Bloomsday

Bloomsday, for those unfamiliar, is the celebration of the life and work of James Joyce, since his most notable work, Ulysses, takes place on June 16. While it wasn't the main reason I went to Ireland, it was why I was there when I was; it was the starting point, datewise, for the trip - everything else was built around me being in Dublin on June 16.

I had a few things lined up to do, but before those came along I had to occupy myself, so first up I dropped off some laundry to be done and then headed off to the National Gallery of Ireland.

One of the Bloomsday traditions is dressing up in period clothing, with a lot of emphasis on boater hats.

Anyway, to the gallery. They currently have an exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci sketches, which was awesome. No photos allowed, though. But one of them was this, called Cats, lion and a dragon:

Ugly baby Jesus!

Goya's Portrait of Doña Antonia Zárate.

Titian's Ecce Homo.

They have Avercamp's A winter scene, though it's quite small so I didn't take a photo; here's what it looks like:

Another you can't photograph is Caravaggio's The Taking of Christ, so here's what it looks like:

Wandering around some more. The statue of Molly Malone, as in the one from the song.

Next up I went on a tour of Dublin Castle. That was reasonably interesting, but it took longer than I felt was necessary.

Albert.

Victoria.

I had to rush from the castle to the laundry to collect my washing, and then dash off back into the city to the James Joyce centre to join the tour I'd booked. We went on a walk around the city to some of the key places in Joyce's life and a few referenced specifically in the book.

While the guide was terribly knowledgeable, he was American – which meant that his reading of the passages didn't have quite the impact they'd have had in a 'proper' Dublin accent. One of my struggles with the book (which I did actually read all the way through) was that I couldn't quite get a handle on how it should be 'read', i.e. I don't really grasp how it would sound if spoken aloud.

But that was a minor complaint. Pictures!

There's a statue of Joyce just off O'Connell Street, the main street of Dublin.

And that was the tour. I had a couple of hours free between the end of the tour and the next thing on my timetable, which was at 7pm. But it was cold and miserable, so I went back to the hotel for a while and had dinner at a nearby restaurant before walking back into town for the 7pm talk.

When I first started planning the trip I wasn't sure exactly what events I'd go to – because they hadn't announced the specifics that early. It wasn't until I was on my trip that I was looking at the itinerary and saw that the guest speakers for the annual Bloomsday talk would be American husband and wife authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman.

I probably would have happy with whoever they brought along, but that I was getting to see one of the most acclaimed authors of recent times in real life (he's won a Pulitzer), and I'm a huge fan of his books The Yiddish Policeman's Union and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

Here's a picture.

The talk was good, but wasn't really all that much about Joyce or Ulysses. Which is both a good thing and a bad thing; given I didn't really understand it, if it'd been a hardcore conversation about some of the more impermeable aspects, I might not have been able to follow it. But I wouldn't have minded hearing some discussion that could have shed some light on it.

What they did speak about was far more general; their lives, their writing, politics - they're quite good friends of the current US first family, since Ayelet went to college with Barack Obama.

All up it was a good evening; in the lead up I spent some time talking to the man next to me, who turned out to be from New Zealand. After it was over I called it a night and went back to the hotel.