Sept 15 & 16 - The Cold Cuts Right Through Ya!

Sunday in Blackrock, Ireland found Paul taking Rich across the street to a special Open Day at the Gardia Station (Policemen). I stayed in Paul's flat and relaxed before we went to a church service. This event allowed members of the public to meet and greet the local Gardai.

The children got to sit in their vehicles.

This was intended as a family fun day and enabled the community to see various specialist units such as the Garda Band, the Mounted Unit, The Water Unit, Divisional Traffic Unit and various other Operational Support Units.

There were refreshments for everyone.

They use horses in the police units here.

The jail cells were visited by these children.

This is probably his 2nd offense, at least.

Do you recognize this guy on the right? He was part of the line-up. Personally, I think he looks highly suspicious and a very shady character.

In Paul's flat - not sure what this is all about.

We went to a church that Paul attends occasionally - the Quaker Church in Monkstown.

The Monkstown Quaker Meeting House has been used for more than 170 years.

It was a very interesting meeting. We all sat in a circle and for the first hour, we had "Quiet time". No one spoke, there was no music, just thoughts going through heads and contemplation and prayer. Then there were some announcements, some stories, and for the next 30 minutes a few people took turns talking. Following that, we went into a reception hall for coffee and cookies. The people were very friendly. There were probably about 30 of us in attendance.

Then Paul took me to Monkstown Castle, which was built in the 12th or 13th centuries. It was erected by Cistercian monks of the abbey of the Virgin Mary, near Dublin. In 1539, King Henry VIII awarded the Monkstown lands to Sir John Travers, Master of the Ordinance in Ireland. John Travers lived in the Castle from 1557 to his death in 1562.

Paul says he used to play in this castle back when he was a kid.

The main tower dates from the later 15th century. It is four stories high with a sentry box along the stairs. There are projections from the battlements so that stones could be dropped on unwelcome visitors.

A good view of Monkstown Castle.

In a state of disarray now after 700 years.

I wonder what it would be like to go back in time....to be a Princess.

Time to go to the Farmer's Market

Paul knew everything about this area as he had lived here many years. He knew several people we ran into and enjoyed visiting with them. He's quite the people person.

Paul is definitely a "card".

Everyone had their specialty foods and items for sale.

Dún Laoghaire harbour (I think)

Is this guy for reals? I was freezing with three layers and he's out there swimming!!

The old Round Tower by the dock

Rich's specialty...Kung Pao chicken

We later went to a favorite pub of Paul's, but this foursome were the only people there. I sang a couple of songs for them and they just clapped and clapped.

WOW! Free entertainment from an American girl....ME!

Guess these sharp rocks at the top of the wall kept out ancient intruders.

These old post boxes for mail were throughout Great Britain - very cool looking!

The next day, I went for a long walk downtown Blackrock. It was SO bitter cold! I bought myself a fruit pastry and when I sat down to eat it, there was a bottle of chocolate milk sitting there, unopened and still cold. I waited a little while, but no one came for it, so I drank it with the sweet roll and it tasted so good! We were getting low in money about this time on our journey, so I really had a treat today! PLUS...I was cold and ready for our excursion to be over. I could go home now and skip France, Spain, and Portugal.

I remember that after I ate this, I felt better and my spirits were lifted!!

The quiet streets of Blackrock - unlike bustling Dublin

St. John the Baptist Church is a Roman Catholic church.

The church was completed in 1845. It was built as a replacement of the chapel of the Carmelite monastery on Sweetman's Avenue. The stain glass below was one of the last ever produced by Evie Hone.

The Evie Hone stained glass donated by the McGuire family in 1955.

I thought it was just a beautiful church inside. AND...it was free to go in - that's always nice.

9 statues representing the "Bearers of the Word."

A lovely depiction of Christ

Back to Paul's, Rich and I went to catch a bus to Dublin to see more sites of the big city. On we go to Merrion Square Park ...

It was laid out after 1762 and was largely completed by the beginning of the 19th century. It is considered to be one of the city's finest surviving squares. Merrion Square is a gorgeous Georgian-era park, well-manicured and much quieter than its more famous Dublin counterpart, St. Stephen's Green.

The park has a collection of old street lamps - so cool!

The Georgian doors are very neat around three sides of the park. They are painted very bright!

Jester's Chair sculpture dedicated to the memory of Dermot Morgan, a Catholic Archbishop.

Michael Collins was politically important to the country (he was the first President of the Irish Republic) but because he was assassinated, he got a statue in his honor.. He was only 31 years old and and engaged to be married. This statue makes ‘The Big Fella’ look years older. He obviously packed a lot into those years because so many pubs are named after him;

Oscar Wilde's childhood home was 1 Merrion Square so here he is, on the corner near the house. The great aesthete reclines in colored stone with a bemused smirk crossing his lips (well they did place a naked female statue in his line of vision).

‘The Fag on the Crag’- Oscar Wilde.

1855-1878 are the dates Oscar lived here.

After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, his only novel (The Picture of Dorian Gray), his plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment and early death.

He had MANY quotes which are really great. Here are a few of my favorites.

"Some cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go."

"True friends stab you in the front."

"A man's face is his autobiography; A woman's face is her work of fiction."

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Oscar Wilde
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/o/oscar_wilde.html#w6OKu4mG20dhrdh6.99

On the front door step in front of Oscar's home.

Rich posed in front of his home. With his British hat, doesn't he look like he could be Oscar?

This car parked in front of a store, off the street. When they came back to get in, the police had chained their tire up with a note. That's a good way to make them not do that again! Crazy!

As we wandered the streets of Ireland, we came upon a free art museum. This is always great to find something to do that is free.

National Gallery of Ireland

Located in the centre of Dublin, the National Gallery of Ireland holds the state collection of Irish andEuropean art, including paintings,drawings, and sculpture. Founded in 1854, following the Great Industrial Exhibition, the Gallery houses more than 14,000 artworks.

Among its 2,500 oil paintings are European works by Velázquez, Goya, Caravaggio, Vermeer, Titian, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Rembrandt, Rubens, van Dyck, Monet and Picasso.

It's a Vemeer!

St. Patrick's Day Painting

I'm on the bus and I'm FREEZING! Look at the girl behind me!

Gorgeous park, but I can hardly enjoy it. Why is the wind so cold?

A couple of Irish street people

James Joyce sculpture in the heart of Dublin.

James Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century.
Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922).

"For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal."

A tram in Dublin that we rode on.

Famous O'Connell Street in Dublin

Jim Larkin Statue

This year is the centenary of the most dramatic series of episodes in which Larkin was involved : what's referred to as "The 1913 Lockout". Larkin himself came from the slums of Liverpool, and his focus in Dublin (which had some of Europe's worst slums) was on the rights and prospects of unskilled and low-paid workers in insecure employment - people like carters, dockers, labourers & factory hands.

"The Lockout" - in which over 400 employers deliberately excluded more than 20,000 workers from their places of employment - was essentially a concerted attempt to prevent employees from securing representation by Larkin's "Irish Transport & General Worker's Union" and ultimately "break" that union. It came at the end of a 5 year period of bitter disputes between the union's members, and Dublin City employers led by William Martin Murphy, in which Larkin at times cleverly used tactics of "sympathetic strikes" and boycotts ("blacking") of goods.

The seminal "1913 Lockout" lasted about 7 months, included violent police attacks on workers' meetings and slow starvation of ordinary people - children being major victims. Although Larkin + his union members did not win this unequal battle, the principle of union action and workers' solidarity was nevertheless firmly established by events of the time and sustained subsequently.

Dublin Castle - 1204
The Castle was until 1922 the seat of British rule in Ireland, and is now a major Irish government complex. Most of it dates from the 18th century, though a castle has stood on the site since the days of King John, the first Lord of Ireland. It came after the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169, when it was commanded that a castle be built with strong walls and good ditches for the defense of the city, the administration of justice, and the protection of the King's treasure.

The Dublin Gardens were beautiful

Saint Patrick's Cathedral founded in 1191, is the larger of Dublin's twoChurch of Ireland cathedrals, and the largest church in Ireland, with a 43-metre (140 feet) spire.

Is this where St. Patrick's Day came from?

In 1192 John Comyn, first Anglo-Norman Archbishop of Dublin, elevated one of the four Dublin Celtic parish churches, the one dedicated toSt. Patrick, beside a holy well of the same name and on an island between two branches of the River Poddle, to the status of a collegiate church

I find these churches have some really unique organs inside.

This door has a good story - read to the right.

It's always fun to get to one of these famous churches for their 5:00 p.m. Evensong Service. So we attended and listened to the beautiful music, and of course, it's free to browse around afterwards if you attend.

This statue of St. Patrick was discovered when workers were clearing away rubbish from a ruined part of the Cathedral back in 1833. The lower part of the statue is from the 13th century. The head was put on much later. What a treasure!

This stone was found in the famous St. Patrick's Well

The beautiful River Liffey through Dublin

Decor over a bridge was old and quaint

The Guinness name was everywhere in Dublin

Guinness is a popular dry stout
that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guiness (1725–1803) at St. Jame's Gate, Dublin. Guinness is one of the most successful beer brands worldwide. It is brewed in almost 60 countries and is available in over 100. countries. Annual sales total 850 million litres (or 1.8 billion US pints).

Guinness stout is made from water, barley, roast malt extract, hops, and brewer's yeast. Studies claim that Guinness can be beneficial to the heart. Researchers found that "antioxidant compounds in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls."

I don't think I'll be making or taking this any time soon. :)

NEXT...we just happened to wander onto some alley ways where posters were painted of famous Irish EVERYTHING - from sports to music to fashion. It was so very interesting. Here are a few highlights from the two blocks of fame.