Leta warned us of a surprise company visit, and I was dubious of what it could be, since she didn't tell us to wear anything particularly special. The day before, Emily, thinking much as I have that her surprises nearly always leave me inappropriately dressed for the occasion, interrogated Leta about the casualness of our casual dress code. Not walking heavy, no hiking, we were promised. But cute casual, not athletic casual.
I had heard competing information for Leta and Gabriel, 9:30 company visit, 2 hour company visit, two hours to get to a company visit, visit in Dublin, visit in Belfast. When we first took a little look around the dockland areas of Belfast, before heading out of the city, I was suspicious that we would come so close to the Titanic museum without going inside. The H&W, Harland and Wolff, cranes that once lifted the Titanic were impossibly large. The museum is large, four pointed, to look like the prow of the ship from every direction. The building is as tall as the ship was, from keel to gunwales.
Of course, we were indeed going to the museum. Never underestimate Leta's ability to surprise us with the thing we were guessing we would do... Anyway, inside the museum, we went directly to the sixth floor, and worked our way downward through the history of the vessel. Information about the history of Belfast and shipping in Belfast got us started, and I confess, I rushed through the first three floors too quickly, and ended up in the bottom three, which were primarily devoted to modern depictions of the Titanic in media, and to deep sea explorations to better understand the ship, which I did not find quite so compelling. So, the short story is that I rushed through the good parts, and then stood around for an hour, while more sensible people dragged their feet through the exhibit.
(Bear with me on this, for my mind, it makes more sense to go first floor, second floor etc, but you have to just remember that I am moving reverse chronologically down the stories of the building. Pretend it is Star Wars, and just go with it, and argue amongst yourselves about which floor I am really talking about.) The first floor was the history of Belfast as a linen manufacturing city, as the bustling northern port in Ireland for the British, and for Harland and Wolff, the operators of many many cranes. The most notable, and most relevant to the story, are Samson and Goliath. They are still standing today, and I got pictures of them before we went into the museum. They look perfectly modern still.
The second floor was about the construction of the ship, and while the ride was a bit hokey, they had an actual moving ride, where you could move along as though on the side of the ship, and watch recreations and see displays of the various parts that went into building the boat. I would hate to be on the crew who hammered the steel bolts in from both sides to keep the metal plates together. I'm sure there was an entire generation of completely deaf Belfaster men. (For your interest, there is no official name for people from Belfast. I googled it. No one has settled on anything. Belfastians has been thrown around, purely academically, but no one likes it.) After my little lift ride, I continued on to the next floor, to see recreations of the outfitting of the inside of the Titanic. There was one display, in which you could virtually move up the stairs through five levels of the ship. You stood in the center of this three sided room of tv screens, and get extreme vertigo as it completely feels like you are moving around within the room. It was really that good. I feel like it might have been easier if I had pretended to walk while I was in it, to ease some of the vertigo.
The outfitting of the rooms was quite marvelous, especially the state rooms, but even the smaller rooms were clever and quaint in their use of space. I could not get over how tiny the beds were though. I am not an especially large woman, but there is absolutely no way I could have slept in even the largest, and most palatial of state rooms. If I thought hostel beds were terrible and tiny, sleeping in second class bunks must have been horrendous. I read that for all but the state rooms, the showers ran salt water. Salt water. What would even be the point of showering? You would come out just as gross as you went in.
The next floor (the fourth? I think?), we heard audio recordings of survivors, or readings of things written by survivors, of the crash. All along the walls were the Morse code and text versions of all the distress calls and responses from other boats. The most tragic thing is the obvious desperation in the voice of the guy tapping out the calls. "OK, we will hold on as long as we can." It said that from the moment they saw the berg to when they hit it was just over 34 seconds. Virtually instantaneous. When you realize how truly massive this boat was, and the confidence that people had in it, it is absolutely astounding that it went down. There was a bridge built in Dublin by H&W, and for several years after the tragedy, no one would cross it. What is nearly as remarkable as that, is that Titanic was only 406 of over 1000 ships that Harland and Wolff built. Despite the tragedy, they went right back to making boats, and eventually people got over the whole bridge thing. (Haha, see what I did there, it's a bridge, you have to get over it. Very clever, Sierra.)
After that, as stated before, I sort of lost interest. The final levels featured a theater playing video and some very rehearsed audio of the deep sea searching of the wreckage underwater. The only thing of note at this stage was that they have identified a microorganism that can break down metal, that is slowly eating the Titanic, that might be usable for breaking down more of our waste on the surface. The final sections were on the representations of the Titanic sinking in media (apparently the mid century movie depiction is the most historically accurate), and of further deep sea diving to the Titanic on the ocean floor.
After my tour, I needed some coffee rather desperately, and got a cup at The Galley coffee shop, where the crew wore very cute turn of the century outfits. The poor Americans behind me in line literally held their money out, and he took what he needed from them. They said that that was not the first time they have done that. In fact, they were nearly robbed blind in Morocco because Moroccan merchants are not as honest as the Irish. I mean, I hate the money too, it's all silly sizes and colors, and there are literally eight million different coins. (1 cent, 2 cent, 5 cent, 10 cent, 20 cent, 50 cent, 1 euro, 2 euro. You could very nearly give exact change with these coins so that someone could conceivably get one of each. 3.88 in change, and you would get one of everything. It's preposterous.) But I am literate, and I can figure out how to count out my own change, however slowly. I figure that it is my right as an obnoxious American, who -- second to the Germans, who are holding up the euro right now -- are the main source of foreign direct investment in their stupid little country, to get to take as long as I damn well please counting out my money.
Anyway, I sipped my coffee, got on the free wifi, assured my mother and boyfriend that I am alive, and googled how to say "how are you" in Irish. Not only had Tony the cart driver tried to tell me, but Gabriel had too, and this time, I was going to learn this phrase. Google Translate, in fairness, is retarded. It did not offer to pronounce the Irish translation, only my English phrase that I just typed. Thank you Google, I do, in fact, speak English already. The phrase is "Conas atà tù?" and happily pronounced very much the same way that it is written. (Contrast with the Irish language word for cheers, for drinking, spelled Slaintè! but pronounced s-lawn-cha!)
We piled on the bus, and began heading for Dublin. I was very much looking forward to returning to the Republic, and because this was our last day with Gabriel, I rode with him in the front seat. It was quite warm in the sun, and there were fairly forgettable hillsides on the way to Dublin, so I did some blogging, and some staring out the window. When we passed into the Republic, I felt like I could exhale again. By the time we arrived in Dublin, I felt quite comfortable again, but was prepping to have to say good bye to Gabriel. Someone else in the group had bought a card, and everyone had signed it. I took a second to write to him, and told him that I will miss him terribly, and if he ever needs a live-in nanny to care for his kids, I won't be hard to find. I thanked him for letting me be the co-pilot he never asked for, and for learning my name, and I told him that I would miss him very very much. I hugged him as I got out of the bus, and again before I had to check in in the hostel. He said that he might be coming to visit in Seattle, and I hope that he does, and if he does, I hope that we can have a massive reunion of all the kids he has driven around Ireland over the years. He has been doing this trip with Leta for at least five years, so by now, there must be nearly 150 kids who have fallen in love with Gabriel too, and would like to see him. If I ever make it back to Ireland, I will go visit Gabriel.
We checked back in at the Four Courts hostel, and I contemplated what I would do about the weekend. Since everyone else is leaving on Saturday morning, I will have to find accommodation for Saturday and Sunday night, which are honestly the two worst nights to be looking for accommodation in Dublin. I would love to say that I planned ahead and organized it in advance, but I didn't, so I would need to do a little research. But that was going to be an issue for future Sierra, because soon after we arrived, we decided to go to Penney's one more time. Literally every single girl, including Leta, and Kathleen who came to replace Marnie, went to Penney's. I didn't need anything, and I wasn't prepared to buy anything unless there was something incredibly good. I was interested in seeing how different pants were here from in America. The first thing I discovered is that the boot cut has not crossed the ocean. There were 5 different varieties of skinny. Skinny jegging, skinny slim fit, skinny high waist, boyfriend (which is hardly an improvement over skinny, because the narrow hips and wide legs make me look about seven feet across.), and another variety of skinny that I think was cropped. Not a boot cut or flare jean to be found. So, that was tragic. I stumbled upon a maxi dress, to which I am strongly addicted, but passed because, despite being 3 euro, it was at least one size too big, and thin as cheese cloth. I don't know what you are supposed to wear under it, but I've noticed that most of the Irish don't seem to know either. So that's not good.
As my beloved and patient mother will attest, I am having a very hard time with the fact that I gained some weight recently, and had to buy all new pants, and I can no longer throw on whatever and still get a flattering cut. I have come to associate high waisted pants with greater success though. I found an intriguing pair that came with little suspenders and were skinny, but had plenty of hip room, so I decided to give it a shot. This was a terrible idea. I don't know what these pants were made of, but it was not real denim. They were very very stretchy, and had the top flaps of pockets, but no pockets, so that the flaps just stuck out straight back from my butt, which looked much like someone had put two balloons on top of ice cream cones. And not good balloons, but day old balloons. It was very bad. I apologize for the mental image, but I was thoroughly horrified by putting on these pants, and in fact felt quite terrible about my abnormal, American shaped body for the rest of the day. Clothes shopping has gone from one of my favorite hobbies to the absolutely worst activity ever, and I don't ever want to go back. Eff you, Penney's, and your weird, bad self-esteem pants.
Leta, as usual, had a fantastic time, and several much skinnier girls made some purchases. We met outside and took off for another Thai restaurant. I should have decided to find my own food. I don't like Thai, and it was giving me a weird vibe (see, Thai food after the Aran Islands). But I went because everyone else was going, and I am not good with peer pressure. It ended up being quite good, beef red curry with bamboo shoots and coconut milk, if very expensive. I think I ended up paying somewhere in the family of 13 euro, including the service charge for large groups. We were all quite motivated to shed our coinage, so the pile of change on that table was a bit over the top. As we set up to leave, Leta was taking a cab, and Lauren and I were going to go with her, but there weren't enough seats with all the people who wanted to join the taxi, so we decided to walk instead because Lauren wanted some gelato. She asked very nicely if I wanted some gelato, and I said I had spent quite enough money already that day, so no, and besides I don't really eat dessert. She said, well, then you can watch me while I get some gelato.
We took a different route from the other girls who were walking back, and ended up crossing paths with them on O'Connell street, and from there found our gelato place of choice. She got a rich, dark, chocolate brownie gelato, and was extremely satisfied with her purchase. We found the river, our easiest landmark, as it runs up the center of the part of town that we inhabit, and proceeded on to the hostel. Once inside, I spent quite a bit of time on Facebook messenger, chatting with everyone at home, and she took a shower, and I had one before bed. As usual, everyone else got in quite late. I will admit that other than when Reilly and Will came in looking for something, and Reilly rode Will piggy back out of the room, I did not hear anyone return.
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