Dublin Cont. (um a month later…oops)

After Trinity, we got tickets to a hop on hop off tour bus. Always interesting J. The problem with staying in a city the size of Dublin for only a day is that you are never going to fit everything in. As a result about half my pictures are blurry snapshots from a moving double-decker bus. My personal favorite shows how silly tourism looks on the outside.

Who knew Dubliners were so into their Viking history?

The first thing we went to see after Trinity, and the only real museum, was the National Gallery. It’s a nice museum, pretty much like every other National Gallery. I would defiantly suggest you go there if you get a chance. We only had around 45minutes and it was nowhere near enough time to appreciate it. I'm always a sucker for large mythological scenes and they had those in abundance. http://www.nationalgallery.ie/

By far the most unexpectedly cool stop was the Kilmainham Gaol . It was built in 1795, and is one of the largest unoccupied goals in Europe. Apparently a lot of movies have filmed there. The main wind is a several story half ellipse with an observation bridge to make every cell visible to guards. A very intimidating effect when you walk in, and also strangely pleasing to look at. Towards the turn of the century it housed a lot of the political prisoners of the Irish rebellion, including those executed for the Easter Uprising in 1916 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Rising. Most likely why it was closed in 1924 soon after Irish independence.

You have to love a jail that has BOTH creepy cells and creepy doors to the basement.

One thing I didn’t expect was the continuous presence of Guinness in the city. Guinness brand trinkets were available in every shop, and advertisements were everywhere. The Guinness brewery, which is huge and right in the middle of Dublin, due to the founder, Alex Guinness, leasing the brewery for 45pounds per year for 9,000 years! Talk about an investment. I’m pretty sure the actual headquarters are in London now, but I don’t think Dublin is willing to acknowledge it . We were there, but we didn’t see the actual museum, so I have lovely pictures of the sign.

To finish off the night we wandered around Temple Bar, and the other pub districts. Temple Bar is supposedly Dublin's cultural area, but really it’s about five million pubs. I’m not a huge fan of drunk people, and apparently that holds for drunken Irish, too. One thing I found odd about Ireland is the amount of roving preteens and early teens that are out at night. I think they must have different parental supervision viewpoints, because not only Dublin, but also Swords had them in large quantities. They were roaming Temple Bar to the point I didn’t know if I was in the middle of a pub district, or a Miley Cyrus appearance.

All in all I enjoyed Dublin, but I wouldn’t say it’s really the city to pick if you have a limited amount of time. It kind of pales in comparison to London in my head, and was actually more expensive. A feat when you’re comparing pounds to Euro. Speaking of London, that’s what I need to post next. THAT will take a lot of talking, because I was there for a full five days and was almost ready to move in.

Anyway, time for lights out :)