May 1st Having some good Craic! (Fun!)

May 1st: Long day of museums today. We started with a tour of Trinity College and the Book of Kells, then on to the National Gallery, the Reading Room, the Little Dublin Museum and then the National Irish History Museum. Today was also one of our first rainy days! YAY, UK WEATHER!!!

Trinity College:

We had a lovely tour of the college grounds.  In addition to a brief overview of some of the building and the grounds, we learned a lot about the history and traditions of the school. Our tour ended with the display of the Book of Kells.

National Gallery of Ireland:

This is Irelands most famous Art Museum. There is so much culture in this one location, and it was amazing to witness the Irish heritage through its art. The class did a lot of exploring in this museum and had so much fun with this experience.

National Library of Ireland (Reading Room):

We stumbled upon this exhibit on our walk to our other destinations. We found that we had more time than we thought between museum visits. Unfortunately, we couldn't get into the entire library but we did get a quick view of the reading room which for those of us who love books and being surrounded by them was a treat. (Sadly, no photography was allowed inside the Reading Room, so here are few pictures of some of the class waiting to go inside).

 

Little Dublin Museum:

This had to be the most adorable little museum we could find!!! It was a compilation of different objects and pictures all of which were donated by individuals in the Dublin Community, thus earning a reputation for being Dublin's personal museum. The main floor was a recording of the history of the Viking Invasion depicted in comic book form and the upper level was the collection of donated items arranged by century in the 1900's.

National Irish History Museum:

This was our last stop on what came to be known as Museum Day on the Trip. This was a HUGE museum with massive exhibits to match, covering a wide expanse of topics and time periods. The pictures below speak for themselves; we probably could have spent days in this museum absorbing all of the history and culture it had to offer.