Ireland is Awesome! Day 1 and 2

I like living in Poland for the most part. It is nice, however, to be able to visit a place where they speak English as their first language. This place, for me, was Dublin Ireland. July 18th couldn’t come soon enough. Chris, Shaelyn and I left for Dublin at 12:30pm Sunday July 18th and arrived in Dublin around 2:30pm

Driving to the Shelbourne

After we collected our luggage we headed for the car rental counter. The car rental (or car hire as they call it in Ireland) agent informed us that she didn’t have a rental for us. Uh Oh! In the end we ended up with the car that had been booked and previously paid for. It was a Volkswagon Passat. And the driver’s seat was on the wrong side. Of course Shaelyn thought this was hilarious. I’m not so sure Chris felt the same way. I certainly felt awkward. The car was a stick shift. Chris kept stalling the engine by putting it in 4th gear instead of 1st  when taking off.  To make matters worse I forgot to bring the GPS and we didn’t have any maps of Ireland. We were not prepared!

For anyone who decides to visit Dublin let me give you fair warning. The street signs in this part of the world are non-existent. I’m not being overly dramatic. The street signs, when they are posted, are usually on the side of a building near the intersection but not necessarily in the driver’s line of sight.  A 15 minute drive from the Airport ended up taking 1-1/2 hours. Due to the lack of street signs, the multitude of 1 way streets and bus only routes we simply kept driving in a concentric circle that slowly took us farther and farther away from the hotel.

As we drove towards the hotel we realized that we needed to turn left onto a bus only route to reach the entrance of the hotel. So, we turned right as we watched all the other cars turn left onto the lanes marked Bus Only. We started our journey over and circled back around and 20 minutes later finally turned left onto the Bus Only route. We arrived at the hotel which was about three feet from the intersections we had just turned at.  I was so happy to get out of the car. We had finally arrived at the Shelbourne. The oldest hotel in Dublin!

 

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Our First Night in Dublin

The Shelbourne is absolutely beautiful. Their were wooden revolving doors, door men with top hats, Egyptian Goddesses holding lamps, and all kinds of other things you would expect to see in a hotel in the 1920’s.

In the reception area they had these cool paintings on the walls. The picture I have does not do them justice though. I swear you could have walked into the painting.

Upon entering our hotel room I slipped into the bathroom to get a look at its size and the toiletries that were supplied. I laughed out loud when I saw the brand name of the soap.

Seriously, who names soap Pecksniff’s?

 

The Wax Museum Plus

The first place we decided to visit was the Wax Museum Plus. It turned out to be mostly wax and very little plus. On our walk to the WMP were all kinds of statues. Shaelyn absolutely loved this afro guy. I have no idea who he is but he’s pretty funny looking.

And then of course there is the statue of Molly Malone.

   

The entrance to WMP had a stockade that I thought would be cool to get a picture of Shaelyn in. It was cute but mostly because she was to short to fit.

 

Here some pictures of the wax figures in the WMP:

 

• Writer’s Hall

 

Shaelyn’s Pictures

     

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• Prehistoric Pictures

Jen’s Pictures

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Shaelyn’s Pictures

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• Medieval Hall

The guy in the dark cape is supposed to be a druid priest.

 

Jen’s Pictures

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• Hall of Legends:

The boy with the fish is the legend of the Salmon of Knowledge. The Salmon of Knowledge . . . is hilarious.

 

Jen’s Pictures

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Shaelyn’s Pictures

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• Hall of Horrors:

Hanibal Lector, Buffalo Bill, a she devil and Frankenstein among others. Use caution some are graffic and gross.

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• Cartoon Hall:

Barney with no Fred and Spongebob with no Patrick. What is this world coming to?

Jen’s Pictures

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Shaelyn’s Pictures

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Double Decker Bus & The Zoo

After the Wax Museum Plus we took a double decker bus hop on hop off tour. I learned that Gaelic is the official language of Ireland, that it a compulsory subject in school but that only about 12% of adults can actually speak Gaelic. All of the street signs were in both Gaelic and English. It was neat to see.

Here are some pictures from the top of the double decker bus:

Jen’s Pictures

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Shaelyn’s Pictures

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We hopped off the Bus tour and explored the zoo. The zoo was great. There was a huge lake in the middle that the monkeys and hippos (maybe others) could access and hang out in. It was really cool. It was also a large zoo. We didn’t get to see everything. The cafeteria was an actual cafeteria.The food was good and fairly inexpensive. When was the last time an actual chef made you food at the zoo . . .

Here are some pictures of our zoo adventure:

Jen’s Pictures

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Shaelyn’s Pictures

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The Clock Museum

The next museum that we visited in Stuttgart was the _____ Museum. The building the museum in housed in was originally a castle, but, after it was destroyed during WWII and then rebuilt years later it was turned into a museum. Most of the museum deals with the history of the region of Germany that Stuttgart is in.

Museum Architecture

  It’s hard to get a picture of the whole museum because of how its situated. This pictures shows on of the castle walls. They all look pretty much identical.

 

Entrance to the museum

 

Outside Museum Corridor

Museum Courtyard

 

Altarpieces

 

This museum had a hodgepodge of items in it. One of the exhibition halls had nothing but ancient altar pieces. Here are  pictures of a few of them.

 

Shaelyn took this picture. She’s having trouble holding the camera still. We’re working on it.

 

Shaelyn’s Pic

Shaelyn’s Pic

Shaelyn’s Pic

 

Stained Glass Windows

The next area of the museum had stained glass windows from various different churches. They were pretty cool. I could have sworn I ended up with more picture than I did. I appear to only have two so . . .

Shaelyn’s Pic

 

According to the placard above this stained glass window is from St. Thomas’ Church in Strassburg and is from the year 1250.

 

Reliquary

As you passed from one main hall to another there were just randomly placed exhibits like the reliquary pictured below.

 

 

 

 

According  to this placard this reliquary is from the 1200. It is made out of bone and depicts scenes from Christ’s youth.

 

Clocks

In the basement of the museum they have a coo-coo clock exhibit. The clocks in this exhibit are not like any clocks that I have ever seen. They were mesmerizing. Both Shaelyn and I were enthralled with them.

 

• Clock “Sockelgewichtsuhr”

 

This clock is believed to be from Italy and is from the End of the 16th century.

 

• Clock “Vogel Strauss”

As the placard states this clock is from the 16th Century. I think it says it’s from Augsburg although I’m not sure. It is made out of Bronze and Gold.

 

• Clock “Hahn”

This clock is from the 1590’s and was possibly made in Augsburg. It is made from bronze, gold, silver and iron.

 

• Clock “Schiefe Ebene”

This clock is from the 17th and 19th century.

 

• Clocks in Action