Tourist Day

Last Sunday the roommates and I went out for a day of being tourists. We took pictures with multiple cameras, looked at maps, got lost and went on a tour. It was quite excellent and we learned a lot about Irish history and how sweet it is.

Our first stop was St. Stephan's Green, which is a park in the middle of Dublin. Apperantly Central Park in New York was based on this park. It's absoulutely beautiful and my pictures don't do it justice. I'll have to go another time, just to take decent pictures.

The roommates in front of the mucky lake in St. Stephan's Green.
From left to right: Jordan, Molly (who doesn't actually live with us), Hayley, Bill, and Allan

















Sitting on a fountain with my roommates. And a little boy to the right who I was afraid would fall in the fountain.

These next pictures are out of order, but they are from Dublin Castle. Which I believe is a Georgian castle built on top of what was a Norman castle that burnt down. There is actually a moat burried underneath the castle. We got to go see it and it was quite... danky. But cool none the less. For 200 years they didn't know there was a moat burried underneath the castle. Until one day in the 1980s when the water pressure kind of exploded a tower. Good thing it was beign used for a tax office and nothing worthwhile was ruined. Dublin Castle was given to the people of Dublin in 1922 when the English gave up their rule of Ireland. It is now a government building still in use by the president (who is female by the way).

Before we went on the tour we explored this area in front of the coach house, or some other building. The little brick paths mean nothing to us, but were really fun to follow along.






















Inside the castle is this beautiful portrait of Earl de Grey. Who I think was a Viceroy of Ireland back in the day. He also owned a tea plantation. Tenpence for whoever can guess what kind of tea he grew!

















This is a room inside the castle. Rooms like this are used for meetings and confrences, but I'm sure they just drink Guinness and talk about Family Guy. In 1922 when the English handed over this building to Ireland, they gutted it and took everything, including the drapes! So this beautiful old furniture was donated by some cool, generous people. Lots of the furniture was given as gifts from other important people from around the world.

















This is a big ball room with paintings on the ceilings, which didn't really turn out well in this picture. They use this room for innagurating the president and such. More boozing with drunken dancing occurs here.

















Outside of Dublin Castle here. You can see the only tower left standing from the original castle. It used to house prisoners but now it is a museum for the Garda, (the Irish police).

















This is a really cool room, I think it may be called the Drawing Room. But what it really is, is where the single ladies sat while everyone else danced the night away in the ball room we saw above. It was considered impolite for a lady to be without an escort in the ball room, so the men had to come to the door and ask a lady to dance. Unfortunately for many women, there weren't enough men who wanted to dance.

This is another view of outside the castle. You can see better here how the old tower has merged with the newer buildings. There are also now places for people to park cars! Dublin is full of old history mingled with present day life.

I've decided that every weekend that I have nothing planned I'm going to see something cool in Dublin. There's history everywhere here, so I'm sure there will be no shortage of places to see.