The Queen and I: Dublin Day 2 – Trinity College and The National Archeology Museum

On day 2, we woke up and had breakfast at our hotel around 9 am. It was an Irish continental breakfast for 10 euros/person. It was hash browns, scrambled eggs, white and black puddings, pork meat (that they called bacon but I didn’t go near it because it looked like boiled lard), baked beans, bread products, fruit, yogurt, juice, coffee, and tea.

After breakfast, we walked down and across the river to the famous O’Connell Street. On the way there, we saw a pub called The Bachelor Inn that had some cool quotes on it.

We did a bit of souvenir shopping on O’Connell Street. I heard a song in the souvenir store that I fell in love with and have been listening to regularly.

Then we headed off to Trinity College. Trinity College is where the Book of Kells is, but it was expensive and the line was super long. Also, illuminated manuscripts have never been my cup of tea.

We walked around the campus and looked at all of the old buildings. The school is largely enclosed like a castle with a courtyard in the middle. Maybe Cal can look into that to keep all the crazy people off of our campus.

Then we went to the Dublin's Phoenix Park which is like Central Park.

After we looked around for a while, we headed off for the National Archeology Museum, which mom really wanted to see. Since it was Sunday, the museum did not open until 2 pm, but we got there around 1:40, so we sat outside for 20 minutes. When we got inside, it was really cool. There were gold and stone artifacts dating back 5000+ years. As mom pointed out, those artifacts are further removed from the time of Christ than we are now. That’s pretty cool since America doesn’t have anything that old.

We also saw a boat that was 5000 years old.

Then we went to the bog part of the museum. I still don’t really get bogs, but basically I guess they are liquid heavy areas of decaying living things. Ireland has used most of its bogs up because they are good to burn for energy. When they extract the bogs they sometimes find really old things because the bogs don’t let oxygen in and keep things preserved.

There were some bodies that were 2000-3000 years old. They were crazy looking.

After that, I was really tired. We looked around for a bit longer, but eventually I had to go back to the hotel to take a nap. I really had a hard time with the jet lag/time change.

We got a recommendation from the hotel for a restaurant to go to for dinner, but when we got there they turned us away because they were reducing their capacity because their head chef was not there. They sent us to their other restaurant, which was supposed to be “12 minutes away.” It ended up being more like 25-30 minutes away. It was near the Dublin soccer stadium and since they had just had a game, the pubs and streets were full of people in Dublin soccer jersey and face paint. At the restaurant I ordered a steak sandwich. The waiter was not happy when I asked for it well done, but oh well.

Afterwards we walked back to the hotel which took about 30-40 minutes and then we went to bed.

(I'm just going to post pictures at the end of entries from now on because it's faster)