It's maybe half an hour, 40 minutes to the city center via
DART (Dublin Area Rapid Transit) - a fairly comfy ride, and
way out there there are seats inbound at all hours. We
got off at Connolly and were going to do a walking tour of
the area, but it was starting to mist a bit aggressively,
so it was more ducking in doorways and waiting a bit than a
walking tour. The Abbey Theatre was closed. We went by
degrees toward the National Library and its photographic
exhibition, called something like life in the great manor
houses circa 1900 - a rather small but interesting
selection, including a couple photos of Powerscourt and
its waterfall. We dodged raindrops through the Temple Bar
area, where it was too early yet for lunch or even a beer,
went up to Dame Street; poked our noses in the Olympia
Theatre, which was preparing for that night's festivities,
then gave a thought, as it was by now pouring in earnest,
to paying an extortionate amount to see Dublinia, the
exhibit dealing with the original Viking settlement. But
cheapness and hunger won out, and as we had recently walked
past an interesting-looking assortment of restaurants -
Malay, French, and a lot in between, an earlyish lunch
seemed in order. For some reason we decided on Toscana:
perhaps because of its advertising a 4-course meal for
E10. Beware - in Ireland nowadays they count your tea
as a course! So appie/soup, main, sweet, and bev.

My bruschetta was a rather coarse treatment - big chunks
of greenish but decent-tasting tomatoes in a dressing of
okay oil and vinegar on chewy bread. I guess more or less
what I should have expected. I have a soft spot for even
mediocre spaghetti Bolognese, so I had this - it was better
than expected, a meaty and tasty sauce, good pasta, a few
shreds of quite decent grana on top, an odd garnish of
alfalfa sprouts a bit of a dissonance. They offered a dish
of that nasty powdered stuff to further enhance the
experience if one so cared.

lili pronounced her minestrone and pepperoni pizza (good
rainy weather fare) good.

I forget what dessert was; a respectable bottle of
Montepulciano for not too much money was a nice substitute
for the tea.

As we were pretty much right across the street from Dublin
Castle, so in we went - not to the castle proper, which one
figures is more or less like any other castle, but to a
couple of the museums inside. In tribute to gvdIAD, we
visited the Revenue Museum, which describes the history of
money, its consequence taxation and its further consequence
smuggling, in a tidy 15-minute two-room presentation. We
took a few photos as well to show him, but as it was dim,
these didn't come out.

The plan was to spend the rest of the afternoon at the
Chester Beattie Library, whose exhibits were religions of
the world and Mughal illuminated pages. Enthralling.
Amazing collection of religious manuscripts and artifacts;
and the temporary exhibition was very nicely done. I figure
we spent a couple hours there, but now it was hurry up time.
It had been brought to our attention that it was Arthur's
Day, a recently made-up holiday celebrating the birthday
of the founder of the Guinness brewing empire. Apparently
henceforth every September 23 or somesuch at one to six
(the brewery was founded in 1759, get it?), there's to be
this worldwide toast. I wonder what will happen to the
plumbing systems throughout the civilized world at 1815.
Anyway, the question was, train back to the suburbs or
wait around downtown for the event, a couple pints keeping
us company? Walking past busloads of apparently pre-drunked
young people on Dame St. gave us the answer, so we hurried
to Tara Station, where we promptly missed the train that
would take us back in time; but as we had spent our pesos
we decided to stick with Plan A and return to Finnegan's
for at least the aftermath of the event. The DART down
was much quicker than the one in the morning had been, so
w showed up, interestingly, at exactly 17:59, in time to
view the downtown moment on television, though without a
pint in our hands.

The bartender was pouring Guinnesses constantly in a multi-
stage process, with glasses in varying degrees of pour
arrayed before him. I ordered two, and we took them back to
a round corner table where I had spent many happy hours in
decades past. The guys down the way got a plate of chicken
legs (on the house) but didn't want them, saying that they'd
already eaten, so passed them on to us, who consumed them
gratefully: pretty decent bbq chicken for the wilds of
Ireland. Their game became clear when they, clearly regular
customers, asked the landlord if he had any oysters:
presently he came by with a plate for them, and lili, always
looking out for me, collared him, and soon I had four lovely
bivalves before me; they unfortunately had been butchered
badly in the opening, but that's what happens when a barkeep
tries to do his own work and that of an oyster shucker at
the same time, at top speed, on Arthur's day.

That night we tried to get in touch with a tour company that
lili had used years ago and whose name shall remain shrouded
in mystery - we were looking at an overnighter to Derry and
the Giant's Causeway and the Carrickafergus rope bridge and
stuff like that: let it suffice to say that we didn't end up
getting to any of these places.