September 8 - day 2

Trim, Ireland

It's the little things that cause culture shock, Stephanie would say when she talked about her semester in Spain. As soon as the plane began to decend I started noticing them. The headlights on the freeways were facing the wrong direction. Rugby posts sat next to soccer goals in school fields. DoIuble decker buisses carried people away from the airport.
In the corridor outside the jetway a sign warned that it was not a buggy collection point. Other signs asked "have you the correct luggage?" and mind your head. One popular marker featured a rectangle, an arrow pointing to the ground, and a stick figure running. It took me longer than I want to admit to realize that is supposed to indicate an emergeny exit.
I spent my first few hours in Dublin taking the city bus downtown, getting lost, finding a place to store my pack and drinking coffee. After confirming where and when to catch my bus to Trim, I set off for some of the sites.
Dublin being my first European city to visit, I don't have a lot to compare it to. It's busy and touristy, filled with old building like I imagine most of Europe is. Ireland's history is filled with more than 2000 years of foriegn conquest promptly followed by rebellion. The Romans, though, never settled here. They were smart. The weather is awful compared to Italy, and they realized early on that the locals did not take well to conquest.
I won't bore you with a term paper on Irish history, but for the record I'll note that I visited the Dublin Castle, Temple Bar, the River Liffey and the outside of a couple inpressive gothic churches.
I saw even more of Dublin on the was out of town when the bus driver got lost. we circled around for 20 minutes trying to find a stop, all while the uniformed bus driver took directions from an old lady behind him.
I eventually made it to Trim and a great bed and breakfast reccomended in my Rick Steves book. The owner was a nice guy who chatted briefly with me about the Fannie Mae bailout. He also explained that he's a big proponent of the "keep Trim tidy" coalition, and we eagerly awaited the televised results of Ireland's "tidy towns" contest on the TV in his living room.
Though it wasn't honored this year, Trim is tidy indeed. Pubs and shop fronts fill unbroken lines of century-old buildings along the few main streets. Even in a town of a few hundred people, I learned quickly that navigation is a lot more challenging in places where the streets were laid out centuries before the US was established 200 years ago. For starters there aren't many street signs. Those that exisit are posted on the wall of parallel buildings. There's not a sign labelling a street at every intersection, and because some buildings aren't condusive to hanging placards, many intersections have no signs at all. Even if you do know what street you are on, it's name of it will change at just about every intersection. Once you've figured out where you are, there is never a straight line to your destination. Land isn't divided into blocks so much as it is into rhombuses, triangles and cirlcles.
Don't ever wander around London without a map.
One thing that is always easy to fing in Ireland, though, is the pub, and I enjoyed a couple pints with the locals before giong to bed at what was probably 5 in the afternoon in Texas.