I haven’t left the apartment in the last couple of days, so today I resolve to get out since the weather is clear. However, it’s quite a windy day as evidenced by the ripples on the River Liffey:
I text my friend CJ, who fortuitously is free and needing to get out for a walk himself. I meet him just on the other side of the river and we set out on a rough loop through a few different parts of Dublin I haven’t seen yet.
One of the first landmarks we come upon is the deconsecrated St. Mary’s Chapel of Ease, also known as “The Black Church.” Local lore says that you will summon the devil if you run around the church anticlockwise three times at midnight. Seems appropriate for Halloween!
We next head to the Blessington Street Park and reservoir. Here’s the entrance with St. Joseph’s Carmelite Church in the background:
It’s not a very large park, but it’s pleasant enough with the autumn foliage and lots of ducks on the water.
We continue heading northward and come across the Irish Volunteers monument as we enter the Phibsboro neighborhood. The Irish Volunteers was was a military organisation established in 1913 by Irish nationalists. Members of the Irish Volunteers took part in the Easter Rising of 1916 that was the first major armed insurrection by Irish republicans against British rule since the 1700s and marked the beginning of the Irish revolutionary period.
Phibsboro is home to a small food truck park called the Eatyard, where we decide to pick up something for lunch. CJ chooses a wrap from a Japanese place, while I order a tasty beef and potato dish from a Mexican one. The Eatyard has some Halloween decorations up, including a coffin with a headless Marie Antoinette. There are no tables for eat-in given the COVID restrictions, so we amble along the Royal Canal for a ways and lean against a wall to consume our food.
We continue following the Royal Canal until we reach Dorset Street Upper, when we turn back towards city centre. Here’s another example of local Dubliners showing their enthusiasm for Halloween:
A friend reminded me that Halloween also coincides with Samhain “a Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season and beginning of winter or “darker half” of the year. It is held on 1 November, but with celebrations beginning on the evening of 31 October, as the Celtic day began and ended at sunset.” (quote frm this Wikipedia article).
We pass by St. George’s Church, another deconsecrated building that was sold off in the early 1990s and doesn’t seem to be used for anything, although it’s still a landmark of the inner north part of Dublin.
We continue southward and pass through Dublin’s small Chinatown and come to the Parnell monument:
From there, we spill back into the pedestrian shopping area along Henry Street / Mary Street. The following maps show the general area of town we covered:
CJ wants to stop by the Marks & Spencer Food Hall to get something for dinner later on, and since it’s on the way back towards home for me, I’m happy to tag along. Most of all the other grocery shops we passed during our walk had long queues of shoppers outside. However, we walked right into M&S… it’s known for being more expensive than other grocery stores like Lidl, Tesco, Dunnes and Aldi. It has lots of prepared meals and speciality food items, which I scan for future ideas as CJ fills his basket with some fish cakes, salad, cheese, and beer. There’s a checkout lane open, so again no waiting required. CJ lives only a few blocks away. It’s around 5:00 and already getting dark. We say goodbye, vowing to meet up again soon for another walk. I head back across the Liffey to Spranger’s Yard and up to my apartment, ready to relax for awhile after a couple of hours of walking. According to my iPhone, I clocked in more than 10,000 steps today! I have nothing special planned for the evening. Thankfully there are plenty of leftovers, so I’ll probably just heat up something easy for dinner and watch TV. There are sounds of some fireworks in the distance, but I’m expecting it to be fairly quiet given the lockdown.
