from June-ish to August so if you're in an area that has these sports, I suggest you check out a game next summer.
*While the Lansdowne Stadium (now Aviva Stadium) was under reconstruction, the GAA voted to allow rugby and soccer matches to be held at Croke Park. It was the first time in 120 years that non-amateur sports were played there.

Question: Do you have a sports-mecca that you have visited or someday hope to visit? (Please assure me I'm not alone in my love of a sports facility!)