Saturday, Dublin, Ireland

Back to civilization - the view from my room.

A city tour took us to all the highlights of the city proper; buildings with long rows of apartments. The only difference were the different colored doors. Guess if you stayed too long at the pub, this helped you to find your own home.

To me, this building looked like The Coliseum meets New Orleans.

A Dublin casino?

A stop at St. Patrick’s Cathedral where St. Patrick baptized converts; an impressive cathedral with lots of statues and recreated antique tile floors. Click HERE. Internet has better photos of the interior than I do. 

Jonathan Swift and his mistress are buried here. 

 I really love this cathedral from the outside. It appeals to my bookkeeper nature - clean lines but decorated.

Then a stop at Trinity College to see the Book of Kells (an illuminated manuscript of the new testament), which I found to be unimpressive. The library, however, was magnificent.  No photos allowed.  So who took the ones on the internet? Click HERE.

For the college, click HERE. For the Book of Kells, click HERE.

The rest of my day was free.  I went to the Kilkenny’s Department Store for chicken and broccoli pie covered with mashed potatoes, sprinkled with cheese and browned.  Did I want more mashed potatoes?  No, just some carrots, thank you.  How about some rice?  These people must live on carbohydrates. Good food, though. Then I walked down Grafton Street - click HERE and saw Molly Malone, click HERE, but there were so many people milling around (weekend, remember?), that I couldn't get decent photos, so relying on the good old internet.

I walked over to the Museum of History – lots of gold, including canisters several inches in diameter which the natives put through their earlobes and used for storing their treasures and many belts, necklaces, and robe pins.  Also lots of rather primitive tools, and a surprisingly large collection of Egyptian artifacts.  No photos allowed. 

Next door was the Museum of Natural History.  Three floors of every imaginable mammal, fish, insect, and bird.  I even got to see a now extinct Irish deer, which is larger even than an elk. They also had a small collection of minerals.  No photos allowed.  Really? Click HERE.

And down the block was the National Gallery.  There were lots of portraits by Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, a Gilbert Stuart, some Rembrandts, the recently discovered Caravaggio’s “Taking of Christ”. Click HERE.  And real surprise to me – landscapes by Gainsborough.  I searched my brochure to see if they had a Vermeer.  They did!  I found the correct room and started on my right and let my eyes travel along the wall.  There it was!  I went over for a good look and here was “A Man Writing a Letter”.  I was thinking, “I don’t remember this painting”, and then I noticed the artist’s name – Gabriel Metsu. Click HERE.  But it looked like a Vermeer.  Same black and white tile floor, same Delft blue and white ceramic tiles forming the splashboard, same open window up high on the left wall with the light streaming in and a picture on the back wall, same mostly red tapestry lying across the table.  I looked on around the room and on the opposite wall found the real Vermeer – “Woman Writing a Letter with Maid." Click HERE. Everything was the same except for the people (and the woman’s maid is watching her), the subject of the picture on the wall, and the pattern of the tapestry.  If I had seen the Metsu in a garage sale without a signature, I’d have sworn I’d found an unknown Vermeer.  Again-no photos. Click HERE. I was begining to wonder why I bothered with a camera. At least I got to take pictures of the cattle out front. Remember the moose in Canada and the angels in Los Angeles? I think someplace did horses, too.

I love being able to walk around, because you just miss so much from the window of a bus. Like this cute little house. Wonder why they painted it green, right in the middle of a green-green island?

And the shamrock street lights.

And the shamrock fence.

And more buildings with doors of different colors.

I walked back to the hotel through a crowded shopping district, stopping at McDonald’s for dinner (they now rank Shanghai, London, Dublin, and Paris). 

It was a long walk and starting to get cool (no sweater), so I was glad to be back in my room. No exercises - walked a lot today. 

To be continued. . . . .