We landed in Dublin at 8:55 a.m. after a 5-1/2 hour flight
from Boston. I had slept for only two hours and Abby for just slightly more. The
Delta employees were all wearing new uniforms that had just been issued on May
29. Purple was the color of choice for many of the women. Several flights landed
in Dublin at close to the same time and we stood in line for an hour and
fifteen minutes before clearing immigration.
The weather was fine with a blue sky and the temperature in
the upper 60’s. It would not get above 71 all day. Our taxi driver was really
enjoying the weather, and said it had been like this for three weeks. We hoped
it would continue, but we knew it wouldn’t. This is Ireland, after all.
After checking into the Fitzwilliam Hotel, we walked the
four blocks to the National Museum of Archeology, just south of Leinster House,
the home of Ireland’s parliament. According to Fodor’s this museum houses the
largest collection of Celtic antiquities in the world, dating back to 7000 B.C.
We at lunch in the museum café, where Abby had a Caesar salad and I had a beef
and Guinness pie.
We enjoyed the beautiful exhibition of Irish gold artifacts
dating from 2200 to 500 B.C. I especially liked the gold lunulae, maybe because
I had never seen them before and they are very old, from 2000 B.C. Lunulae are
flat crescent-shaped sheets of gold. (“Lunula” means “small moon” in Latin.)
Only 100 lunulae have been found in western Europe, and 80 of those were found
in Ireland. Lunulae were originally developed in Ireland and then exported to
other parts of Europe.
I also like the gold torcs, which are relatively newer,
dating from about 1100 B.C., and the gold collars or gorgets, which date from
800-700 B.C. These are found throughout Europe and are not as distinctively
Irish as the lunulae.
Moving on to the treasury, we were greeted by the odd sight
of a three-faced stone head from County Cavan, broadly dated as Iron Age. A
couple of ornamented silver chalices from the 8th and 9th
centuries A.D. seemed to be quintessentially Irish. Also interesting were the
gold and silver brooches dating from the 9th century A.D.
We walked back to the Fitzwilliam Hotel, where Abby took a
nap while I took a taxi to the Kilmainham Gaol. Abby had originally planned to
go to Kilmainham with me, but she was just too tired. The jail was built in
1796 and finally shut down in 1924. In 1960 former prisoners started restoring
it and it now is a museum run by the Irish government. The jail held common criminals,
including men, women and children. Our guide said that a child as young as 5
was held there. The jail included a courtroom as well as Catholic and
Protestant Chapels.
Political prisoners have made the jail most famous. Fourteen
of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rebellion were held in the jail and executed
there by firing squad. Our guide said that the rebellion was not very popular
among average Dubliners because some of them were killed by crossfire and city
life was greatly disrupted. However, the British government created martyrs by
executing them and made the rebellion popular. The Irish revolution started up
again in 1919 and ultimately led to independence in 1922. One of the martyrs,
Thomas Clarke, bears the same last name as my Irish forebears who earlier had
immigrated to Canada after the potato famine.
I taxied back to the hotel in time for our 6:00 dinner
reservation at the Inn on the Green Bar at the hotel. We ate olives, mussels
and bread while sampling some of the local beverages. After supper we sat on
the balcony of our hotel room and listened to the sea gulls. I was sound asleep
by 8:15 p.m., well before Abby, and slept for eleven hours.
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