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| Temple Bar area. |
It was a busy, busy, busy day. Hopefully Randy isn't running everyone ragged. We started with breakfast at the Bee Hive. Randy's mochas are getting fancier. This one maybe hard to top.
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| Big breakfast plates that we shared. A full Irish. |
We then headed to our first museum, The Little Museum of Dublin. It's a bit hard to describe. The museum is located in a middle class house and is filled with items donated by the people of Dubin. Posters, artifacts, and miscellaneous memorabilia filled the house. Our guide, Claire, used them to go through the history of Dublin in a very cheeky manner by mixing serious facts with humor. Founded by Vikings, taken over by the English, rebellion, civil war, and strict Catholic rule, were all covered. Definitely not a typical museum, but we highly recommend it.
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| A huge doll house based on actual houses in the area. |
We then moved on to the National Museum of Archeology. The museum covers the history of Ireland from pre-historic times through the middle ages, including the Viking period. The exhibits included gold and jewelry, which were made by skilled Irish craftsman. Also interesting were several bog bodies on display. Bogs have low oxygen levels which inhibit decay, so bodies are well preserved. Viking history and artifacts were also exhibited.
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| Gold necklaces |
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| Cape fasteners and ear lobe rings |
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| Example of a bog man |
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| Hand of an even better preserved bog man. |
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| Mesolithic fish traps |
The last museum was called Dublinia and was a Viking centric museum that covered the 300 years or so of Vikings in Ireland, although the Vikings never really went away, they just became integrated with the Irish society. The Vikings arrived in Dublin in 841 and formed the first town there. Other Viking towns included Wexford, Waterford, and others. Before the Viking era, Irish lived in small villages. So these larger towns all sprung because of the Vikings.
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| Randy the Red |
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Rune alphabet - letters were carved into wood.
Try to write your name. |
Dinner was fish and chips at a nice pub. The presentation was quite unique. On the side we enjoyed a bowl of carrot soup.
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| Fish with small salad and mushy peas |
Our final event was a music-pub crawl. Two Irish musicians both gave information about various aspects of Irish music sessions intertwined with playing and singing. The Haerr sisters even got in the act when they requested songs from the audience.
Heidi and Heather singing
The Billboard song
Tomorrow we head south for Kilkenny and visit the medieval town and Cathedral there.
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