This past summer, while heading back to the US from Europe, I had no clue I was going to have to demonstrate that quintessential travel trait: Flexibility.

Ascending the escalator from the train station in Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport I was greeted by the “Departures” monitor blinking the cancellation of my flight back to Atlanta. I hadn’t even had my morning coffee.

The airlines that summer had been grounded sporadically around the globe due to the CrowdStrike computer outages, causing a domino effect in cancellations and stranded passengers. Looks like my flight had fallen victim to a “blue screen of death” somewhere along the way. I adjusted my backpack and proceeded into the main terminal and found the KLM/Delta check-in.

Behind the counter sat a rather delicate man about my age, wearing the light blue uniform of KLM. I presented my situation and after what seemed like many hours of clickity clackity typing, while his reading glasses slid down his nose with each purse of his lips, he arrived at a solution. He proudly announced that he had rebooked me to Atlanta via Dublin for that morning.

Now, I’m very picky about my seats on long haul flights. I asked if it was an aisle seat or window seat on today’s flight from Dublin to Atlanta. Hmmmmmm. He resumed his lip pursing glasses sliding. After a final click of the mouse he offers the apologetic “I’m sorry sir, but unfortunately that ist not possible.”

Nope. My wheels started spinning. Am I in a hurry to get home? My dog Pork Chop is at the kennel, or “camp” as we like to call it, and that costs money. And I do have people covering me at work, but it is already mid-week so what difference does that really make?

“Is there an aisle or window seat for the Dublin to Atlanta the day after tomorrow?”

“OOOOOOOOOOO!” He exclaimed with wide eyes bright from behind his readers as though he was about to embark on the impromptu adventure with me. The answer was yes, so two nights and 1 full day in a place that was not on my radar for this trip. Done and dusted.

Before passing security, I had booked a hotel, texted my buddy Frank, who is from Boston but lives in Dublin, that I was surprisingly headed that way. I acknowledged that it was short notice. Soon after, I received a text back with helpful Dublin Airport logistics and directions for catching the bus into town.

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Thanks to Google Maps, I meandered my way to find my hotel. “What the hell did we do before Google Maps?” I wondered to myself. “You would have bought a paper city map at the airport and used it” I answered myself cringing at how “get off my lawn!” that sounded. But it is true.

I fell in love with the Ruby Molly Hotel check in. Eclectic doesn’t begin to describe the sense of design. Purposefully mismatched vintage furniture and a classic yet modern color pallet binding it all together, giving it a sense of arrival from the get-go. The common areas on the ground floor included several rooms - all hodgepodged together speakeasy style - each uniquely decorated, with the sense that each were hiding some comfortable mystery or secret passageway. Very “Ms. Peabody, in the library, with the candlestick” vibe. Loved. It.

I had only visited Dublin once for a work trip 15 years prior. The island was certainly on my list to revisit with a desire to get out and really see the countryside. Here I was again, the thought of which never crossed my mind while I was in Amsterdam Centraal Station that same morning, navigating to the airport.

I reached out to Frank via WhatsApp telling him I had arrived. Frank is one of those buddies one meets through travel. I ran across him years ago at my local bar in Atlanta overhearing him talking about a music festival I attend in Cologne on the regular. At the time, he was in Atlanta from Boston on business. We had a couple beers and talked music, and we’ve now been on many an adventure together. We made plans to meet up the next day.

But for tonight, I was on a mission to find some Pub and relax.

As much as we may rail on globalization, with every place filling with the sameness of every other place, there is something to be said about the trusty Irish Pub. From my experience, the Irish Pubs in Hong Kong are substantially similar in look and function as ones in Boston, Bucharest, Berlin or Buenos Aries. There is something “homey” about their consistency when you’re in a foreign land – even if you’re not Irish. I found a great, nameless one around the corner from the Ruby Molly Hotel, and plopped down on a high seated leather bar stool. This place was going to be my entertainment for the evening.

I’m not really a Guinness drinker, and I don’t necessarily “when in Rome” when it comes to things that I don’t particularly care for to begin with, so I ordered a Carlsberg. Over the bar was a picture of the Pub’s exterior taken in what appeared to be the turn of the 19th century. I wondered to myself if it was still owned by the same family, or if it sold to some conglomerate that owns Pubs like these across the globe.

I was easing into that sense of “place” where I could sit with my journal and let my thoughts wander, absorbing the real-life movie being filmed through the lens of my mind’s eye, mentally embellishing here and there. The pictures and memorabilia hanging from the walls, the worn wooden staircase winding up to the dining room, the construction workers sitting in the corner debating the football match on the TVs, the waitress from Poland who was working her first day and struggling with the menu, all gave good fodder to my imagination.

“Yeah, my great, great grandfather was Irish. O’Brien. I believe they were from Cork. Do you know any O’Briens?”

The American accent speaking to the barman boxed my ears jarring me out of my daydreams. How many times a day this barman hears about the family linage of some New Worlder? Who else does that? Does a German walk into an Irish Pup in Dublin and talk about his great grandfather? When was the last time a French person told you “Well, my grandmother was from Norway, and my Great Grandfather was Italian.”

I think it is something uniquely American.

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Next day I explored the Temple Bar area: rows of Georgian and Victorian buildings filled with all the modern amenities the global citizen requires: H&M, Zara, Dunkin’, Starbucks, and a Lego Store smattered about in conflict with local businesses like FX Butchers, the bakers and the candlestick makers, including Donner Bap and Thai restaurants, all being policed by the souvenir shops in between selling the same refrigerator magnets and other goods made in China.

F.X. Buckley Butcher, Dublin Ireland, July 2024

I bought five magnets for my collection and a few for my Irish American friends.

I can now say, sadly, I have visited Dublin twice and have yet to really “see” it. But what does “seeing” a place really mean? Is it relative?

I’ve never been to the Jameson Distillery or the Guinness Brewery. The library at Trinity College, the Christ Church, and St. Patrick’s Cathedral all still elude me. I saw the National Museum of Ireland (and even the Leprechaun Museum), but my Birkenstock clog clad feet did not cross their stone thresholds.

What I did do was catch up with an old travel buddy, reminisced over pints and shepherd’s pie about our war stories about festivals and concerts we’d attended together. How it took us hours to get into the Olympic Stadium U Bahn in Berlin after that Depeche Mode concert the summer before. How much it sucked getting Covid after that one show in Arlon Belgium but how it was worth it. How our mutual German friends, whom I had just visited, were getting on. How our luck, or lack thereof, was going with the ladies (for him) and the guys (for me). How we hate our jobs.

Impromptu detours like these can have a certain magic to them. I didn’t really have enough time to research all the “things to do” and, frankly, after three weeks on the road I really wasn’t in the mood. It was time to allow a place to “happen” to me. To relax. To walk down the street and just pop into a place. Catch up with an old friend unexpectedly. Having a conversation with a barman, in English, over a pint (of something that isn’t Guinness) about absolutely nothing important. To fully “be” in a quiet, serendipitous way.

To daydream

The next morning, as I gathered my things into the Uber to head to the airport, I took one last look at the row houses lined up like soldiers, each topped with chimneys that once belched smoke from stoves heating the day’s stew pot, breathing in the air filled with the ghosts of families of linen weavers and Guinness brewery workers. I swore a vow.

I will return to you one day soon Dublin, you dear ol gritty gal, to really take in all the beauty and history I know you have to offer.

An Unexpected Trip to Dublin

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