Little Girl Lost

Today marks an important day-- the partial formation of my independence in Dublin. Here's how I got it...

This afternoon, my mother-in-law and I decided to visit the Dublin Writer's Museum. We walked to the bus stop, hopped on the 11, and got off at Parnell Square. The Museum, which is housed in a Georgian townhome, traces Ireland's literary history from the Book of Kells and into the 20th century. It features manuscripts, authorial artefacts, paintings, and bronze busts of people like Brendan Behan and Oscar Wilde (who most certainly would've made a fabulous friend).

After the museum tour and a small snack in the cafe, I decided it would be a good idea to walk home along the same route the 11 takes back out of the city. Oddly enough, I was also able to convince Marcie that this was a sound, good plan. "I can't learn my way around the city from riding the bus," I told her, "I have to walk around it." And while I firmly believe this is true-- the easiest way to learn to get somewhere is to get inside the map rather than to try to read it-- I was counting too much on my memorization of landmarks, like the bakery with the purple awning is at such-and-such corner, and that's where we turn left-- for a walk home to be a truly splendid idea. Did I mention that it was raining?

So, we took off. And we walked for quite awhile in the right direction, my mother-in-law bolstering my directional self-esteem by asserting that she, too, remembered many of the same landmarks as I. Then, where I thought the bus turned right, near the Home Farm Football Club, we had to stop to ask for directions. Turns out I was wrong (surprise!).

We followed the directions given us instead, and we made it home in a roundabout, square-ish, way that took us in the back gate of the university rather than the front. But, we made it. Now all I have to do is get lost in three other directions, and then I should know Dublin as well as a high school football captain knows his steroids.

One more thing: holla to Marcie, my mother-in-law, who claims not to have walked this much since dinosaurs trod the earth. For a self-confessed "old" lady, she sure did keep up with my Jane-Fonda walking style!