Sunday in Ireland: My Last Day

Sunday morning we had a devotional in our hotel room because the nearest church of Christ required a complicated system of bus routes to locate. Once we finished our worship, we met up with Scott and took a bus to the Kilmainham Gaol, opened in 1796 as the County Gaol for Dublin. A number of the leading figures in the struggle for Irish independence were imprisoned here, and some were executed at Kilmainham Gaol.

Chris and Scott peer into a cell

 

A warning issued by prisoners on a wall inside the Gaol where revolutionary leaders from Ireland's War for Independence were imprisoned and executed by British authorities.

The East wing opened in 1862

In May 1916, following the Easter Monday uprising of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army against British rule, fourteen men were executed by firing squad here in what had been the stone-breakers' yard.

After we finished our tour, we went outside to a beautiful, sunny day in the low sixties (Fahrenheit). We explored a little, coming across two historic cemeteries with (unfortunately) locked gates.

 Irish Museum of Modern Art

 As we walked back toward the center of Dublin, I finally got a picture of Thomas Read Company, a cutlery shop founded in 1675 and only recently closed. Thomas Read was a sword maker, but the shop continued to sell knives and scissors and so on until it closed in 2009.

We also walked around Dublin Castle...

...and after a delicious lunch at Queen of Tarts (highly recommend!), we headed over to the National Museum of Archaeology, which is free to the public.

The rotunda in the Museum

A logboat

Bronze Age gold lunulae (collar necklaces), some dating from 2200 B.C.

Silver chalice from the 9th century

Tara Brooch, a Celtic brooch from about 700 A.D., is considered one of the most impressive brooches because of its advanced design and techniques of workmanship--it's made of gold, silver, copper, amber and glass

After we left the museum, I was EXHAUSTED so I got a nap at the hotel while Chris and Scott walked around Grafton Street and got some coffee. Later, Scott headed back to Cork and Chris and I went in search of dinner. We happened upon an Italian restaurant called Dunne and Crescenzi, and we were not disappointed! They had excellent service, authentic, delicious food, and a quiet atmosphere. We took our time over dinner, as the Irish do, and strolled back to the hotel at twilight.

We called it a day and I bid farewell to Ireland the next morning as I managed to finally catch a bus to the airport (that was quite the story itself) and flew to Pittsburgh, then home to DFW.

You made it! You survived my Ireland Trip Blog-tacular!