Dublin

Last weekend I travelled outside the UK for the first time since I've been here - I made the grueling 1 hour flight to Dublin, Ireland. To be honest, it was ok - not horrible but not brilliant. I didn't really have much planned, which may have been part of the problem, and I'm not really sure what I expected of the city either. 

Dublin

Dublin

Here are the highlights and lowlights:

• I made the obligatory trip to the Guinness Brewery - it was interesting and included the freshest pint of Guinness I've ever had, but I spent the whole time thinking that they must be making a killing (it wasn't cheap and it was packed). 
• I went to the Archeology section of the National Museum of Ireland where I learned that they recently (2006, I think) found a book buried in peat that was 1000 years old (pretty neat when I think about it).
• I went to the Modern Art Gallery where I got absolutely none of the exhibits (I can normally understand/appreciate one or two ... but not here).
• I went to the Science Gallery, which, in combination with having a bath tub in my hotel room (exciting when your flat only has a shower), made the weekend for me. It's a gallery that combines science with art and all the exhibits were artists depictions of where they think science and technology can take us in the future. There was one that explained that in the future humans could give birth to other mammals so we could help repopulate endangered species. There was a model of a dolphin in a human uterus (like when you see a model of a human fetus in a uterus at a doctor's office... but instead of a human fetus, it was a dolphin). There was another exhibit showing video of what looked like a pristine landscape but was actually a sort of farm for producing liquid oxygen for fueling space travel. The species of plants and animals on the farm had specific purposing for "growing" the liquid oxygen. It was all a little weird and very interesting!





Guinness Brewery

Looking up at the Spire