Dear Dirty Dublin

Joyce’s words, not mine. Dublin is not as dirty as in his day and at the moment a lot of it is under construction--tram lines or something--so there are barricades everywhere.

I took the bus down and had lunch at a pub called Searsons with Theresa, my former yoga instructor at Vanguard, and her husband, Don, who writes a syndicated column about beer. He’s leading a tour of 24 people around Ireland. They have an amazing itinerary planned (Dingle peninsula, Cliffs of Moher, Aran Isles, Galway) and quite a few pubs and breweries, so they are in for a fantastic time. Here we are in front of the pub:

Well it was vertical on my desktop...
Here we are in the pub, where they tried a Wicklow Wolf, a Rebel Red (made at a former Franciscan monastery) and, of course, a Guinness:

Don and Theresa are Francophiles and plan to retire in France. We had an interesting conversation about the challenges of moving to a new country later in life and making friends. Someone told me to allow five to seven years, which seems like an awfully long time. I have friends whom I can call and invite out to lunch, which I tend to do twice a month. But it’s all on me--I don’t tend to get invites to join others doing social things. Which I accept. I don’t think you can pop into people’s life this far down the road and expect a social circle to form quickly.

I told Theresa the site MeetUp is a great way to find like-minded people who enjoy hiking, film, theatre, trying new restaurants, etc. I haven’t made much use of MeetUp, partly because I’m more of a morning person than a late-night person, when many MeetUp events take place. But I hope to be a more regular MeetUp participant because I have met some interesting people at events. Making friends is work and you have to invest the time, including late nights.

We had beautiful weather today and walked around Merrion Square and happened upon an open house at the Friends of the National Gallery, where we toured a large Dublin townhouse. Amazingly, there was a large Caravaggio in the dining room, hung low, and you could get as close to it as you liked. It was mesmerising.
10-15