O'Connell Street

This street is the main artery of Dublin’s northside.  Mike had arrived in Dublin a day before John and was eager to show us some of the sites he had discovered. This street, one of the widest in the city, was the first one to which he guided us.  Daniel O’Connell was a politician who lived from 1775 to 1847.  He campaigned for Catholic emancipation and repeal of the Acts of Union which combined Great Britain and Ireland.  His statue on O’Connell street is titled “The Liberator”.  The winged figures by his side represent his bravery, patriotism, fidelity, and eloquence.  We passed by this statue on our tour bus on another day and our guide pointed out bullet holes on the winged figures they hit this landmark in the 1916 rebellion.

 

Another important figure for Ireland is that of the well-known Irish author James Joyce.  There is a James

There is a Joyce Centre in Dublin, which we did not visit.  However, during our tour of Dublin, Finola our guide pointed out  various sites pertaining to the fictional characters of Leopold and Molly Bloom featured in Joyce's book "Ulysses".
Pictured at the bottom of this posting is the "Dublin Spire", a 398 foot stainless steel post in the background of that photo.  It is also called “Monument of Light”, and is one of the newer landmarks on this street. There were big plans for this monument, including a revolving platform at the top- but funds ran out.  It has a variety of nicknames as “the stiletto in the ghetto” ," the pike in the dike” or “nail in the pale”.  Have to be a Dubliner to understand them!

 

There are a couple other monuments on O’Connell but I would rather finish this with some bit of humor.  However, it is necessary to move to another part of Dublin, to the Molly Malone statue.  Do you know the Irish song of Molly and how she was a fishmonger selling cockles and mussels?  Had another business at night.  Here she is with her fish cart.  Her breasts are a bit shiny from well, I can only imagine that some visitors to dear Molly have enjoyed giving her a bit of a rub!

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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.

Trip Plans Changed

Last year John and I, along with our son, Mike planned a trip to Ireland.  Through our travel club we bought airline tickets to Dublin, Ireland, as well as a guided tour which included Dublin, Galway, Ennis, Kilorglin, Kerry Mountains, County Cork- well, I will go no further mentioning those places. We missed them all except Dublin.  The second day of our tour (Friday the 13th of March) we boarded the bus only to be asked by our tour guide to get off and meet in the hotel lobby which we had just left.  We then waited two hours, only to be told that the tour was cancelled and that they would work with us to purchase airline tickets home.

The day before, on the twelfth of March, we did tour Dublin with our tour group.  All was not lost, and, while attempting to purchase our airline tickets Friday, we spent another day and a half in that city- seeing more sights in Dublin as well as a couple of towns on the outskirts of that city.   So I have do have something to share regarding our trip.  Being on self quarantine for 14 days gives me no excuse to not get back into writing, especially since I do have a fair amount to share.

We did a lots of walking around Dublin, except for the one day when we were on the tour bus.  Our hotel was right on the river Liffey, and there were a couple of pedestrian bridges which we crossed to enter the city.  By the way, the river separates north and south Dublin.  The bridge pictured above is the Samuel Beckett Bridge.  It looks like a harp on its side (the harp is the official emblem for Ireland), and was constructed in 2009 for 60 million euros.  It has a swivel opening of 90 degrees which allows ships to pass through.

Pictured above is the Ha Penny toll bridge built in 1816.  At the time it cost half a penny to cross it, later the cost went up and it is now Penny Ha Penny Bridge.  No toll charge today.  That picture was taken on a fairly dark day.  There was only one day that was sunny with no rain while we were in Dublin.  And if you are wondering, that is a beggar sitting there, a fairly common sight on the bridge.  More on Dublin in my next posting.

Hughes Mountain

Don’t get excited, John and I did not make a trip to Colorado and climb a mountain, so maybe this posting will not be too interesting.   However, John and I did enjoy ourselves on this Ozark hill near Potosi, Missouri (about 60 miles from St. Louis) last week.  John had read about this property, owned by the Missouri Department of Conservation, in the book  “Geologic Wonders and Curiosities of Missouri” written by Thomas Beveridge.  John was intrigued by the fact that Missouri has one of four world-famous “scenic examples of igneous rock which has cooled to form giant polygonal columns”.  Hughes has one of the smaller examples of this phenomenon, and it has been christened the Devil’s Honeycomb.  It is a smaller group of columns than found in the other three sites. ( By the way, John and I have seen one of those others, Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming. The other two are Devil's Post Pile National Monument in California and Giant's Causeway in Ireland.) Once John learned that we have a site here in Missouri, he was ready to go.  Last Monday he mentioned making a trip down to southeast Missouri, and after we quickly glanced at the weather forecast for the week, we knew we had to go that day.  Unfortunately, by the time we got going it was well into the day, a fact which caused a bit of a problem later in the waning hours of the afternoon.

This hike up the mountain was similar to the one we made several weeks ago in Virginia.  The upward assent was about 400 feet, and the round trip total was about a mile and a half.  We encountered rocks and roots- also the wet leaves were slippery, so we had to constantly watch where we were placing our feet.  We kept reminding each other to be careful, the memory of John falling on our last hike was forefront in my mind. 

As we got closer to the top, John started pointing out to me the fact that the rocks had certain geometric shapes to them- a polygonal pattern meaning that they are four to 6 sided.  Like Elephant Rocks (another rocky scenic site in this part of Missouri) the mountain here is composed of granite rock.  They are salmon pink, but colored yellow by lichens.

The mountain top view was wonderful, especially now that the leaves are turning color. 

Once we reached the top of the mountain, we found ourselves on a very rocky surface bald with a 

few grassy areas and short shrubs.  We started wandering all over the surface at the top, looking for the columns which were described in the book.  What we found were shorter rows of rocks than what I expected, they were 3 to 4 feet maximum height, having 4-6 sides. 

We lost all track of time as we hiked all over the surface at the top.  The sun was getting lower in the sky and we realized that we had to climb down very soon.  However, there was no exit sign; we had to find the area where we had entered the top of the mountain.   We wandered around rather aimlessly for about 30 minutes.  For me, panic starting building as I realized that if either of us fell it would be a cold night on the mountain.  No other humans had been seen the whole time we were there.  John checked his phone, no service- we couldn't even call 911.  John studied the trail map a bit more closely, and with the sun's help we got our directional bearings.  We then saw a small trail sign pointing to the path which we needed to follow.  Whew, that was the first time that ever happened to us in our wanderings.  Hope we remember in the future to always pay attention to our surroundings.  Maybe the whole problem lies with memory issues????