Friday, 16 February

We started out our second day in Dublin at the General Post Office. Its a massive building and is one of the sites of a resistance movement against British occupation. When you get right up to the columns, you can even see the bullet holes! The Irish lost this fight, but there are great photos and a statue to commemorate the event inside.
Then we were off to the National Gallery of Ireland. The building it is housed in is amazing. It is actually three separate buildings that have been combined by knocking out the walls. Therefore, getting from room to room is interesting. The number of stairs from floor to floor is different at times and to get to some galleries it proves tricky, but well worth it. The artwork there is wonderful and you can get right up to it. I am amazed that they let you because you know there are special people out there that don't realize that touching the painting will actually damage it. Probably why its all under CCTV surveillance and there are lots of guards.

Then because somehow James and Julia got lost (like I said, lots of crazy ways of getting around and apparently random entrances/exits to wait at), Mike and I headed over to the National Museum of Ireland, Natural History. There are four different parts of the National Museum, three being housed in Dublin. The fourth is Country Life which is outside the city, obviously. This museum was rather small, but still had some very cool rocks. But then again, I think just about any rock is wonderful. There were loads of stuffed animals too. There was a really cute looking weasel like thing native to Ireland, and a HUGE skeleton of an extinct Giant Deer.
We then grabbed some sandwiches for lunch and had a lovely picnic style lunch at Saint Stephen's Green, which is a beautiful park in the middle of the city. Thankfully we were not assaulted by massive pigeons, like in London. We were visited by beautiful little blue birds, but I cannot remember their names.


Mike and Justin

After lunch we went to meet one of Justin's friends, Daniel. He is a wonderful guy who is also studying History. I have no idea what in History, but I think that he is a Modern Historian. There are too many different kinds of Historians for me to keep straight... We met him in this wonderful cafe/bar called Cafe en Seine. It was a little place and did not look all that wonderful from the outside, but then you step inside and its spectacular. The cafe seems to keep going for miles once you step in and its incredibly ornately decorated. Needless to say, I felt way under dressed in my jeans and t-shirt, but was willing to accept the shame if they let me stay. They did. Its near the high end part of Dublin, so come 5pm its full of affluent professionals and we would have no chance of being served. Kinda like dining near Wall Street in jeans. Trust me, it doesn't work. But, again, at night they also have a piano playing and its supposed to be wonderful. Maybe next time we'll bring nicer clothes so we can go AND get served all at the same time. According to Daniel, a few years ago, this was the place for the rich to be seen with other rich people. So, here I am being "seen" at Cafe en Seine. I am definitely not monetarily rich, but I am still being seen... maybe people will think I am rich and important though.

After our wonderful tea break, we headed over to the National Library of Ireland to see the William Butler Yeats exhibit. We had seen his father and brother's artwork in the morning, so it felt fitting to see WB Yeats in the afternoon. The exhibit was amazing. I have not read a lot of his work, but it was still fascinating. Throughout the exhibit there would be rooms you could walk into that would have mini movies on Yeats' life. Each room was spectacularly decorated. They also had huge flat screen computers that had programs up so that you could actually read his work written in his handwriting. It was like you were able to read his actual journal, and it was touch screen activated so that you could turn the pages. One of these screens even enabled us to click on a portion of his handwriting, zoom in and had a feature where you could change it to typed out text. It was wonderful.

After that we quickly headed over to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells. I agree with Steve, it would not be worth the 8 euro to see. Not with the Chester Beatty Library in the same city, but that's a story for another day. We thankfully got in free as Justin's guest. Every student at Trinity College gets in free as do their guests. It helps knowing people. For those of you going in the future, bribe some student to get you in, free food should work. The book was interesting and so was the information on how books were first made, but again, Steve was right. There are tons of people gladly willing to push you out of the way, because they can. It was really irritating to get up there after reading all about it to get pushed around by tourists. But, I didn't pay for it either (and I was a tourist too.) The room after the Book of Kells is marvelous though. Its Trinity's old Library called the Long Room. It contains 200, 000 of the college's oldest books. Some years ago, the ran out of room, so they took off the roof and added another level. The room is absolutely full of books, and it was amazing. We unfortunately could not take pictures in there, so hopefully I just remember it... its not likely, but thankfully there are pictures on the Internet!

After seeing the Book of Kells, we headed back to Justin's apartment, but got side tracked by a Rugby match. Mike had never seen a game before, and really liked it. It was great to be able to see it again. They were not very good though and I am positive that when Christopher played, he would have beat them after one practice during his first year playing. (Well, maybe after a few practices.)


Here are some more pictures of our day:The O'Connell Bridge

Justin had told me about these plaques before we came. They are from the book Ulysses by James Joyce. Its set in Dublin and these plaques are placed around the town with a quote and page number. The plaques have been placed at the place in town where the action in the book was taking place. I tried reading it before we went and got 15 pages into it. I think that's as far as I will ever get.