In October I was lucky to visit 16 museums in Dublin, Ireland. As much as I’d like to give each museum its own blog post, I’m never going to get anything else done in life for quite a while if I do. So here are a first four, with a photo (or two) and a …
Dingle OceanWorld Aquarium (my second fish museum of the year) is the largest aquarium in Ireland! How could I resist? Arriving just in time for the afternoon Reptile Encounter, I was pleased to meet an Irish tortoise named Gonzalez. His sister is Speedy (love these names). They were among 200 babies attempted to be smuggled …
It was a pleasure to visit Adare Heritage Centre in Ireland’s prettiest village of Adare, County Limerick, not once but twice. The Heritage Centre is very conveniently located as part of a shopping / dining / parking complex on the main street of town. As the website says: It was that “Earls of Dunraven” part …
There are four things about the Cliffs of Moher Visitor Centre and Cliffs Exhibition that made an early-morning visit especially interesting for me. 1) The Geology Look at those layers. That’s 300 million years of bands of sediment upon sediment, of sandstones, siltstone, mudstone, and shale. Stunning. Consider the fossils. I love how the visitor …
I learned a most astonishing thing at the Clare County Museum in Ennis, Ireland. In September 1588, following its defeat by English naval forces and attempting to return home, up to 24 of the 130 vessels of the Spanish Armada were shipwrecked … off the western coast of Ireland. Public Domain, Link Perhaps 5,000 men …
My first night in Ireland, after 18 years away, I had a hotel room in Ennis, County Clare, with a window facing directly onto Ennis Friary. The sight of this 13th century Franciscan friary that had seen so much history was a perfect introduction to how Ireland’s preserved heritage structures are OLD old, compared to …
