First Impressions of Dublin

 It is necessary for me to clarify where we were located in Dublin.  If you are at all familiar with the city, from what I wrote on the last posting you may have guessed the southern part.  And that is correct.  It has most of the historic sites of Dublin and we stayed on a mission to see as much as we could in the short time we had.  And during the time we had, the historic buildings and museums were closing fast because of the virus.  We got into the National Gallery of Ireland three hours before it closed for two weeks.  That was fortunate as our tour guide had mentioned that on special exhibit there was a Cararvaggio painting “The Taking of Christ” which I wanted to see and was able to. 

Pictured above is the Custom House, original building constructed in 1791.  It was gutted in 1921 by the IRA, and subsequently restored to house various government departments.  I apologize for the poor quality of pictures.  I was quite literally on a fast walk while taking them, and the weather was usually wet and windy when I was snapping them.  I chose not to take my camera, as it is rather big and bulky compared to my phone camera.  Mike took a few pictures and kindly shared them with me.

We learned very quickly that Dublin is a mixture of old and new buildings, as you can see in the picture above.  That is reflective of what is happening nationwide.   Ireland is moving from an economy based on tourism and agriculture to that of one driven by the pharmaceutical and IT industries.  Our tour bus took us through the financial area where our guide pointed out some of  the Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Apple business buildings. 

 Our bus tour also took us through the older Georgian part of Dublin.  These row homes were built at the time of King George during the later half of the 18^th century into the 19^th.   They were the homes of the British aristocracy.  Back in the day the doors were all black, that has changed, and now the doors vary in color.   These homes are also notable for their wrought iron balconies, fancy door knockers and lighting fixtures

 

One other note here before closing this posting.   Many of the older buildings have windows closed off.  We were informed that those windows were shuttered because property taxes once were based on the number of windows in the building one owned.