Up in the morning and grateful that it was cloudy but not raining. Dot and Bill cooked us some fabulous porridge, what we in the States would call oatmeal. They have lots of goodies to be able to put into it and it was a delicious way to start the day.
We packed up our bag and we headed off to explore the city of Dublin.
Dublin is filled with wonderful museums. The first one we went to was the Dublin Museum of Archaeology.
We had a lovely walk over crossing through quite a famous park Saint Stephen’s. It was here that a lot of a battle for independence from the English happened in 1916. Weird to think about that happening in the middle of the city in quite a lovely park, but there you go.
Soon, we arrived at the Archaeology Museum, with perfect timing with a tour of the highlights of the collection just beginning. We quickly joined in and spent the next hour with a very knowledgeable, young woman, Roisin.
She took us skillfully through about a dozen of the prime pieces in their extensive collection. We learned so much about the culture that started that thousands of years ago, in terms of catching fish. Then, we moved into various types of toolmaking, as well as bronze and gold making. This museum had an amazing collection of gold chest pieces.
And it also had some really famous pieces that included a chalice and a brooch pin that all the Irish people on the tour were very familiar with.
We were also fascinated by a display that gave us more of an opportunity to learn about how peat bogs work. The originally lakes were formed by glacier. Then vegetation eventually filled in the lake, but created a moss mass without oxygen. This created a perfect way for a variety of different artifacts to be preserved. Really interesting to learn about.
We also had a chance after the tour to look around a bit more. They had a really strong collection of Viking artifacts, as well as many other fine things in their collection.
But, we were getting hungry so we ended up eating lunch at the cafeteria in a large department store. This is a very popular place and crowded, but we had the option of having some nice Irish food for lunch, which we enjoyed.
After the lunch, we went to The National Gallery of Ireland. Dick immediately saw a display focusing on a a special exhibit of women Impressionists. We knew we wanted to go and see this. It was a spectacular collection that had been pulled together by this museum from many places around the world. It featured four women who were very involved in the Impressionist movement, but have received less notice than the men of that time. One of them was the American artist American, Mary Cassatt. We had seen some of her work elsewhere, but this was quite a collection that was pulled together.
The exhibit had beautiful paintings and prints and a lot of really interesting interpretation.
We learned from one of the docents that the gallery has a fairly new woman director who has put an emphasis on spotlighting women artists. This one was an amazing exhibit.
The same docent pointed us towards some more really prominent pieces, including some by Picasso, Van Gogh, and two brilliant pieces by Vermeer. We really enjoyed soaking in all of this beautiful art.
Then we walked over to Merrion Square. The highlight there is a sculpture of Oscar Wilde, who was born and went to school in Dublin before moving on to London and Paris. The statue of him is brilliant. We, of course, needed to take a picture with it. Patti was also delighted that they had a children’s playground based on Wilde’s children’s book about the Giants Garden.
We were both were quite tired and rested and read on park benches for a bit. Patti actually dozed off while Dick was reading. But, then it was time to head back to meet up with our hosts.
After debriefing our days with our hosts, we lay down for a little nap because we were going to have a big evening.
The four of us walked about 20 minutes to a wonderful Moroccan restaurant. This is one that they ate at fairly often and we got some really beautiful food which was so fun.
Then, we walked over to another favorite pub of theirs, Pipers Corner. This is a place that often had traditional Irish music. There were two and later three musicians who were sitting up front just enjoying themselves playing music. It was noisy rowdy, pub atmosphere with people talking and tour groups coming in and out, so not the best way to enjoy music, but it was still quite fun.
Eventually, we were all tired and hopped on a bus that took us back across town with a little walk at the end to get back to our flat. It had been a delightful evening.
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