It was a lovely sunny day today so I decided to spend the morning outside, wandering around two places I hadn't been to the day before; the grounds of Trinity College Dublin, and the nearby St Stephen's Green, a leafy and colourful public park.
Founded in the 16th century, Trinity College Dublin is one of the oldest universities in the world. I didn't go inside, as I had already decided to see the Book of Kells and the Old Library on Tuesday, but I enjoyed walking round the grounds in the sunshine. Impressive buildings, sculptures, green fields, patches of wildflowers in full bloom, and beds of other impressive flowers, the latter outside the School of Botany entrance, appropriately enough... (I got a photo of the entrance but not of the flowers, unfortunately).
St Stephen's Green was also lovely to walk round - very green and flower-filled, with two small lakes into the bargain. I spotted a grey heron on a clump of bushes in one of them. I also read some of the information boards set up around the park which told the story of the events of the Easter Rising in 1916 which took place there.
After I'd finished in St Stephen's Green I made my way back to the hostel to use the facilities and rest for a bit. I passed through Dublin's main shopping streets, in the process of doing so bumping into one of my now-ex colleagues by the famous statue of Molly Malone, leading a school group visit. I took a fancy to some of the buildings nearby.
I also made sure to find St Werburgh's Church of Ireland, which is where my 4× great-grandfather was a churchwarden. It was closed, and no opening times were given, but two phone numbers were there, so I decided to give them a ring another time. I also admired a plaque for the composer John Field, who was baptised there in 1782.
My last and longest visit of the day was to the Archaeology branch of the National Museum of Ireland. I spent just over 3.5 hours there and still had to rush through the last couple of parts somewhat (about Ancient Egypt, Ancient Cyprus and Viking Ireland/ Dublin) because closing time was approaching. It was amazing! Not quite as big as I was expecting, but there were still so many interesting things to see it would take all day to write about them if I tried to mention everything.
I'll settle for some highlights - the first of which was a room of objects found in bogs, including eerie bog mummies, put into wider context by some information about other 'bog men' which have been found in Denmark, Germany and the U.K.
Another highlight was a collection of Bronze Age weapons, cauldrons and musical instruments, including the oldest known musical instruments from Ireland - a set of end blown and side blown horns.
Another highlight was a collection of stunning prehistoric Irish gold objects.
Other highlights included rare Neolithic polished jadeite axeheads, an immensely long 4500-year-old logboat, megalithic carvings on decorated stones...
...a collection of exquisite Celtic and early medieval Christian art, jewellery and other items of metalwork...
...medieval Irish weapons, book shrines and reliquaries, a one-room temporary exhibition on St Columba which included his bell and crozier...
...and an extremely ancient psalter found in a bog but so incredibly special and rare it was given its own one-room exhibition, though shared with one or two other examples of early writing in Ireland.
The other examples of early Irish writing were a stone with Ogham script carved into the sides - very rune-like lines - and the Springmount Tablets, which were found in a bog and are the earliest examples of Irish handwriting in a script known as Insular minuscule.
Although as mentioned above I had to rush through the Viking Dublin/ Ireland part and missed some of it, the parts I saw made up another highlight.
I got an even briefer look round the Ancient Egypt and Cyprus sections:
I also have a small collection of photos of miscellaneous objects I also had to rush past and weren't grouped with any of the previous items I've posted here:
I was interested to see that occasionally there was an 'item missing - currently on display in the World of Stonehenge exhibition at the British Museum' notice next to an empty space - nice to know that I've already seen those at that exhibition!
This featured blog entry was written by 3Traveller from the blog Teaching and Travelling Abroad.
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