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.

Saturday 6 June 2009

Well, it’s early morning and we are just starting to get ready for our day.  Yesterday, we drove from County Clare into Dublin and that was a nightmare.  We were fine until we reached Dublin.  Because of road construction, everything in Dublin is a giant mess.  We managed to get through that okay, but the airport is also stupidly set up.  First, we couldn’t find a gas station to fill the tank.  As you know, if you don’t return the tank full, you get charged outrageous amounts to refill it.  We discovered after we returned the car that there was a gas station a few minutes away, however, we would have only discovered it if we were leaving the airport and we were arriving.  Stupid setup for an airport.

Also, there are three different places to go for your car rental.  They are all labeled he exact same way, making it difficult to figure out which spot you need to be at.  We ended up going to all three.  Of course, we asked where we should go and were directed to the wrong place.  We were happy to get rid of the car though as it is a giant pain to drive in Dublin.  Before we returned the car, we went to our hotel to drop our crap off.  We did this so that we did have to carry everything on the bus back to the hotel from the airport, especially since we would need to take two different buses.

What we discovered was that the roads are not all labeled.  Many of the larger roads do not have signposts, so you have to guess where you were.  It was during this frustrating time that we understood why the hotel gave directions such as, “you’ll pass a large church with a green roof” and, “turn left at the Beechcomber Pub.”  If you didn’t have landmarks where you need to turn, you’d easily get lost.

After we returned the car, we headed into the city centre.  We got off on O’Connell Street, which is the major street in Dublin.  We really wanted some fish and chips, but could not find any shops that were either open or selling fish and chips.  After walking around for an hour and seeing that it was nearly 7 o’clock, we decided we had to eat something.  We had eaten nearly 12 hours before and we were starving for just about anything.  Sadly, the only thing that was open was McDonald’s.  With great regret we ate their food.  We are determined to find proper food today though.  I didn’t come half way around the world to eat shit fast food every day.

I’ll write some more later today as it’s now 7:22am and we need to get outside and be tourists.

Sunday 7 June 2009

Today was a nice day out, even though it was partly cloudy.  We spent the day walking from site to site instead of taking the bus because the weather was much nicer than yesterday.

Our first stop was the corner of Grafton and Harry Streets to take a picture of the statue of Phil Lynott for my friend Greg.  He’s a huge Thin Lizzy fan.  Next, we went to see the Book of Kells.  What a gigantic ripoff!  Normally, I’m all for seeing old texts and manuscripts, but, for €9 ($12.62), it was totally not worth it.  I really felt ripped off and found it hard to enjoy any part of it.

We then went to St. Stephen’s Green and wandered around a bit before heading over to St. Patrick’s Cathedral.  Johnathan Swift is buried there.  Paul kept commenting that there were holy relics just lying about that people could touch.  Apparently, you not supposed to touch the holy relics.  Shhh, don’t tell anyone that I did, or didn’t.  You weren’t there.  You can’t prove anything!

After St. Patrick’s, we walked uphill a few blocks to ChristChurch Cathedral.  It was okay for a church.  Strongbow is supposedly buried here too.  Sorry, churches just aren’t all that interesting to me.

On our way to Dublin Castle, which is another few, short blocks away, we got hungry so we stopped for some fish and chips.  Lunch itself was good, but the service was crap.  Yes, I’m used to the service in America and I know what to expect when traveling, after all, I’ve done enough of it, but this service was extra crap.

I prefer not to have to seat myself.  I can get past that, but, when you have to beg for everything, it really gets old quite quickly.  We waited 15 minutes for the waitress to just bring the menus.  Another ten to bring us our drinks.  20 minutes after that, we had to beg her to come back to take our order.  I was also tired and crabby, so that made me cranky too.

So, Dublin Castle was decent enough once we got there.  Again, I learned some cool things, which is never a bad thing.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t go and tour the Bank of Ireland.  Another missed opportunity for Ireland to make some money off the tourists and embrace their history.  The bank used to be the headquarters for the government.  So, we walked back to the bus stop and headed back to the hotel.  Fortunately, the best part of the day was about to begin.

Paul and I had dinner with his friend from school, Anthony, and Anthony’s wife, Adrianna, and their two boys, Alex and Justin.  Paul hadn’t seen Anthony in 14 years, so it was a really nice time.  We ate at the hotel’s restaurant, which is super expensive, but tasty.  After spending several hours with them, I was quite happy that I didn’t have to travel back to the hotel.  We just had to go up one floor and down a hallway.  I just wish we had more time to visit with them.  A few hours is, simply, not enough.

Monday 8 June 2009

Today was a light day for us in Dublin.  We went to the Jameson Distillery, which was okay, but far overpriced.  After that, we walked over to Dublin City Hall.  Paul and I enjoyed the little history museum in the basement.  At €4 ($5.61), it’s quite the bargain.  It’s probably the best deal in Dublin.  There’s a lot of reading though, so some people might think it really sucks.

We were also going to visit the Chester Beatty Library, but they wouldn’t let us keep our bags with us and the lockers that were available didn’t look trustworthy.  Instead, we went and had a nice lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe, then went for a walk to the War Remembrance Memorial.

Paul and I made it an early evening today as we’re a bit tired and just want to relax a little for once on the trip.