Castles, Music, Tired Feet and Rain

Our second full day in Dublin started with rain. We visited the General Post Office first for some stamps and to get some currency exchanged. Then we walked up to the Dublin Castle. There wasn't a tour leaving for another 45 minutes so we walked (in the rain) over to the Chester Beatty Library and Museum.

Apparently this Chester Beatty dude was quite the collector. He started collecting Japanese snuff boxes when he was in his teens. His collection of asian and middle eastern artifacts was very extensive. He had traveled to the middle east and Asia/Japan several times I guess. He had this royal robe that was amazingly embrodered with dragons and apparently was supposed to have been worn by some emporer of Japan or something like that. (See how well I pay attention?)

Dublin Castle. This is where their
president is sworn into office.

The library killed our time before the Dublin Castle tour. The "Castle" was more of a mansion or a palace. I guess they still have some of the original walls under the current building, but they said a lot of it was dismantled centuries ago. Today the Dublin Castle serves as a fancy location for dignitaries and honored guests to be wined and dined. They were setting up for a big event with the Irish President that evening.

The building was beautiful, but the tour was a little dry. The tour guide wasn't as passionate about her history as the other tours we went on. At least we didn't have to pay for this one since we have the Heritage card. (Gets you into all the heritage sites around Ireland for a year.)

After all that walking we were done. We had been going, going, going for days at that point and our feet hurt badly. We spent the rest of the afternoon at the hostel resting and catching up on some chores. (Laundry, writting post cards and other such tasks.)

The previous night we had gotten a tip to go to a place called The Cobblestone if we wanted to hear really good Irish music. After catching a bus and walking what felt like all over Dublin, we finally found the place. It was a little scary looking from the outside, but we could hear the music on the inside so we went in.

We're glad we did too! We were there pretty early so there were only a handful of musicians there. We sat right in their section at the bar and ordered some Guinness. As the time passed the musicians started filing in. The music got better and better! By the time we left there were over a dozen musicians crammed into this little tiny area.

It was amazing to me that none of them had a single sheet of music. There was one fiddle player who seemed to lead off each tune. She'd play the first lick of the tune and everyone would just join in. They'd usually play a couple different tunes in a row. Each new tune, the guitar player would just sit on one chord while the fiddle player played the next lick for the group. After a couple phrases they'd all join in and it would pick right back up. It was facinating to watch and even more fun to listen to! It was a good tip and we're very greatful to the pub crawl musicians for it!