Weekend in Dublin: National Wax Museum

On Sunday we again got up early so that we could make the check out time.  Even though we'd checked out we were still allowed to store our stuff in the locker during the day.  Our first stop was Christ Church Cathedral which was conveniently right next to our hostel.  Kayla didn't have her camera during our first visit so we wanted to be sure to stop there.

Perhaps in Another Time My Large Head Would've Been Useful

Then it was on to the National Wax Museum which was also fairly close to our hostel.  All in all we had a lot of fun at the museum, but it was not worth 10 euro.  Although, to be fair, Kayla and I got scared away from the Chamber of Horrors section so maybe that would've made the visit more worth the money.  Either way I'm choosing to look at it as I spent 10 euro on two museums and I would've been willing to pay 5 euro for each of them.

My Precioussssssssssss

My Rightful Place

My God I'm a Nerd

While most of our time at the National Wax Museum was spent taking ridiculously fun photos with fictional characters, there were also some interesting things about the historical ones that I want to make note of.

Me in a Viking Raid

There was clear historical bias in the Time Vaults section.  The Vikings were purely depicted as barbarians who killed innocent monks.  While this undoubtedly did happen, they would more often ransom abbots and there was no note about the art style etc. of the Vikings.  However, the clearest bias was present in the more recent historical figures.  There was a black and tan, a man hired by the British government in 1920 or 1921 to help try and stop the Irish revolution, who hurled horrible insults at us as we walked down the hallway while Irish nationalists were portrayed as very dignified characters.  This, again, is not to say that there wasn't some truth to the portrayals, but rather that there was still a clear bias in them.  To be fair a similar museum in the US would probably have a similar bias, so this is not a critique, merely something I found interesting.

Weekend in Dublin: Lunch, Wandering, & Dinner

After the museum Kayla and I were hungry so we set out to find a place my guidebook recommended, the Cake Cafe.  This took us on another lovely stroll through Saint Stephen's Green.  We had been warned that the Cake Cafe could be a little hard to find, but with the help of my map and my memory of the picture on Google maps, we found it.

Mmmmmmmmm

It was a lovely little cafe, although we did have to sit outside because the inside was full.  But Kayla and I got huge tasty sandwiches for a very reasonable price.  When Jen joined us we all got slices of cake (how could we not at a place called Cake Cafe).  I got sponge cake and it was rather tasty.  Oh and I was also very amused at their slogan: prepare to meet your baker.

Grafton Street

After lunch we just wandered around a bit, heading into a few second hand shops.  Then Jen led us to Grafton Street.  This street was packed and had tons of shops.  Some were familiar like McDonalds and the Disney Store but we also saw people selling Irish fireman calendars for charity.

Kayla at the Book Sale

We then wandered around the Temple Bar area and found a book fair.  There were a ton of books in no particular order.  But at one stand Kayla, Jen, and I talked with the guy running it.  We talked a fair bit about politics and by the end of our conversation we derived a plan for how the four of us could rule the world (I got the US).

Dublin at Night

After we said bye to Jen, Kayla and I were pretty exhausted so we headed back to our hostel and checked into our new room.  We mostly spent the evening relaxing and watching TV, but we did venture out at night to get some food from the nearby Eddie Rockets (exactly like Johnny Rockets).  There we met a slightly crazy guy who attempted to tell me that no one died on 9/11.  I was very glad we were getting food for take away.

When we got back to our hostel we ate our food and then we met one of our four roommates for the night.  He was a 68 year old Harley rider who just retired after working for 22 years at a hospital.  I could honestly go on and on about him as he was very chatty.  It wasn't until much much later that our other three roommates showed up.  Kayla and I honestly don't know if they were French or Spanish as we were always only half awake when hearing them speak.

Weekend in Dublin: National Museum

The National Museum

After some initial difficulty, Kayla and I were able to find the National Museum of Archaeology.  We had been there once before on one of our field trips, but we only had about twenty minutes to wander.  Seeing this museum is actually one of the main reasons why I wanted to go back to Dublin.

The museum is pretty great.  It's not on the scale of say the Field Museum, but it has a lot packed into it and it was free.  I am proud to say that Kayla and I saw the entirety of the museum.  Although, to be honest, there were a few things that I didn't look at.

Statue at Ritual Artificial Pond

The museum has a really cool exhibit called Kingship & Sacrifice.  It was very interesting and held a lot of cool objects.  However, besides the objects there were also bog bodies on display.  These are the remains of people found in bogs who appear to have been elites who were ritually sacrificed.  I did look at one body and decided I did not really want to see the rest.  The one I looked at was more skeletal than the others and after reading the descriptions of what was done to some of these men, I knew I did not want to see their remains.

Other than that, I think I saw every exhibit in the museum.  When we went to the National Museum before our professor, John, told us that we were not allowed to take photos but that maybe we could sneak some.  So when Kayla and I went to check a few of our things we began to give them our cameras, but then the attendants told us that we were allowed to take photos (as long as we didn't use flash).  I think we were both really excited about this.

Tara Brooch

I think some of the coolest objects were in the room known as the Treasury.  Most of these were forms of metalwork, but there was still great variety.  My favorite object in the museum was in this room: the Tara Brooch.  The Tara Brooch was made during Early Medieval Ireland and is an example of Insular Art with incredible detail.

Neolithic Fish Traps

Late Bronze Age Gorget

However, there were many amazing things to see in the museum.  There were a lot of prehistoric items and Kayla and I had fun identifying the items that we learned about in our classes.

Mummy with an Encaustic Portrait

Me and a Replica of a Viking Ship

There were also a few exhibits tucked away into little corners like the museum's Ancient Egypt collection.  Although a few of these seemed a bit out of place as most of the items were of Irish origin or were significant to Ireland (such as a replica of a Scandinavian Viking ship).

To finish up this post here a few more photos of items I couldn't resist sharing.

The Shrine of Saint Brigid's (Important Irish Saint) Shoe

A Sheela Na Gig (Female Exhibitionist Figure Thought to Ward off Evil)

Weekend in Dublin: Saint Stephen's Green

Kayla and I got up bright an early (relatively speaking) because our check out time was at 10:00am.  Although, to be fair, Montana and Kyla had to meet their Paddy Wagon bus at about 8:00am.  I had not had a great night's sleep, but this actually had nothing to do with the hostel.  Kinlay House is a great hostel.  The staff is super friendly and helpful, our room was clean, the murals were funny, there were posters decorating it (although some were for some graphic movies), the location was amazing, the hostel felt very safe, it was very cheap, there was breakfast (even if we didn't eat it), and we could rent a locker for only a euro a day so we didn't have to either leave our stuff unlocked in the room or schlep our stuff around all day.

Perhaps before leaving the hostel for the day we should've asked for directions, but I was confident that I could find the National Museum of Archaeology using my handy Dublin map.  Sadly I was mistaken, but not sadly people are very helpful and a storekeeper pointed us in the right direction.

Saint Stephen's Green

Another fortunate thing was that this right direction took us through Saint Stephen's Green, a beautiful park.  Kayla and I could not have had a better day to go through it (well I suppose it could've been a bit warmer).  The sun was shining and there were lovely birds about.

Robert Emmet (an Irish Nationalist)

Famine Memorial Statue

Besides the natural beauty of the park there are quite a few statues throughout the park.  The two I chose to include photos from were the ones that were, in my opinion, the most striking.

Weekend in Dublin: Arriving & the Brazen Head

This past weekend Kayla, Kyla, Montana, and I took a trip to Dublin.  However, Saturday morning Kyla and Montana went on a Paddy Wagon tour of some places in Northern Ireland while Kayla and I stayed in Dublin.

Because of our different schedules Kayla and Kyla went up to Dublin earlier on Friday than Montana and I did.  We took Bus Eireann which took roughly four hours.  I wish we'd taken Go Bus like Kayla and Kyla, but I didn't know about it at the time I was buying my tickets.  If we had, we would've gotten there faster as we would not have made any of our stops in between (including the one we had to do because someone left their iPad on the bus).  But Montana and I enjoyed our ride and it was kinda cool to see the country at night.    Being from a city I'm not always used to the darkness that living in the country brings at night, but I was struck by how the buses looked at night.  They reminded me of that moment in Spirited Away when the ferry is arriving at the bathhouse, light gliding on the dark.

When we finally arrived in Dublin we met up with Kayla, Kyla, and Kayla and Montana's friend Jen before heading off to find dinner as I was the only one who had eaten since lunch.  After some wandering of the Temple Bar area we settled on a nice Mexican restaurant called Pablo Picante.

Our Hostel (Photo technically taken on Sunday)

After that Montana and I were desperate to dump our stuff at the hostel so we headed there and finished checking in.  We promptly dumped our stuff and headed out.  Some weeks ago Kayla, Montana, and I had gotten a pub recommendation in Dublin from a monk, so naturally we went and found it.  It was called the Brazen Head and it claims to be the oldest pub in Ireland, but there is some debate on the matter (I believe that there was always something there but that it was not always a pub or tavern).

Me at the Brazen Head

The Brazen Head was great.  It was mellow, but had a great atmosphere.  We met a very nice old man who told us about his life as a doctor.  He had a great memory for our courses of study and home cities (he recited them to his friend).  We had a lot of fun talking to him about random things like do boys ever chat me up about statistics and why everyone hates the accordion.

I Hope to go Back and Find This One Day

One really cool thing about the Brazen Head is (at least in the room we were in) that it's covered in money.  Most of it was American dollars, but I also saw bills from other countries from Canada to Kenya.  Luckily for us Kyla had a dollar on her, the bar had a sharpie, and I had a pen, so we decorated our own.

Main Quad

Castle-y Part of the Main Quad

After a bit of shuffling around, my history class Religion and Magic in Reformation Europe: Witches, Demons, Jews, and Heretics, finally settled into its normal room: West Wing 6.  The west wing is a part of the Main Quad building.  This is probably the most beautiful building on campus and the room is very nice (although I think it was just redone).  The only problem with it is that there are so many of us that pretty much every seat needs to be filled so people who run late have to make rows scoot in (although we should just not leave spaces between us, but oh well).

West Wing of the Main Quad

The class is pretty great.  Our professor is an excellent lecturer and I get the feeling that he pretty much plans out speeches for our class because he always takes dramatic pauses.  Although perhaps they are a trick to get us to pay attention as he revealed to us that he sometimes falls off the little stage when he feels like he's losing a class.

While I generally don't like European history, witches are always fascinating to me.  Although we still haven't gotten to witches yet, but we have talked about demons and exorcisms so I'm still pretty interested in the course.  I actually wish our lectures were a bit longer as I think history isn't well suited to a one hour time slot.  I also wish we had more of a chance for small discussion, but I have gotten to know a German student pretty well in the course.

My biggest complaint with the class would have to be that while our professor is incredibly knowledgeable and an amazing lecturer, he's not the best with work that's for outside of class.  We have a paper due a week from tomorrow and he still hasn't uploaded sources for us.  Oh well, luckily for me the Swarthmore librarians are amazing and have already helped hook me up with some sources.  I sing their praises!

This is Halloween

Happy Halloween!  I hope yours was sufficiently spooky and candy-filled.  I guess mine could've been spookier, but then I wouldn't have liked it so much.

I was sort of hoping that my professors would give us candy or something, but no such luck.  Although in my history class today we did talk about demons and exorcisms so that was pretty Halloweeny.  Although we did not see any footage from any because he said that it would be too disturbing.

Me as Merida

Even though I saw very few others doing it, I went in costume to class.  Although, to be fair, mine was a fairly subtle interpretation of Brave's Merida.  But I'm still quite proud of making my bow and arrow out of an old paper bag, tin foil, and staples.  I also made her necklace out of a quarter, tin foil, and a sharpie.

Our Kitchen Halloweenified

In between two of my lectures today I went back to my apartment.  One of my roomies got a package a while back of Halloween decorations from her mom.  I went and bought a few bags of candy and proceeded to set up our kitchen in as much Halloween spirit as possible.  I thought it turned out rather well.  I also left notes on their doors saying "Boo!  Be sure to check the kitchen for treats! <3 Holly"

The major event of the night was the Shandon Halloween Parade.  If you want to see more professional photos check out: http://www.dragonofshandon.com   The four of us who went really loved the parade.  It felt very Irish.  It's hard to describe why, but honestly I think part of it was all the music that was playing.  There were several live bands in the parade all of which were good and ghouly.  I took a lot of photos so I'm kind of amazed I actually managed to post only these.

All of the Kids in the Parade were Adorable

These Flew at Us Several Times

She was Fantastic

The Skeleton Band Heads to Town

The Wings Flapped

The Dragon of Shandon...Made of Saran Wrap

After the parade, we settled down with a ton of candy and watched Clue and Nightmare Before Christmas.  It was a pretty great Halloween this year.