Final Day in Dublin, 22/01/2012:

Sunday was our final day in Dublin. Since most of the shops and museums open late on Sundays (Catholic country and all), my parents and I headed to the Dublin Jewish Museum in the old Jewish quarter. The museum was in a small, two-story house that used to be synagogue.

I had never though of Dublin (or Ireland) as being particularly Jewish, and my assumption was mostly correct. The museum highlighted the Jewish history of Dublin until 1985 (the founding of the museum) and it was fairly short. Small groups of Jews came to Ireland, but the population never exceeded 5,000. As the Irish emigrated during times of hardship, so did the Irish Jews, thus reducing the population.

Currently, there are less than 1,000 Jews in the greater Dublin area and most of them live in the suburbs. As the need for synagogues within the city decreased, this synagogue was converted to a museum. Upstairs, most of the sanctuary is intact, and it feels a bit like a ghost town, since I would expect people to soon sit down to pray but I know that they will never come.

The museum was small, so we decided to walk back to our hotel through St. Stephen’s Green one last time before leaving for the airport. I guess Sunday worship had just ended, because the park was full of families enjoying the (rare) sunshine and having lunch. I snapped a few pictures of some of the fun.

Dublin Zoo, 21/01/2012:

Our last full day in Dublin, my mom and I headed to the zoo while my dad taught his last lecture. We hadn’t expected much from the zoo, but were blown away by the quality of exhibits. There were so many young animals: gorillas, elephants, giraffes!

I took a ton of photographs, but here are a couple of my favorites from exhibits around the zoo.

Dublin Docklands, 20/01/2012:

Dublin is a city split by the River Liffey and a class division exists across the river. The Northside is regarded as working class and the Southside is regarded as middle to upper class. Our hotel was on the Southside, just on the edge of Grafton Street, where the high end shopping is located. 

On Friday, after exploring art galleries in the Temple Bar district, my mom and I walked along and across the river. I was intrigued by the (supposedly) antique ship in front of the modern convention center. Turns out, the ship is a famine museum on a reconstruction of a ship from the 19th century.

I also captured a picture of the artwork covering the fencing along the river. It served as the fence for a private parking lot.

Occupy Dublin, 20/01/2012:

The Occupy movement has spread world wide. Occupy Dublin looks quite different from any other tents that I’ve seen: Occupy Harvard was laid back but required extensive police protection, Occupy Davis got violent in an instant, and Occupy Dublin was cheery and holding strong. If you are interested in learning more about Irish financial troubles (the government bailed out the banks to 100%, thus crashing the housing market), use Google.

Dublin Museum of Archaeology, 19/01/2012:

Our second day in Dublin, my parents and I explored the local museums. Dublin is home to many national museums of Ireland, including the archaeology museum. We ended up at the archaeology museum by mistake (we were aiming for the National Gallery) but enjoyed the exhibits nonetheless.

As always, I was equally as impressed by the building as the collection. I enjoyed reading about the beginning history of Ireland, and was particularly interested in the discovery of a bible from the 8th century in a bog. I have no pictures of that exhibit, since the book was (understandably) light sensitive, but I uploaded a few other pictures from the museum.

Image descriptions:

  1. The domed ceiling in the entryway of the museum.
  2. An rustic doorway.
  3. An ancient carved head (of semi-unknown meaning).
  4. A medieval crucifix waiting to hold a remnant of the True Cross.