A couple weekends ago, we took a short get-away to Dublin, Ireland. Of course, we can never go anywhere without it being an educational experience, so the kids researched beforehand about the vikings and leprechauns. We had some knowledgeable tour guides, even if they were 11 and 9!
Some of the highlights of our Dublin tour were –
The Viking Museum:
We learned a lot about the history of Dublin.
The interactive tour and exhibits were great, even if they did lock Emma up to show the slave trade.
After the tour, the kids were able to be archaeologists and dig through history. Hannah actually unearthed a sword!
Christ Church Cathedral:
This cathedral dates back to 1030 when the Norse king of Dublin founded the original Viking church.
The architecture is amazing and we were reminded again of what ‘flying buttresses’ are.
History Museum:
This was a bit of a trek to find as they have a number of free museums to go in, although they are all just labeled ‘museum.’ We wanted to find the history museum and had to go into the science and archaeology museums before finding this one.
Trinity College:
Trinity College is Ireland’s oldest university (according to Wikipedia).
The library holds a wealth of legal documents for Ireland and the UK. One of the ancient documents housed inside is ‘The Book of Kells,’ which is a beautifully illustrated book containing the four gospels from the New Testament in Latin. It is said that it was created by Celtic monks around the year 800.
I loved the use of Gaelic translations under the English words.
“Sphere Within Sphere” Sculpture outside of the library
Wax Museum:
We questioned the kids when they chose this museum as wax figures always make me feel uneasy.
Chris enjoyed making the kids feel more comfortable around the wax figures, as they did start to be uncomfortable around them.
Caleb was happy they included Michael Jackson, as he loves his music.
One unplanned event that deserves remembering is the sidewalk artist that gave Cami a mini art lesson when she expressed so much interest in his work. We had tried to steer her past him quickly as he just wanted donations. But, for some reason, she was adamant about stopping and seeing his work. He immediately stopped what he was doing and showed her an artist ‘trick’ for drawing a building.
Cami enjoyed trying and thanked him for helping her. He gave her an extra piece of paper and a freshly sharpened pencil to take on the plane to practice. Of course, we did give him a nice donation for the ‘free art lesson.’
But, the REAL reason for our weekend trip . . .
to be Aunt Eliza’s cheering section for the Dublin Marathon!
Eliza has been training for the marathon for a long time and we were glad we were so close that we could hop over to cheer her on.
I think we were all surprised how many runners there were in the marathon . . . 10,000 runners!!
There were many characters running as well –
Santa
Gorilla – complete with a snack
Batman and Robin
“Juggling Jim” – he juggled the entire race!
Then we spied Eliza as she rounded the first turn, with her friend Kristin.
She made sure we ‘got her back’ so she could send her love overseas.
Five hours later we hung out around the last turn to catch a glimpse of Eliza coming in after running all over the city.
She looked great . . and then she headed down the homestretch . .
and finished strong.
Eliza had planned on running the marathon in 6 hours, at best. She definitely beat her expectations!
Way to go, Eliza! We are in AWE!!
Ha, that juggling man cracks me up…who thinks of these things! What a fun trip and I too am in awe of people that run marathons. Funny coincidence…a friend of mine from Utah who has cancer mentioned on her blog her friend Eliza that was running a marathon in Dublin….gotta be the same girl right? 😉