I could talk about all the things we visited/saw/toured: The Book of Kells, Trinity College, The National Gallery, Joyce Center, Hop-on-Hop-off bus tour, Guinness factory, Jameson distillery, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Christchurch Cathedral, Dublin Castle, National Library & Yeats Exposition, Abbey Theatre, Pearse Train Station, Oscar Wilde Memorial, Dublin Spire etc. The pubs we lounged in, famous bridges we crossed, and the streets we strolled make for equally good memories. Yet, out of all the things we did, the two things that stick out in my mind as overwhelmingly blissful (I say ‘overwhelmingly’ because Dublin was blissful and everything we did was amazing) are Gogarty’s pub and the Leprechaun Museum.
Gogarty’s pub was the meeting place for the musical pub crawl, and at the time, Martha and I were wary of it because it’s located in the Temple Bar area. Our last night in Dublin, after a very filling dinner, when our feet couldn’t handle more walking, Gogarty’s lured us in and up to the second floor where we spent hours of enjoyment. We heard one traditional Irish band for a while. Then two ridiculously talented Irish dancers took the floor for half an hour. Afterward a second Irish band took the stage. We stayed for about 5 hours, most of which were spent on stools at a wooden bar set before the stage, beating along with the band and singing the lyrics that we knew. Over the hours we made a couple of acquaintances and had a couple pints, we bought a CD from the band, and although we finished the night about 30 minutes before the bar closed, we left with huge grins and the feeling that our night couldn’t have been any more perfect.
The Leprechaun Museum was a random idea indeed. Our first day in Dublin Martha had seen a sign for it, but we neglected it until the last few hours before heading to the airport. There’s not a huge wealth of Leprechaun information I would call ‘museum worthy’, so we were unsure what we’d find. The museum turned out to be SO FUN!!! It is definitely a museum geared toward a younger crowd (aka pre-teen children), but the only other people in the museum were three other American girls around our age who were equally thrilled about Leprechauns, so the guide gave us the mature content and a ton of details. The museum is designed to be a journey through different themed rooms. Martha and I had a fantastic time in the first room where everything was giant sized. We climbed up onto chairs fifteen feet tall and handled a teacup larger than a family sized casserole dish. It was like being a little kid again when life was all about climbing and pretending. After a few more themed rooms ranging from solely informative to solely entertaining we found our way to a pot of gold. Martha, me, and the other girls perched on the rim of the large bowl and listened to leprechaun information from the guide. In yet another room we found ourselves within a forest. Another room with colored string from the ceiling took us through a veritable rainbow. By the end we were laughing and giggling - I think we re-found some of the happiness we'd depleted from travel stresses. You were allowed to color a picture at the very end which the museum would stick in a frame on the wall. Pictures colored and inner child set free, we left leprechaun land lighter than air.
No comments:
Post a Comment