Stay-cation in Dublin

For the first time this month, I stayed in Dublin for the weekend. It was nice to be here for a change so I could catch up on some much needed sleep, study for mid terms, and of course, explore Dublin a little more.

The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival was going on for the past two weeks, and I got to see a film on Friday and a film on Saturday. One was a Swedish film with English subtitles about a 1970s political scandal, and the other was a series of Irish short films. I preferred the shorts to the Swedish film because the seven short films that comprised the series we saw were the perfect mix of humorous, heart wrenching, and eclectic. My favorite short, "Hannah Cohen's Holy Communion," was about a little Jewish girl who tries to sneak into a First Communion in a makeshift white dress because her Catholic friends told her that she would get cake. The girl who starred in the film was there in the theater, and needless to say I was a little starstruck when I saw her.

A scale model of part of the distilling process 

Since the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival was going on, my friends and I thought that this would also be the perfect weekend to tour the Jameson distillery. The tour was a little disappointing because it wasn't a tour of the actual distillery, but a tour of a model of the distillery. It was still cool to see how whiskey is made though, and we got to learn about different types of whiskey and what the differences are between them. Jameson is made up of a unique proportion of malted and un-malted grains, and this is their "secret" to its smooth, almost sweet flavor. At the end of the tour, everyone was given a free glass of whiskey with ginger and lime, and although I can see why people like it, I'd rather see a Jameson film than drink a glass of Jameson.

Outside the Old Jameson Distillery

View of the outdoor market from inside the Gallery of Photography

On Saturday we walked around the Temple Bar area of Dublin. On the walking tour of Dublin I took a few weeks ago, the tour guide told us that Temple Bar is the cultural center of Dublin, and I can definitely see why. We visited the Gallery of Photography, where there was an exhibit going on called This is Not a House. The photos in this exhibit were originally published in the New York Times Magazine in 2009 as part of a series on the sub-prime mortgage crisis. It was kind of weird to see an exhibit on America in a gallery in Ireland, especially since I had been to the places that were featured in some of the photos. In the courtyard outside of the gallery, there was a huge outdoor food market. It kind of reminded me of markets I've seen in Berkeley because most of the food was organic and homemade. They didn't have many fruits or vegetables which was disappointing, but I guess it makes sense since most of the produce here is imported from Spain or Africa.



While this weekend wasn't as exciting or as jam-packed as most of the other weekends I've spent here, it was fun to be here in Dublin and not really have an agenda; it made me start to feel like this is my home (for a few more months at least!) This is the last weekend for a while that I'll be in Dublin though; during the next month I'll be going to Kilkenny (which is in Southeastern Ireland), Italy, London, and Paris!