(Written 5/2, posted much later once I had internet access again.)

Third day, and my last real day in Dublin for a while.

Thursday is new comics day, at least in Europe, and so it made the most sense for us to go into town on a Thursday. I'd initially thought we could just walk there, and I still imagine we could given a map and a lot of lead time, but distance on the map doesn't have much meaning in a maze of twisty little passages all alike. So we took the bus; on the top level, of course. (Someday the novelty of that will wear off, but this it not nearly that day.) The bus runs down roads much smaller and twistier than we would put one back home, but an exaggerated response to danger is a rather American thing, I suppose.

Everything is smaller (and older, of course) here; growing up as I did in a San Francisco pointing glass and metal fingers at the sky, it was hard to quite internalize it as a proper city despite everything. Too many bricks and statues, too few franchises. (Spar excepted, of course.)

Saw the Spire, and thought up ways to make it useful, e.g. lance for a giant robot or long-term car storage. Went to Temple Bar, too, and found comics and record shops. Also found that I have a knack for finding Paddy Casey albums before I remember to look for them, gen'rally within thirty seconds of arriving in the shop. Just as well, since I could never manage to track down anything once I was looking for it.)

Walked through Moore Street and got some plums from a grumpy old lady who seemed quite displeased at my handling her merchandise (hem, hem) and got some Polish apple-mint juice. The mannequins were unsettling and goateed but apparently you aren't allowed to take pictures in the mall, so you'll have to take my word for it. Then some old man on a streetcorner decided to inform Liam at length that he was a cunt and a gobshite, so we had to book it in a fairly undignified fashion.

This, too, was the day I remembered that being incredibly shy is not good preparation for being a world traveller. Every grumpy old lady or failure to look the relevant way at a street crossing made me even more embarrassed, and there's nothing that gets to me more than being embarrassed. Liam, at least, understood, but I worry a little at what the rest of the trip will be like without him.

Anyway, there was dinner at Captain Americas, where the walls are covered in rock'n'roll memorabilia and Nazis getting punched. I very nearly got a drink called a Red Skull, but ended up deciding I wasn't sufficiently fond of grenadine to pay full price. (Now, if we make it back for 3-euro drink night, on the other hand...) Not to mention that portions here gen'rally prove to be huge. I am not at all used to being the one at the table eating the least, even though I do seem to have picked up Liam's habit of eating once a day.

There was a pack and some mysterious waterfowl, and a statue henceforth referred to as "the clitoris". And managed to get back to the bus to sleep relatively early (by which I mean 1 AM) so I could get on a ferry in the early afternoon. That's all for Ireland for now, I'm afraid.