The Last Day--The Best Museum

Today was our last day in Dublin, and actually our last full day on this wonderful trip back across "the pond." We had only one thing on our itinerary and that was to visit the EPIC (The Irish emigration story) museum. EPIC stands for Every Person Is Connected and is a new museum that opened in 2016. It was voted Europe's leading tourist attraction at the 2019 World Travel Awards. 

The museum is a privately owned one that was founded by the former CEO of coca-cola who was born in Ireland and emigrated to the United States. It is highly technological and interactive and uses a great deal of hands on technology to do this. Thus, it keeps the visitor highly interested and involved with the material. 

The museum is divided into 4 sections. The migration category discusses the migration patterns in to and from Ireland from 500 AD to today. 

This sculpture is in this gallery and shows the mode of transportation the people used from the beginning to today. It starts in the bottom left of the above picture with the small boats and ends in the upper right with the large boats and planes from today.

The next gallery was called motivation and discussed the reason why people emigrated from Ireland. This included the potato famine, missionary work, religious and social persecution, and foreign conflicts.

The influence section was a very large part of the museum and included the many ways Irish immigrants have influenced the world in various areas.

Some of the rooms showed their influence in business, politics, and science. 

In the science influence room these sculptures were to represent synapses of the brain.

In the room where it showed sport influencers the interactive board allowed one to put different sport disks on and turn them showing you what Irish influencers were important to that sport.

There was a room that showed those who were of Irish decent that were important to the world of art and design.

Finally, there was a room that showed the many literary greats that were from Ireland. As an English teacher I found this room to be absolutely fascinating and well done. In this large room you could pull the glowing white books toward you and they would read part of the book allowed. These were from the Irish authors who wrote: Gone With the Wind,

The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe,

Dracula, 

Ulysses, 

and Gulliver's Travels. 

There was also a large interactive book you could flip through that would allow you to find out many facts about these books and authors. 

In this large flip book I learned that most of these authors left Ireland because they didn't have the freedom to write as they wished.

 In fact many times their words were blackened out or the books were simply burned.

This was such a great way to end our trip. We learned so much but we had fun doing so. Now we are off to try to get all of our newly found treasures and such into our suitcases within that 50 lb. limit. However, it is all worth it for all the memories with which we will come home.

A Day in Dublin

We started out our day with a bus tour of Dublin. Even though we did one the last time we were here, it is always interesting to see what new things are happening. 

Christ Church is the oldest church in Dublin and was founded in 1030. It is located in the center of Dublin.

Dublin is becoming Europe's Silicone Valley. Currently the European headquarters of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Air Bnb, and Google are all within a 4 block area of Dublin. In fact currently Google is building 3 additional high rises in the area and will be expanding its already 8,000 person workforce.

Dublin seems to have a pub on every corner!

The city also has many beautiful flowers!

 The old homes are surrounded by ivy and currently house many hotels, restaurants, and businesses.

St. Patrick's Cathedral is the second oldest church in Dublin. It was founded in 1191 and is the central church to the Church of Ireland.

The Ha'penny Bridge was built in 1816 and until that year there was a ferry to move passengers from one side of the river to the other. The owner was told he had to either fix the ferries or build a bridge as the ferries were in bad shape, so he chose to build a bridge. However, for the first 100 years he charged everyone ha'penny to cross.

After our bus tour we headed off for our evening excursion which was an Irish music pub crawl. 

We started off in the famous Temple Bar area.

Our first pub was Oliver St. John Gogarty.  We met our two guides Alan (who was the guitar player and singer) and Eamon (who played the flute and drum).

Then we headed to the Ha'Penny Bridge Pub which is one of only two family run pubs left in the Temple Bar area. Upstairs we listened some more to our musicians. 

They were fantastic and it was real traditional Irish music. They told us the history of every song and it was truly inspirational and interesting. 

Learning about the history of the music made me appreciate it that much more. It was a great way to spend one of our last nights.

Dublin--The Final Destination

Today we headed for our final destination on this trip. That of Dublin, Ireland. This will be our second time to this city and we are looking forward to it as much this time as we were the first. We decided to take the bus from Belfast to Dublin for two reasons. First, it was only eight pounds a person versus forty on the train. Second, it dropped us off two blocks from the apartment we are staying in while we are in the city.

Here was our ride to Dublin.

We arrived in Dublin and checked into our cute little apartment right downtown by the river. We had just enough time to walk to our evening activity. Our walk took us through some pretty yet typical Dublin sights.

Here is a Dublin pub all decorated. Not sure if it is for the World Cup or just because, but they sure do have it done up right!

The pub was open, but as it was only about 4pm things were pretty quiet since things don't get going until later in the evening.

This is the pedestrian street in Dublin called Grafton Street. It is filled with shops (of many different price levels) and restaurants. Even in the rain it was pretty busy.

We finally arrived at The Gaiety Theater which was our destination to see Riverdance. We were so excited as we figured what a better place to see it than where it really came from?

The inside of the theater was really cute, and the theater was tiny.

The show was absolutely AMAZING! We were impressed by all the dancers and the musicians. 

It was a great way to start our time in this great city!

Northern Ireland Countryside--An Abbey, A Farmhouse, and The Game of Thrones

Our second, and last, day in Northern Ireland was spent in the countryside. We decided to head south since we went west the last time we were out this way. If you have watched, know about, or have any interest in Game of Thrones, you may know that much of the outdoor scenes were filmed around Belfast. There are probably two reasons for this. First, indoor studio scenes were filmed here in the building I showed you on my blog yesterday. Secondly, Northern Ireland has some beautiful natural and historical scenery. 

Our first stop was Inch Abbey which  was established almost 900 years ago in 1180. It is believed that this is the monastery where the monks wrote the story of St. Patrick running the snakes out of Ireland. It was taken out of service by King Henry VIII in the 1500's. It was an extrememly beautiful and peaceful location.

For anyone who is a GoT watcher the Abbey was used as Rob Stark's encampment. As it stated on the sign...it was where Catlyn Stark confronted Jamie Lanister as he was bound to a pole. 

We just knew that it was a gorgeous day in a peaceful and quiet set of old ruins.

It was also set right along a lake and within view of the Downpatrick Cathedral. 

We then set off for a National Park area call Castle Ward. It is a large park that was once owned by a local family, however it is now owned and cared for by the National Trust. It has a modern mansion that is being refurbished, many hiking and biking trails, a lake, a tea room, and a farm area known as Old Castle Ward. This is the area we visited. 

Old Castle ward was built in the late 1500's. It is an 850 acre walled home and farm area that was lived in by the Ward family. 

This was the entry into the gates of the home.

These panoramic pictures show the "home" or farm inside the walls. It consisted of several buildings. Some housed the family, servants, equipment, animals, and various other items and/or people.

The family's home or sleeping quarters were really the main tower. They slept on the top floor and there was a main large fireplace on the bottom that would heat the tower. 

 

For those who watch Game of Thrones, Old Castle Ward was the set used for Winterfell for the first season of the show. They spent 8 weeks building onto Castle Ward for the show and then the cast came for shooting for many months. 

We then spent the rest of the afternoon driving up Northern Ireland's Eastern Coast along the Irish Sea since the weather was full of sunshine.

This area had large herds of dairy cattle. In fact, there were more dairy cattle then there were sheep. 

Except for the fact that we were driving on the opposite side of the road we felt like we were back home!

Finally, it was time to come back to our city home in Belfast! There is beauty in the city as well as the country. 

The City Where The Unsinkable Was Built

We left Scotland this morning on a VERY early flight to hop across the water to Northern Ireland. We arrived 30 minutes later in Belfast. It has been 10 years since Stevie and I have been to this city and my has it changed. 

There are pretty much two claims to fame for this part of the world. First and most recently a few decades ago some may remember the civil unrest here between the Catholic and Protestant population. Violent fighting, deaths, disagreement divided this beautiful city. However, that has for the most point been put behind them. 

The second is the history of shipbuilding that occurred here a century ago. Specifically, this shipbuilding resulted in the infamous Titanic in 1912 from Harland and Wolfe shipbuilders.

We were here last in 2009 to visit the Titanic corridor and it was a mostly industrial area at the time. We were able to see some buildings from the old H&W company, the dry dock, and a few other places where things occurred. However, it was mostly abandoned and left up to the imagination as there were just signs that told what had happened in certain areas. 

We were shocked when we arrived this morning. The area has become completely revitalized. Within three years of our visit came the 100 year anniversary of the Titanic disaster and the Belfast area decided to bring the area back to life. To start with we are staying in a set of beautiful high rise condos that are on the waterfront.

This is the view from our condo. You can see the SS Nomadic (tender boat) and Titanic Belfast from our balcony.
Within the different buildings there are restaurants, stores, coffee shops, and about 300 condos. There is also a hockey arena, office buildings, and they turned some of the old H&W buildings that were used for building the large ship into movie studios. 

In fact the striped and gray buildings in the background were the indoor filming location for The Game of Thrones during its many seasons.

When we were here ten years ago we saw the tender boat that took many of the first class passengers out to the Titanic in France and Ireland. It was completely rusted out and you were unable to go anywhere near it as it floated in the water. 

Today it has been dry docked in one of the H&W old dry docks and has been completely redone. You are able to go on board and look around the boat. What is interesting about The Nomadic is that it is one of the last remaining pieces of The Titanic.

The one large project they completed for 2012 or the 100 year anniversary of the sinking of the ship was this building.

This is Titanic Belfast. This unusual building is a large museum that is dedicated mostly to the building but also the history of the ship. The building was designed by a Texas architect. It was built to look something like an iceburg, it is the exact height of The Titanic, and it has points so it looks like a ship. 

It is divided into several galleries starting with "Boomtown Belfast" which explains what Belfast was like at the turn of the 20th century.  There was a "Shipyard" ride which was a ride that was exceptionally well done. It took us through a simulated Belfast shipyard. We learned that each rivet (metal nail) was put in by a group of 5 men/boys. The rivet heater, rivet thrower, rivet holder, and two hitters (a left and right handed). These men would have to properly put in 250 rivets to make one pound. It was loud and hot work.

The "Launch" gallery spoke of when it was first put unfitted into the water. This room let you look out into the original slipway where it was slipped into the water. 

The large metal posts symbolize where the Titanic would have been and the slipway was at the far end. Ten years ago non of this concrete was here, just the derelict slipway.

The "Fitting" gallery described the dry docking and fitting out of the ship. This was done within one year as she was slipped into the water in 1911 and she set sail in 1912.

The left side of this shows her before the fitting and the right side shows her after the fitting.

The end of the museum was emotional with the sinking and aftermath. Belfast lost many prominent people as H&W had sent many of its architects, engineers, etc on that first sailing and they never came home. 

Belfast certainly has outdone itself in the revitalizing of this historical area. I am happy to see it has come back to life.