Dublin

                                                                       

We’ve had to spend 5 days in Dublin due to a gap in our schedule between farms. When we arrived on Sunday we went to a pub the hostel recommended called The Brazen Head. This ended up being the oldest pub in Dublin. We shared a bowl of Traditional Irish stew and watched the Ireland football playoffs while I experienced Irish coffee for the first time. We learned quickly that any drink that has Irish in front of it means alcoholic.

 

Monday we went to the National Gallery to see Caravaggio’s famous lost painting “The Taking of Christ”. Lucas’ father Jeff is a big fan of Caravaggio and has been educating us about Michelangelo Caravaggio. To see this famous painting in person was remarkable. It’s very dark, busy and confusing to the eye at first glance, however the longer you look at it the brighter it becomes and more detail you see. Although it was in a crowded gallery full of art it stood alone in our eyes.  We look forward to seeing more of his work when we're in Rome. After the National Gallery we went to the Temple bar district where all the classic Irish pubs are. We ended up in Temple bar itself where an Irish band was playing. Seeing a traditional Irish band was top on our list and this particular one was fantastic.
 

 

Since we were spending so much time in Dublin and there isn’t much to see (other than millions of pubs) we decided to book a day tour to the West coast to see the Cliffs of Mohr. This was something I wanted to see but was a bit skeptical that they would just be some cliffs that the Irish hype up to make money off tourists. I couldn’t have been more wrong! There was something very magical about the Cliffs that I find hard to describe in words. We also got to see a farm as part of our tour which was kind of cool. The farm land has been in the family for 300 years, It’s been rightfully owned by them for the past 80. The best part of the farm tour was learning about the traditions they have. They still use farming methods that their ancestors used 300 years ago. With big farming in the modern world today knowledge that was once passed down is being lost. We hope to continue learning about these family traditions on our next farm.



Here we are at the farm we toured on top a mountain like the one behind us. It was very windy!



 

It’s been really hard being in Dublin without my family the O’Connell clan. We’ve made so many happy memories celebrating our heritage together that I wish every one of them were here with me. It’s also been hard not to go crazy buying all my gear for the next St. Patrick’s day.