St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin is... Anglican!?!

Our trip to Dublin was fantastic. Nicole and I agree the only problem with it (other than the hostel maybe) is that we only had three days there. We spent the whole of our time in Dublin and were not able to go see the rest of the island, which is a shame because it gets exemplary reviews also.

First the ONE negative. DON'T STAY IN HOSTEL'S. If you think dirty hippies in the States are bad, throw them in with Euro-trash and thats pretty much the clientele. Our room was Spartan to say the best. We did however have a shower and about 50 wall power outlets (why unkempt hippies have that much electronic gagetry, I do not know) which is better than our room here in Cambridge. The thing that really soured us on the hostel was the Frenchman that repeatedly tried to enter our room. After his fourth attempt at entering, I finally yelled at him to leave us alone. To which he replied, "Sorry.' Thats all that needs to be said about the hostel experience.

We got to do a lot in Dublin. Here is a short list: National Museum, National Gallery, City Wide Bus Tour, Old Jameson Distillery, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Temple Bar Area, Riverdance, Phoenix Park, and the Dublin Zoo.

Dublin was founded by Vikings in the 10th Century. Eventually the English began to exert more and more control over it and by the reign of the Normans, it was basically an English territory. George III (yes that one) exerted a great deal of control over Ireland, as well as successive monarchs. Ireland became independant in 1921 after a series of bloody uprisings. Most of the rebels are now remembered as heroes and most of the English infrastructure has been renamed to show that. Then they went and sold their souls to the EU devil, and gave up many rights that sovereign goverments enjoy.

The National Gallery had pretty much typical art gallery stuff. Some notable artists featured were (and please pardon my spelling): Carravaggio, Rembrandt, El Greco, Titian, Picasso, Monet, Rubens. The National Museum was pretty amazing. It included lots of gold the ancient Gaelic peoples buried as offerings to whatever gods lived in the peat bogs. It also had a number of Viking things including weapons and armor. The best part though was they had 4 guys that died centuries ago and were left in the bogs that became mummified. They didn't have the whole of any of them and they looked kinda like wallet leather. But still, how many dead guys does the Smithsonian have?

The zoo was also amazing. Unlike here at home, the tigers and leopards are kept apart from the crowd by a 6 inch thick piece of plexi-glass. This allowed for some extreme closeups, and a thorougly amazed Nicole. Also, the Dublin zoo is known as the most fertile zoo in the world so many of the animals had babies. We got to see a baby elephant, gorilla, African wild piglets, and a number of others.

On a side note there was also a pro-life rally going on in the middle of Dublin on Saturday. Apparently abortion is illegal in Ireland, and they want the Prime Minister to keep his promise to make sure it remains that way. No comment, just an interesting aside.

Near where the rally was taking place there is a 500+ foot Millennium Spire which was actually built in 2003. The city payed out the nose for it but it was said to be a self cleaning monument. The Dublin city council paid 40K Euros to clean it last month. I have included that in my pictures.

Finally, we get to St. Patrick's Cathedral, which is Anglican. There is no Catholic Cathedral in the city of Dublin. Its a long story and I have rambled for a while already. While in the cathedral, we found uncle Caesar's plaque honoring him. They also had some very beautiful stained glass. It is an amazing structure, but if you want to see Mary, you had better stick with the St. Patrick's in NYC.