The Personal Website of Jeremy Boles

In April 2012 I packed an oversized hiking backpack and got on a plane to Dublin by myself. It was the first trip I’d taken like that alone, and my first time out of the country.

I used the Úll conference as the excuse. The real motive was less respectable: our first child was due in a couple of months, and I had decided this was the last chance I’d get to do something like this.

I was away seven days.

The Itinerary

• Left Springfield mid-afternoon on April 24th, arrived in Dublin the morning of the 25th.
• Stayed in a grubby hostel north of O’Connell Street that used to be a convent.
• Attended the conference, held at Dublin Castle, on the 27th and 28th.
• Took the train down to Wicklow on the 29th to escape hostel fatigue, and stayed in a bed-and-breakfast.
• Flew home on May 1st.

Memorable Food

Before this trip I was a full-on craft beer snob and used to turn my nose up at Guinness. Then I escaped the dreary weather into a warm pub with a pint of it in front of me, and that was the end of that argument.

At the inn in Wicklow I was served a fish so tough I couldn’t get a knife through it. I think I offended the server by not eating it.

Notable Gear

An extremely bulky, heavy backpack—the same one I used for overnight hiking when I lived in Colorado—which nearly killed me.

I’d started working with Hipstamatic the year before and was heavily into that style of street photography, so nearly every photo I have from that trip is filtered to look like expired film.

Favorite Moments

I met one of Ireland’s barista champions at a café I kept going back to. She gave me free coffee once she found out my now ex-wife was also a barista. It was a pleasant place to sit, especially while feeling like a fish out of water in another country for the first time.

I shared a few beers in the hostel dormitory with a strange Irish man who kept asking me about guns in America. Thick accent, old-timey striped pyjamas, and a persistent interest in how far a shotgun could shoot. The conversation unsettled me enough that I had trouble sleeping in the same room, and I snuck out very early the next morning to catch the train to Wicklow rather than run into him again.

Things I Learned

Which side of the road a country drives on shapes your instincts in ways you don’t notice until they’re wrong. I kept walking into people on the street, because my instinct was to pass on the right and theirs was the opposite.

The Guinness Storehouse is a giant commercial. The view from the pub at the top is nice, though.