Irene's Weblog

Tuesday 9 June 2009

Today we went to the National Museum at the Collins Barracks.  You aren’t allowed to take photos in here, thought I don’t quite know why.  So this is what I wrote down that I learned and thought was interesting.

We got to see the different helmets of Irishmen in foreign armies, including the 69th Regiment, a US Army unit based in New York.

Irish soldiers serving in foreign armies are known as Wild Geese.

The 69th Regiment also fought in the American Civil War, including being part of the Army of the Potomac, besieging Petersburg, Virginia in 1864.

The 69th was amongst the first American troops to arrive on the western front in WWI.

For a small country, the Irish have certainly managed to be involved in nearly every battle campaign in the 20th century.  It seems as though they are now seen more as peacekeepers with other UN troops, but they certainly have gotten around the world.

The museum also has a 200ft Bantry Boat that originally belonged to the French Frigate, La Résolve.  It was part of a fleet that invaded Ireland in December, 1796 at Bantry Bay.  The La Résolve lost its masts and the Bantry Boat was sent out to find another ship to tow it to safety.  Instead it was captured.

There’s a giant room full of brass, European brass, bronze, silver, copper, and pewter stacked up on twelve foot high shelves.  There are also every day dishes, microscopes, and pocket watches.

In another room, there are Rigby dueling pistols and Thomas Read and Co. dueling swords.  I also learned that there are preserved records of the most common reasons for duels.  The most common from 1771-1810 were insult, women, politics and elections, legal matters, drinking, “playhouse,” gambling, religion, feud, and jostling.

In the area covering the Easter Rising, there is this quote from P.H. Pearse; “There are many things more horrible than bloodshed, slavery is one of them.”

I also got to see an astrolabe and an Armillary Sphere.  Too bad I couldn’t actually hold them.

There’s another area full of old coins.  It covers 1000 years of coins.  I could have spent all day here.

The second floor of the museum covers period furniture, which all looked ugly and uncomfortable.  On this floor is a large studio camera with a Ross lens.  It’s so big that it is bigger than me!

There is also a large clock that covers three floors.  It can actually be seen from outside.  It was made in 1849 and has weight-driven movement.

The neo-Celtic room was very boring.  Anything Celtic bores me.

The special exhibition on sacred art in Ireland had lots of chalises…..yawn…..

So, next, we traveled to the other side of town to the National Museum of Ireland Archaeology.  I must make an interesting side note.  In both museums, Paul commented, “Might as well check this out.  I want to get my money’s worth.”  Both museums were free.

Again, we come across more stuff with no information.  All we know is that it’s a skeleton of a human.  You have to walk five feet away from the skeleton to know that it is Baronstown West Man, County Kildare, dating from 200-400 AD, Early Iron Age.  The placing of signage is not intuitive at all here.

Clonycavan Man, County Meath, 392-201 BC, Early Iron Age only has his head, arms, and torso.  A peat harvesting machine destroyed the rest.  He had hairgel made of resin imported from France or Spain.

It’s pretty common to find bodies in bogs.  The bogs preserve the bodies quite well.  The only problem is that the Irish seem to have a knack for carelessly chopping up the body to bits before and attempts at preservation are made.

There’s a room about viking Ireland, which is nice.  It’s also got air conditioning to cool you off.  Yay for airco!

In the room with all iron and bronze bells, all I could think of was, “Needs more cowbell.”  I’m such a dork.

I also learned that the name, Collins, is purely Irish and it’s original form is Ó Coileáin.  It means descendant of Coileáin (‘whelp’).

There is no rhyme or reason to the layout of the museum either.  Ancient Egypt is down a narrow corridor that is easily missed.  The Irish need to get things better organized because backtracking over everything just pisses people off.

We spent out last evening with our good friend Annau, Leyla, and Leyla’s boyfriend, Monte.  It was really good to see them again.  It’s been several years since Paul and I saw Annau and Leyla.  Again, I wish it had been longer than a few hours, but I’ll take whatever time I can get with them.  It was a lot of fun.

Wednesday 10 June 2009

Checking out of the hotel was surprisingly easy.  Our final cost was €448 ($627) and it should have been €592 ($829).  the taxi driver was also very nice and we had a nice chat in the car on the way to the airport.  Then, we arrived at the airport.

In typical Irish fashion, nothing was signed.  USAirways had two lines, one for Chicago and one for Philly.  Both lines were all crushed together and no one knew if they were in the right line or not.  Finally, someone who knew their job separated everyone into the proper lines and the Chicago people started getting checked in.  Eventually, our line to Philly started moving too.

This process was quick, but not smooth.  There was very little room at the counters and you had to backtrack through the area where you were in line to get to the x-ray machines and security.  Next, we had to go to the VAT refund window.  The woman at the counter just up and left, leaving a sign that said she’d be back at 9:15am.  So, we stood in line for fifteen minutes.

The stupidest part was next.  You have to go through the US Passport Control in the basement of the airport.  They also eliminated the two lines that there should have been, one for US Citizens and one for foreigners.  So, we had to wait in line while all the foreigners had their fingerprints taken, slowing the line considerably.  Once through, we waited in the usual cattle holding area until we boarded our plane.

On the plane, there was a movie and some other videos.  However, you needed to pay $5 to rent headphones.  Why in the hell do we have to fly for seven hours with no entertainment?  If I had known, I could have bought a book.

Just before arriving in Philly, we had to watch a video about arriving at the airport.  In typical, craptacular fashion, the video was unhelpful.  Not only did the video keep cutting out, the audio was garbled and you couldn’t understand anything the people were saying.

Flying out of Philly wasn’t much fun either.  We left an hour late and, then, the flight attendant kept bitching that people shouldn’t get out of their seats to use the bathroom because there was turbulence.  Most of the people gave her dirty looks and went anyway.  One guy told her that, if she had listened to the pilot he said you could use the bathrooms if you need to, just try not to walk around too much because of the turbulence.  They started to get into it, but stopped when a free toilet opened up and he went in to use it.  The flight attendant just muttered to herself while I smiled at here.

There.  We’re home.  Ireland kind of sucks.  It’s got pretty scenery, but that’s about it.  It’s not much fun at all.  We did, however, go to see our friends and that part of the trip was a lot of fun.  Seeing friends is always fun and there’s never enough time to spend with them.

If you want, you can go look at the pictures from the trip and make fun of any spelling mistakes that I make.