♫ In Dublin's fair city
Where the girls are so pretty
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone
As she wheeled her wheelbarrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying, "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!" ♫
We are in Dublin! After driving through the Irish countryside for a few days, dodging rain and nasty weather, we decided to drive to the capital. The first day, we walked around the Dublin Castle. It is not your typical castle with a battlement, a turret, and a moat. The whole layout is more the size of a city block, which houses different buildings. The castle served for centuries as the headquarters of English, and later British, administration in Ireland. Following Ireland’s independence in 1922, Dublin Castle was handed over to the new Irish government. These days, a major part of the government is still housed here.
Behind the Christ Church Cathedral we found a small musical garden. Everything in that garden made music, one way or the other.
Dublin's downtown had a lot of different parts. On day one, we did not find a city part that really appealed to us.
The second day in Dublin, we went to the Natural History Museum of Ireland, also called the Dead Zoo. It showcases animals native to Ireland or found in Ireland, from the tiniest ant to the Giant Irish Deer.
We then visited the National Gallery of Ireland, where we admired a whole different kind of art. There happened to be an exhibition on seventeenth-century Dutch artists, which we really enjoyed.
There are a lot of writers who called Dublin home, like James Joyce and Oscar Wilde. We did find Oscar, who leisurely was leaning against a rock. Hurray for high school Literature, as I recall reading some of his work as a teenager.
Ireland served us well. We did not get to see all we hoped to see, as we decided against driving the Ring of Kerry route due to the weather. Therefore we missed the rugged coast and beautiful scenery of the west.
It was the last European country we wanted to visit this trip, it is time to slowly make our way back to the Netherlands.
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