Wet day in Dublin

More photos from Dublin here.

“Cold, rain, and wind.  If you had to pick two out of three, which would you pick?”  “Hmm.  Probably cold and windy.” “Really?  I’d pick cold and wet, because the wind is what’s making my entire body wet and therefore making me miserable.” “Yeah, but if it weren’t for the rain, you wouldn’t be wet at all.”

That was some of yesterday’s conversation.  But in fact, we couldn’t pick and got all 3 at once.  But that didn’t stop us!

First we went to 2 incredible museums. The Museum of Natural History is my favorite kind of museum: dusty and incredibly out of date.  This one feels like the sister museum to the Museum of Natural History at Harvard, with all sorts of dead things arranged in glass cabinets and covering every bit of wall and ceiling.  Unfortunately, no coelacanth—but they did have the requisite whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling on the top floor.  They also had a collection of sea slugs, etc. modeled in glass by the same Blaschka brothers who did the glass flowers at Harvard; I think we got the better deal.  The very charming thing about this museum is that they recognize how obsolete it is—some of the exhibit cards are the originals, but others include commentary explaining the origin and popularity of that particular type of display.

We also went to the Museum of History and Achaeology, which has an incredible collection of Celtic metalworking from the bronze age through the medieval period, including the Tara brooch. 

We popped over to Trinity College, where we got to see the Book of Kells.  Fortunately, it wasn’t too crowded, so we didn’t get rushed along, as the guidebooks warn.  (There are some advantages to visiting on a cold, wet, windy day in March, it seems.)

We also saw Christ Church Cathedral—where as a special bonus we encountered a mummified rat and cat, which had been stuck in one of the organ pipes. 

And Kilmainham Gaol, which gave us another opportunity to learn about human suffering and cruelty.  We also got to hear a good deal about recent Irish history, as leaders of rebellions were held (and executed) there.

We rode around on our hop-on-hop-off bus a bit.  And then finished the events of the day at the Jameson distillery, where we got a very nice tour and a very nice sample.  I finally learned what malted barley is!  The tour guide made a big deal out of the fact that Jameson’s is triple distilled, pointing out how much harsher Jack Daniel’s (single distilled) or Johnny Walker Black (double distilled) is.  But I think it’s ironic that Jameson’s owes much of its taste to the U.S. alcohol industry:  their whiskey is aged bourbon barrels.

We’ve learned to be resourceful in finding good vegetarian food while travelling; on this trip, we’re relying on “ethnic” cuisine. So far in Dublin we’ve had Asian fusion, Spanish, and Indian, and they’ve all been good.  (We also tried to order vegetarian “nachos” at lunch today, but unfortunately they were made with Doritos and contained celery, which Emma is allergic too.  Celery in nachos??)  However, we haven’t been skimping on Irish victuals either—we’ve also visited a couple of lovely pubs while here in Dublin, Kehoe’s and O’Donoghue’s, and enjoyed a bit of Guinness.