A bit of Dublin Culture - Dublin Day 3

So, it's been quite a long day here in Dublin already. Its 4:30pm GMT, and we have been all around the city after yesterdays "planning", and we got lost while we were at it.

Hard Rock Cafe Sign

So, yesterday ended up being an... interesting night. We ended up going to a Spar Supermarket for dinner instead of the planned Fish and Chips because by the time we had gotten to our "planned" pub they had already closed down for food for the night. So we were stuck with finding an alternative. The picture above this is of an interesting sign at a Hard Rock Cafe. Of course, since drugs and nuclear weapons are covered there can't be anything else bad right? Well moving on.

Daniel biking up Pearse Street  Dublin.

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday, which you can probably figure out in the picture above, is that we rented bikes. Here in Dublin for an easy €2 for 3 days, and there are stations you can pick up bikes form around the city. There are charges for times as well, but the main thing is that the first half hour is free. Unfortunately we had to find out the hard way that you can't just coast from station to station, because there is a timed delay between each time you can take a bike. But still the bikes serve is really well, and since we have been careful with our time we have only had to pay €2 for bike trips all around the city. Biking around on the roads was hard at first, considering that it was left side, as well and downtown, with all of its crazy one ways, but we are getting the hang of it.

Some sort of whale

So the first thing we started out with today is the Dublin Natural History Museum. Of course, "Natural History" meant stuffed animals. Everywhere. The entire room had a musty smell to it when we entered, but there were some very interesting things to see, like grizzly bears, polar bears, and Irish Elk (which is just a ginormous deer). There were also fossil remains, and as seen in the picture below sea creatures. There were whales, seals... and some more stuff. Personally, meh, not my highlight of the day. But of course this was after a 15 - 20 minute bike ride, on the street, so I was pretty tired too, maybe that's the reason.

48 cm Lobster caught while fishing 

After going to the Natural Museum we headed over to the National Gallery of Ireland or the NGI. Both of these buildings are situated around the parliament house, so they were a short walk away from each other. The Gallery was great, and we got to see many original works of art that were both Irish and non Irish. While we were there we stopped by for a 30 minute lecture titled The Masterpieces of the European Collection. The speaker spent a lot of time discussing Caravaggio's The Taking of Christ, which we later had a chance to see in the gallery. There were a lot of amazing works of art, but unfortunately we were not allowed to take any pictures of them.

Daniel in the NLI (National Library of Ireland)

 I wish Kamaljot would warn me before he starts snapping pictures, candid never works well for me.  So, in our quest to find free amusement, we stopped by the National Library of Ireland. This gorgeous neoclassical marble building (think any building in D.C.) houses countless priceless tomes which, taken together, tell the story of Ireland's rich history. Anything can be found here, from 300 year old census reports to the first edition of James Joyce's Ulysses. While our original intent was merely to browse the collection, we were immediately  intrigued by the first room, which invited us to use the library's resources to help track our Irish genealogy. While Kamaljot could find no use for this himself, he and I spent a couple of hours looking back into my family's history. We could only find as far back as 1816, and even that was sketchy at best. For more reliable information we would have had to explore the microfilm copies of some old parish records (baptisms, marriages, funerals, etc.) but accessing that information involved applying for permission to access the vast store of microfilm, and we were already much past lunch and not equipped to delve so deep into my genealogical research. All in all, I got a good foundation, enough to whet my interest, and I hope to learn more tomorrow when I visit my family's home town.

A Reading room in the NLI

 Hello Everyone, Kamaljot back again. So after looking at the Whitten Genealogy, we went up another story to the reading room, and got to see these gorgeous desks, that were all prepared with reading lamps at your need. If I were a native Dubliner, I would definitely be using this reading room.

The Garden of Rememberence

So after our interesting visit to the National Library, we decided to find our way back, and that journey ended up being quite... eventful. Our hostel was directly North West from where we were, so we got onto our bikes and started to head north west, but by means of many one way, curving streets, we ended up travelling east. Though we didn't notice until we saw that the buildings around us were getting smaller, and less complex. We decided to reassess at that point and we found out we were almost to the port! So we turned back and began to make our way in the right direction. Of course our bikes times were running short so we decided to try and switch them out so we wouldn't have to pay. And that't when we found out that we couldn't do that. So we began our 3km walk back to our hostel.

Lunch/Dinner

On our way back we had sill not had our lunch yet, so we dropped by the super market right by our hostel here. Wandering down the isles we tried to find the best combination of food so we could be full, and spend the least amount of money. I decided to get 4 buns, salami, and processed cheese (yuck), for a grand total of €4.29. Of course, 4 sandwiches was a lot, so I had planned for lunch and dinner, but it was about 3pm so I just decided to eat it all... Really full now. Daniel found instant noodles, and seems to be good until dinner. I definitely don't need any dinner.

Colorful Doors

So tomorrow, we will be leaving Dublin sadly because we are going to be headed off to Kinlough to see Daniel's home town. We will be out of here by 3 on a bus, and I'm going to miss Dublin, it was nice and cheap for a traveler. I have spent just about €100 over these last 3 days, and I could have done it in MUCH! less, and I plan to.

Finally, just in closing, I would like to say, Dublin has very colorful doors, and it was one of the first things I noticed.

Will write again tomorrow,

-Kamaljot & (some Daniel)