Famous Hat in Gaol

Today Travalon and I slept in, then we went to a cafe for brunch and took a taxi ride with a very entertaining cabbie to our present hotel. This guy reminded me of my paternal grandpa, the way he kept saying how lovely I was and regaling us with entertaining stories. We met up with our tour group and took a tour of Dublin, stopping for a tour of Kilmainham Gaol. The little cells in the "new" part reminded me of cells I've seen in monasteries, and one of them had a very cool painting of the Virgin Mary that I took a picture of. No idea if a prisoner painted that - how would he have gotten a hold of paints? There was lots of graffiti everywhere except in the room where condemned prisoners went to await execution, which sort of surprised me - if there was ever a time you'd want to leave your mark, it should be your last hours of life. Unless they cleaned all those up... The room did look freshly painted. I swear you could still feel the tension in this room from all those people preparing for their executions. We also saw the room where they did the hangings, and the yard where they shot fourteen Irish protesters back in 1916. The prison closed in 1924 and fell into disrepair until some people decided to fix it up in the 60's. The prison tour guide said we had all been well-behaved, so he was letting us leave. Then the tour took us through beautiful Phoenix Park, with its herd of fallow deer visible under the trees in the distance.

This evening Travalon and I went to a sports bar for fish and chips (he had prawn and chips), then we went to a place called Dawson Pub which is supposedly the smallest pub in the world. It is downstairs and reminds me of someone's basement, though to tell you the truth it isn't that much smaller than Le Tigre Lounge. It reminded me of there too, with the dim lighting and chill atmosphere. Now I am blogging for free at the hotel - no internet cafe for us tonight! The keyboards here are a little weird, like the @ and " are switched around from what I'm used to. Plus I had trouble getting into my blog the first time because Google was skeptical that I was logging in from Ireland, but I've gotten that problem solved now, so expect more updates from me.


Famous Hat