The Doors of Dublin

We are safely back from Dublin, clouds of ash notwithstanding.  We nipped over on the unspeakably grasping discount airline Ryanair.  After hearing about their plan to charge passengers a pound for visiting the restroom, we began to trade absurd Ryanairisms - "On Ryanair, you can plug your computer in at your seat... but it drains your battery to power the plane;" "Do you have our passports?" "Oh no, I gave them to Ryanair in exchange for seatbeats;" or, just now, "Hey - I am blogging about our trip.  Do you spell Ryanair with one 'n' or two?" "One. [Reproving scowl.] They can't afford two 'n's."

We were only there for a few days, lured to the Emerald Isle by a production of Krapp's Last Tape starring Dumbledore himself, Michael Gambon.  More on that soon, I hope, but for now, the famous doors of Dublin, as we saw them:


The most well known of the Dublin doors are the ones on its Georgian squares...


... with their translucent fanlights (of crucial importance in what can be a rather gloomy climate)...


... but I couldn't resist more gothic doorways ...


...with their anxious kings and exhausted bishops.


Some doors look staid at first..


... but hide their inner flamboyance...


... in the weather vane.


There are highly guarded doors,


... gracefully pragmatic doors,...


... and doors for midnight meetings with amorous troubadours.


There are also some doors whose carved companions seem considerably more ...


...haunted.

In the end, of course, my favorite doors were a touch metaphorical - 
the doors to higher education, to adulthood, to the ivory tower itself, at Trinity College.

2 Responses so far.

  1. Max Renn says:
    Thursday, May 13, 2010 at 10:54:00 PM ADT

    There are barn doors
    And there are revolving doors

    Doors on the rudders of big ships
    And there are revolving doors

    There are doors that open by themselves
    There are sliding doors
    And there are secret doors

    There are doors that lock
    And doors that don't

    There are doors that let you in and out
    But never open
    But there are trapdoors
    That you can't come back from

  2. Sycorax Pine says:
    Friday, May 14, 2010 at 7:15:00 AM ADT

    I love a good trapdoor...

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