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fbhjrIn the morning I looked at the window at the hotel. It had a curtain inside the two panes of glass that you moved with a magnet. I’ve used magnetic couplers in machines before, but this was my first window with one.
Our spider friend was clearly afraid of us trodding on them, and stayed in the corner for our morning preparations.
We decided to spend the morning in the local area to make it easier to get to the ship in the afternoon. As anyone who knows us would guess, we decided to go to a museum.
Driving into the center of the city we passed lots of things before finally parking in the basement near the Museum or Ireland.
The national library next to the national museum of archeology? Talk about difficult choices. But, with limited time we picked the museum.
Of course I had to wait for either to open…
The archeology building isn’t huge, but they’ve got a lot of good stuff.
And, the museum had a lot of Bronze Age stuff, which is one of my favorites.
A good collection of bronze swords and spears too.
But, by far my favorite was this bronze “rapier”.
I don’t know about “ceremonial and display”. I’d have used it if it came to my hands. I’d really like to hold it (with a handle attached) and see that balance.
The one I went to Wales to make a replica of with Justin back in 2014 is much like the one on the left here.
That came from a mold much like this one.
And, I love that sword, it’s great. But, I’d really like to try that rapier. Maybe I need to get in touch with that guy in Wales and see if he’d make a new replica mold? No, he specializes in Welsh ones, not Irish ones. But, it is still very cool.
They’ve got a lot of Stone Age stuff too. That’s also very cool.
The 15 meter long boat I was also very impressed with.
The special exhibit on show was about bog bodies. They actually had a few on display, but I’m not going to put out the pictures at this time. If folks really want to see them, I’ll do another entry.
It was fairly crowded and at times I had trouble seeing the displays.
But, most were OK.
I found it very funny that back in the main museum on the exhibit of the “hill of kings” they put a marker right where I had fallen and broken my shoulder 29 years ago.
#3 is the spot! I was coming down off of #5 and slid in the mud. That mud never came out of those pants…
I didn’t expect the holy grail, but it’s got to be somewhere…
I did particularly like this gold exhibit with the little gold boat.
No benches, but they did have chairs…
This Viking guy’s eyes seemed to follow me…
When came out in the courtyard we saw TV news and police setting up.
And, they were blocking off the roads around the museum.
Turns out there was going to be a big protest about the stuff going on in Gaza these days. Not sure which side it was on, but we didn’t want our car trapped in an area where they were closing the roads.
It was about the time we were going to get going to return the rental car, so we decided to do that.
The challenge was a bunch of roads were closed and Google Maps didn’t know about it.
But, we managed by going out of the city center the other way and circling around.
Which meant we passed our cruise ship a couple of hours before we could get on. But, since we had to return the car, we kept going.
The car return people were so quick to take it back, I couldn’t get a photo before they took it away.
The raven said “yeah, if you pay for the full insurance they don’t have anything to argue about.”
The Dublin airport is not really set up for folks to return a car and then want to leave rather than getting on a plane. So, how to get to the taxi stand was not super clear and we had to ask for directions.
But, we got a taxi back to the ship. The driver gave us a history of the area as he had grown up in this section of Dublin.
As is our tradition, we could not just go to the ship, we had to go to the wrong parking lot and get told to go somewhere else. Still better than Durban where it involved three tries and the police.
But, we got to the ship. Because of the plan changes, we got there about 2 hours before planned, but they let us on, gave us lunch and said “roam about the ship until your room is ready”, which was very nice of them.
I’m not sure if their way of loading luggage is the best. Other ships just had a conveyer belt…
This is the ship we had originally planned to take to Antarctica, but Covid delayed it getting upgraded to icebreaker status, so we switched to its sister ship for that voyage. It took almost 4 years to finally reach this ship, and I was glad to have made it.
The actual stops are VERY weather dependent, but this is the plan.
We did walk around a bit while waiting for our room.
We thought the supply area for ships in Dublin harbor was very interesting.
My wife went to their photography center got onto one of their computers and checked out their tools. (No, the crew who run the place weren’t there, she didn’t have their passwords, but she’s run a computer lab for decades and didn’t have an issue…)
Then, it was finally time to cast off and sail away.
While we left port there was a talk about what to expect on the cruise. We’ve done other “expedition” cruises, so this wasn’t a surprise to us.
When done with that, we had dinner and went to our room where we were already well away from Dublin.
The pilot was just leaving our ship.
We’re reasonably far north, so the sun doesn’t set until 10 or so and it stays light for a good bit later.
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Date: 2025-07-17 10:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-17 01:13 pm (UTC)I love those jadeite axe heads.
And would totally wear the fur Kingly Robe.
That's Duffy's circus! One of the oldest circuses in Europe I think someone told me. (As a former circus person I try to recognize as many tents as I can)
Have an awesome trip!
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Date: 2025-07-18 12:50 pm (UTC)Sadly we did not have time to stop and see the show.
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Date: 2025-07-17 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-17 03:07 pm (UTC)