Starting with the zoo.

We went to a bunch of places today. We walked across Dublin to Phoenix Park where the Dublin Zoo is housed. It's a nice zoo, and I think it's one of the oldest in Europe. We spent about two hours there, then we went to a tea room on the outskirts of the zoo for lunch--I had a grilled cheese sandwich and tea; John had a feta panini and tea. Then, we headed back to town, where we went to the Museum of Modern Art, which was okay. The building it's in is really beautiful, but the east wing was closed. There was one exhibit that was cool. It was a room where the floor was covered with gravel like you'd find at a beach. There were two mats on the floor where you could sit and put on head phones and listen to the sound of the ocean. Very relaxing.

Next, we took the bus to St. Stephen's Green (park) from Heuston Station. The park is near Trinity College, and it's got a lot of statues and memorials in it. There is a famous famines memorial and the bust of James Joyce. John thought there was also a statue of Oscar Wilde in the park, but we couldn't find it. There were so many people walking, jogging, and relaxing on the grass. It was the perfect city park.

From the park, we wandered over to the Natural History Museum, which is in an old building in the Victorian style. It was full to the brim with stuffed animals. Not my cup of tea, but the building was really beautiful. But the next museum we went to was great--the National Museum: Archeology. It houses all sorts of ancient artifacts from Ireland's past, like viking and celtic artifacts in addition to clothes/jewelry/religious items from medieval Ireland.

We were pretty exhausted by the time we finished this museum, so we stopped at a tea shop, and I had a scone and coffee and John had a crepe and coffee. This food and drink gave us energy to trek back to the hostel, where we are now. On the way, we passed (on accident) the birthplace of Oscar Wilde. It's marked by a plaque, so if you aren't careful, you could miss it. It's simply a building in a row of buildings near Trinity College.

We did not make it to either the Guinness Storehouse nor the Old Jameson Distillery today! Or the Dublin Writer's Museum. So many places to go, not enough time to get there!

Tomorrow, we're taking a bus to Kilkenny, which I hear has a super fabulous castle. It also has a pub that used to be the house of a witch who escaped persecution.