Today you’ll have a full day available for independent exploration of Dublin. If you’d like to tag along on a more organized excursion, Professors Cope and Doggett will be meeting the Geneseo alumni group at 1pm in the courtyard of Trinity College for a short walking tour of Merrion Square and the free museums at Leinster House. In the late afternoon, if time permits, Professor Cope will take interested alumni and students to the National Museum of Decorative Arts and History (Collins Barracks) and Professor Doggett will arrange a trip to St. Michan’s Church and the mummy exhibit.
We will meet in the late afternoon at the hostel and take public transportation to Howth, a seaside village just north of Dublin. You’ll have free time to walk around the village and trails and have some dinner.
Our time in Dublin was interesting in a number of different ways. It reminded me, as it does most people, of any other European city or New York City. Walking through made me want to stop in every church, shop, and park though. We went for a more touristy experience on our free day in which we walked through the Medieval area, walking into Christ Church, touring St Patrick’s Cathedral and Dublin castle. St. Patrick’s Cathedral was the first place we entered in Dublin in which I felt the grandeur compared to churches found elsewhere in Western Europe. The contrast was very informative, in that the nation is obviously mostly agricultural and did not ever have a “Golden Age” in which to focus on the arts, culture, and unnecessary luxuries like the rest of Western Europe did. This is not to say it is any lesser: as someone touring a nation to gain a better understanding, the condition of certain monuments was even more educational than anything else. For instance, the first church we entered in Dublin, St Michan’s was part of the Church of England, and while those churches are typically less gaudy-because the church does not need to spend all of its money on luxuries- it was surprising to me when I entered. In my experience of traveling western Europe, the churches are beautiful pieces of art in and of themselves, whereas these churches served their actual purpose as places of worship. This, in addition to the Strokestown home, and its rundown condition was largely eye opening. As I mentioned in my post about Derry, it is indicative of the overall wealth of the country and the continued strife it has endured.