Day 22 - Dublin

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Woke up late and then walked to where Thea works (just off of St. Stephen's Green... "green" means "park". Thea gave me a tour of the building... I forget how old she said it is, but hundreds of years. It was built using Georgian achitectural styles... like many of the buildings in Dublin. "Georgian" refers to the years of King George. It consists of a narrow brick building with four of five floors. The front door is one of the showpieces of the building, and usually painted with a gloss paint. The doors were often bright colors of green, blue, or yellow. I also saw black and pastels.

After that, I went to the National Museum of Ireland - Archeology and History (http://www.museum.ie/archaeology/)... of particular interest since I had just finished reading a book on the history of Ireland ("Irish History for Dummies", which Thea's boss wrote... and I also got to meet the writer when I visited Thea at work! 😊. Ireland, of course, has a very long history. Ireland was building intricate tombs, integrating knowledge about astronomy, that are still around today and popular tourist attractions... the burials were completed, I think, over 1,000 years before Stonehenge in England.

I took the tour and found out there is still controversy over how "Celtic" Ireland is... they definitely speak a Celtic language, but I guess there aren't a lot of Celtic artifacts or something.

Ireland also did a lot of work with gold jewelry... the museum even has some gold artifacts that appear to be ear spools... those round things used to stretch the ears out... used still by some tribes in, I think, Africa and/or South America.

Ireland has been invaded numerous times. For instance, the Vikings founded Dublin and brought along the concept of towns. Every time it was invaded, the people that stayed mixed with the culture, adding a new dimension to it. And, besides being invaded by the Normans, they were also ruled by Britain for hundreds of years, in the process many Brits mixed with the Irish culture and became "Irish"... and there is a heavy English influence in Irish culture (despite efforts to weed a lot of it out during the Cultural Revolution at the beginning of the 20th century).

Also, something I have been seeing a lot lately at museums (in London, Dublin, and now in Bahrain), are that, it seems like, people would often be living happily in their agricultural society, start trading a bit, and then get invaded and pillaged... then they had to start building walls/forts and making better weapons.

So, after that I went back to Thea's work, and then her, Damien, and I went to an Irish Pub (the first I went to in Ireland... and I think the first one I've ever been to) and they got me a pint of Guinness (also, a first). Pretty good... it tasted thicker than regular beer (it is a "stout" beer) and had a hint of sweetness to it. Guinness is very important to the history of Dublin (and Ireland) as it once employed over half of the city and has been a big revenue generator for the country. Also, wherever Irish have emmigrated to, they have brought Guinness with them.

From the pub, we walked to a nice restaurant, had dinner, and talked.

After that, we headed back to their house, stopping along the way to look at things, such as the unique doors in Dublin. We talked for a few hours and then went to bed.

Note: I don't have any photos from this day, but will have photos posted soon with the other entries for Ireland (to be posted soon, as well).

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