Ireland - Tuesday 6/6

It's our last day in Dublin and our feet are feeling the journey. The weather knows we're leaving too as today was the first cloudy day since we arrived.

Our first stop was Ireland's Archeology Museum. A fascinating museum with a lot of artifacts that came from 3000+ yr old sites that we had seen in person during our travels. The most interesting things were the bog mummies on display. For the most part, they were murdered as sacrifices. But they were mostly well-off people - not slaves. So they might have been political competition. As you can see from the photos, even some hair styles have survived. Bogs are very effective in preserving bodies.

Creepy!!

After, we stopped at the National Museum of Art which had a decent collection of art. Not the biggest museum, but enough to be if interest. Here are a few of our favorites.

After lunch at a cafe we finished off the afternoon with a tour of the Trinity College Library where they house the Book of Kells. Historians think it was created by monks 1200 years ago. As you might imagine, the design and painting was pretty amazing. 

There aren’t any opportunities to take photos so we found some examples in a book.

For those who are a fan of the show Vikings (Mike’s mom) the early episode when they slaughter the monks is loosely based on what happened. 

Included in the tour was the actual library, (with over 200,000 books) which was huge and very old. So much so most books have been removed to preserve them.

After a rest at the hotel, we ended our time in Dublin with a literary pub crawl. It was basically a pub crawl to where some of Ireland's most famous poets drank: The Duke, O'Neill’s, The Stand and David Byrne's. We were good participants and enjoyed a pint (or half) at each stop and came in second place in the ending quiz! We were starving so we ended the night with a slice of pizza. It was a very fun and informative pub crawl!