Monday, October 26, 2009

Phoenix Park




I've been fever-free for a few days, and I even left the house a couple of times this weekend, so today I took a longer walk to Phoenix Park. I think I am almost over the nasty flubug that wiped me out for the week, however, that little bug appears to have left me with a parting gift: the spins. Or to be more specific, I think that I have labyrinthitis, which is a kind of vertigo.

Now, I am not a doctor (well, not that kind of doctor at least), so I only have the internet to go on for self-diagnosis, but I don't think that the physician's diagnosis on Friday was accurate. When I visited the little clinic, still in the throws of fever and weakness, she told me that I was likely suffering from a well known condition that affects people in Ireland: Nightnursitis. Nightnursitis is caused by taking the over-the-counter medicine Night Nurse, which contains the mind-alerting antitussive DM. I felt like that diagnosis may have been accurate, because DM is pretty crazy stuff, but I was a little puzzled by the fact that I was still feeling the symptoms later the next day, when I hadn't ingested any Night Nurse for almost 24 hours. When I woke up dizzy again on Saturday and then again on Sunday, I figured that I couldn't possibly still have significant amounts of DM swimming around in my system. So this is what brings me to determine that I have labyrinthitis, which, according to emedicinehealth.com, often follows a viral illness such as the flu. According to the same website, labyrinthitis can also be caused by tumors at the base of the brain, but I am going to go with common sense on this one, and just assume that my brain base is fine, and the flu is the culprit.

Anyhow, I digress. I was feeling a little less spinny this morning, so I decided to take a walk to Phoenix Park. The sun was shining for the first five minutes of my walk, and then, phew, it returned to normal. It took me about 25 minutes to get to the entrance, but I was keeping the pace relatively slow, just in case the labyrinthitis decided to act up again, and I accidentally strayed into the Liffey. (I did notice, by the way, that ladders have kindly been placed at regular intervals along the inner concrete walls of the Liffey in anticipation of such a thing occurring).


The flotation device I would have used, had I fallen into the river

The park emerges right out of the cityscape, like an oasis beckoning tree-deprived Dubliners. If you follow the quays on the north side of the Liffey past Heuston station, it's hard to miss:




Phoenix Park is the rough equivalent of Toronto's High Park, or New York's Central Park. Dublin Tourism boasts that it is the largest enclosed urban park in Europe, and at over 1,700 acres, it does have a lot of space to offer. I only walked through about a third of the park this visit, and most of what I saw was well manicured and shaped by pathways.




The park also houses the Dublin Zoo, which I was too cheap and tired to visit this time around, and the mowed fields were full of soccer games that looked both planned (some coordination to shirt colours) and impromptu (five players ranging from 6 years old to 60, with skinny tree branches sticking out of the ground as goalposts).




I ended the exploratory part of my visit in the Tearooms, situated adjacent to the Zoo. For 5 Euros I had a machine-brewed hot chocolate and a very nice raisin scone with butter and jam. It's still pleasant enough to sit outside (actually, I think the temperature has been exactly the same every day for two months), so I parked myself on a bench, and listened to an American woman exchanging language lessons with a Spanish woman at the next table. The Spanish woman was trying to get the pronunciation of the English word for "CamiĆ³n" right, and she kept saying "Lorr-a"? "Lorr-ee"? "Lorry"?, looking for guidance, but the American woman just kept throwing out other terms, convinced that the Spanish woman was totally off track: "Cam-ee-own, right? Um, truck? Van? Bus? A large vehicle, right? Truck." No lorries in Dublin.

Here's a pic of the Tearooms, and a bandshell-type thingy, and some holly. The holly is clearly just the height of all marketing ploys to get us thinking about Christmas -- it's not even Hallowe'en yet!



 
 

3 comments:

  1. Natalie,

    I love the teahouse and the holly and ivy.

    You really get around. Hope you are feeling even better today.

    I justed realized I did not capitalize Aunty nancy in the comments about the LIffey Bridges, Phoenix Park, and the Giant's Causeway.

    xoxo Aunty Nancy

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  2. I hope you're feeling better. I've had labyrinthitis many times over the years. Once you have it one time it can re-visit. It feels pretty trippy but thankfully, it doesn't last more than a few days at a time.
    Great post, love the shots!

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  3. that is some fine holly! see...i'm reading...
    :)

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