Museum Tour of Dublin

Continued from Part 3…

After a few extremely busy days, we found ourselves exhausted this morning before the day began, so had a little lie-in before going down for breakfast. We wanted to spend some more time in Dublin today, so took the bus in, the 39A, from just down the road from the hotel, and arrived in Dublin mid-morning.

Before we left, I came up with a shortlist of places to visit, and planned a little loop around one side of the river, to take a look at some of the places we hadn’t seen yet. We started at the National Wax Museum. Some of the models were great, but some of the set-pieces didn’t make a whole lot of sense, like a room with 2 people turning a crank, one with a wax monkey head, the other with a wax zebra head. There was also a big animatronic dinosaur that hit Helen with its tail twice!

Then downstairs, Helen found her kindred spirit in Donald Trump, and we saw a starving Irishman that reminded me a little of Uncle Ian.

In the basement was the horror section, but Helen didn’t see what was scary about the kitchen scene, she said it just looks like the usual sort of meal she serves up at home!

Out of the wax museum, we took a walk up towards Saint Stephen’s Green, stopping off to take some pictures of the Molly Malone statue, Saint Andrews Church, and the Phil Lynott statue. Molly Malone is a fictional fishmonger who is the subject of a well-known Irish song (an unofficial Dublin anthem), and Phil Lynott was an Irish musician who founded the band Thin Lizzy. Due to so many people groping the Molly Malone statue since she was unveiled, her breasts have lost their hue and now shine.

Saint Stephen’s Park was a lovely quiet little park in the middle of the city with a small lake on one side and a little Victorian garden in the center where you could really smell the flowers, the entrance to the park was through the Fusiliers Arch, a monument dedicated to the Dublin Fusiliers who lost their lives during the Second Boer War. We wanted to visit The Little Museum of Dublin just next to the park, but it was only open for scheduled tours, so we decided not to stick around.

By this time it was around lunch time, so we stopped for a slice of cake and a drink before then moving on to the National Museum of Ireland, the Archaeology Wing. The ground floor was full of artefacts from ancient Ireland, lots of flint chips, ancient axe heads and so on. Most of these stones just looked like the sort of stone you use to skim across a lake, I’m not sure how historians can really say someone once used them as axes. Upstairs was more interesting though, with a few models and maps showing what Dublin used to look like during the Viking age, lots of old swords and armour, and a replica of a small viking fishing boat.

Once we were done in the National Museum, we walked across to the National Library of Ireland, but the only part open to visitors was one of the reading rooms where you’re not allowed to take photos, so despite it being a beautiful building, we didn’t really see much of it at all. Next door to the National Library is the National Gallery of Ireland, so we went in here next. Unfortunately all the walking around by this point started to take its toll on us, and Helen twisted her ankle walking in to the building. She sat in the cafe while I went to a pharmacy next door to get some ibuprofen and an ankle wrap.

We walked around the gallery, which again was a beautiful building, and had some really stunning pieces of art inside. The theme seemed to be overwhelmingly religious though, with what seemed like a majority of the art pieces depicting some biblical scene or other, which didn’t really interest either of us. My favourite pieces were an 18th Century statue by an Irish sculptor John Van Nost of George III that looked very Roman for its era, a very busy oil painting of Donnybrook Fair by Erskine Nicol from the 19th century, and a very modern (very large too at nearly 2 stories tall) ash wood sculpture by Joseph Walsh from 2017 called Magnus Modus.

After we were done in the gallery, late afternoon was approaching and we didn’t want to get stuck on the bus in rush hour again, so we headed back to the hotel earlier than usual. At dinner time we wanted to go and visit Johnnie Fox’s Pub as recommended by Dad, but we were much more tired than we thought, so ended up just going next door to an American style restaurant for a quick meal before retiring for the night.