You know you’re a lazy motherfucker when you can’t even get around to completing your own ego-stroking series of pictures from your latest foreign trip. And forget about the travelogue!
Well, friends, my promise to you is that I will complete this ego stroke. Today I bring you the first half of my pictures from Dublin (the second half should be drunker). You’ll remember that I was in Ireland thanks to the good people of Fox Walden, who brought me to Belfast to visit the set of City of Ember. I was also going to Budapest, to visit the set of Hellboy II, and it turned out I had a couple of days in between to kill. I decided to spend that time in Dublin, and traveled there with some other journalists (whose flattering picture is below).
Coming next is more Dublin pics, and then the very few pictures I managed to take in Hungary.
Pictures Part 1
Pictures Part 2
Pictures Part 3
Travelogue Part 1
My esteemed travel companions, Kelvin from Latino Review and Rhonda from Hollywood.com. This is what living in luxury looks like – the first class compartment on the train from Belfast to Dublin.
Hey look, it’s my book jacket photo.
My room in Dublin, at the Harding Hotel. It’s a little small, sure, but I was paying 90 bucks American a night. And the location wasn’t all that bad…
As proven by this view from the bed, which includes a thousand year old cathedral. The view, not the bed.
Here’s the cathedral as seen when holding the camera out the window. It’s Christ Church Cathedral, and it was begun in 1083 by King Sitric Silkenbeard, the Viking who used to run Dublin. It was pretty much totally rebuilt in the 1100s by Richard de Clare, aka Strongbow. Everybody had better names back in the day.
The General Post Office. It was here that Patrick Pearse declared Ireland a republic on Easter morning 1916. He would be executed days later.
Hey look, it’s a hairy American douchebag. And behind him is the Spire of Dublin, which was supposed to be erected as part of the celebration of the Millenium. God bless the Irish, they finished it in 2003.
At night the tip of the monument is supposedly lit up. By the time night rolled around, I was too lit up to notice.
I fail Irish history! This statue is of a great man involved in the struggle to free the Irish Republic, but I’ll be fucked if I can remember his name. I just loved the way this picture came out.
But here’s a man whose name I know – one of the all-time great homosexuals, Oscar Wilde. This statue is in a park opposite Wilde’s birthplace, and it’s part of a small memorial to the great writer, which includes some of his greatest quotes. Kelvin was especially tickled by Wilde’s wonderful border crossing quote: ‘I have nothing to declare except my genius.’