I like my routines.

Whether it’s socializing, writing, working, or anything else, I stick to a schedule. I’m the type of person who can listen to the same song over and over without losing my mind. Day after day, I eat the same bagel with honey butter and eggs. On Sundays, I take the same trip to Barnes & Nobles to browse books while sipping coffee. So, leaving my home country for two months was going to be an enormous departure from my usual routine. Thankfully, I managed to do it. To stay sane, I devised a completely new schedule to follow while living in the beautiful land of the green.

I’m happy to report that I kept my weekends mostly routine-free. It was impossible to do otherwise, given how much there was to do and see. One weekend could be spent taking a bus to the Cliffs of Moher, followed by a flight to London. If not for my daily internship at HotPress, I probably wouldn’t have kept to any sort of schedule at all! (The OCD in me just gasped in shock.)

I swiftly established a daily ritual for my morning commute.

I would grab a muffin from the nearby supermarket while I was on campus at UCD, and then I would head to the bus stop. 39A was my go-to route; it would whisk me away from campus to my stop on Dawson Street in thirty minutes. When taking a bus in Dublin, it is essential to sit on the upper deck. I know I had to. The air is considerably lighter; the view is superior, and there was plenty to take in from that vantage point.

 So, I got off the bus every morning on Dawson Street, which was right next to a well-known store that I soon came to frequent. This massive bookstore, Hodges Figgis, had levels upon levels of books that I could lose myself in for hours. With two large glass displays full of books hugging the front door, it was unavoidable, inevitable, really, that I would start spending time there.

My morning commute took me past many of Dublin’s best features, because HotPress is located close to Trinity College on the aptly named Trinity Street. Trinity is enormous and, naturally, breathtaking. It looks like someone dropped a massive castle in the midst of a busy city. The design is strategic; once you enter the interior grounds and go beneath the clock, everything else fades into the background. Here, the normally deafening din of the busy streets is strangely muted. Trinity seems to be mired in a time warp — that is, if the 21st-century tourists with their cameras had not broken through. The structures ooze history, which I would like to believe I soaked up. Don’t get me started on the Book of Kells.

Every time I passed by St. Stephen’s Green, a peaceful spot with an elegant simplicity, I spotted a variety of green colors. Looking at the artwork hanging on the gates proved to be a good way to kill time on days when there was a lot of traffic. Along with the many tourists who flocked to her statue for pictures, I got to greet Molly Malone every morning on my way to work.

The entrance to Grafton Street was always to my left, and I would often stand there just listening to the musicians play. It reminded me of my trips to New Orleans, where there was performance art around every corner. My favorite was a group of men who painted themselves silver and performed as statues. They had a plush dog that seemed so real that I couldn’t tell if it was or not, so one day I stared at it for a long time until one of them said, “it’s a toy!” There was also an exceptionally gifted artist who used spray paint to make stunning masterpieces—he always drew a large crowd.

After passing all of these sights, I’d eventually turn onto a smaller side street and come across a construction site. And shortly after the remodeling work ends, there’s a door with a HotPress poster in the window, and that’s it. From the outside, all you can see is a door, but once inside, you see it’s more like a townhouse that goes up rather than out.

Oh, and right next to that door, you should see mannequins wearing denim in a window display—don’t ask why. See that, and you’ll know you’ve reached HotPress.

[Side note: One morning on my commute, I was lucky enough to catch the ending of a small performance put on by the dancers of Gaiety Theatre. Irish dance was one of the first things that drew me into discovering more about my Irish ancestry, so witnessing this was one of the highlights of my trip. I’d seen Lord of the Dance back in the States, so I knew how cool, for lack of a better word, Irish dancing could be and was eager for some more! Later that day I booked two tickets to see Riverdance – but more on that later.]

P.S. I’ll upload a sped up video of my commute to this post later, but it’s very shaky and nearly impossible to watch because of it! I apologize for the sub-par camera work, but it was the best I could get before I had to leave for home. [Coming soon.]

With love,

Kinsey

Kinsey Keys

aspiring memoirist rummaging through my noggin, stubbornly clutching the past to my chest like it’s a newborn babe starved for mother's milk.

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