Ireland: Day 2

So Saturday morning we woke up fairly early. I just couldn't sleep in knowing that we were in Dublin and there was still so much that I wanted to see. (Although the first day we walked around for the entire day and saw so many things.) We had spoken with our friend Oisin, and were planning to meet him in Port Marnock at 6:00 p.m., so we had the entire morning/afternoon to see more sights. Sadly it was rainy and gloomy that morning but we put on our big girl panties and dealt with it.

Every city, state, country, that we visit we make sure to see the zoo. We grabbed our umbrella, hailed a cab and headed to the Dublin Zoo. Once we arrived, the rain had stopped and we were so thankful. I took so many pictures of the zoo, so I'll throw in only a few.

Of course half way through the zoo, it started to rain again! Jon reached for his umbrella and realized it must have fallen out in the cab, so we had no umbrella. We ran to the zoo's restaurant for shelter and decided to grab some lunch. We waited for the rain to subside and walked back into town.

We lucked out! The sun came out and the clouds went away, it was a beautiful day. After leaving the zoo, we headed to the Kilmainham Gaol, (Jail). This jail was incredible!

The entrance.

The Jail CathedralI am so glad we took the time to visit this because we learned so much. I learned a lot about Irish history from my dad being that we're Irish, but I learned even more while on the guided tour. This prison held the 8 rebels that lead the Easter Rising in Dublin.

They were held and eventually executed in the jail. We saw Robert Emmett's (one of the rebels), cell.
I had actually heard of him from my dad, but I was able to learn much more about him. We were able to see some of the cells, which were awfully small, and actually enter some of the cells in the east wing of the jail. There are 96 cells in the east wing.

Inside one of the cells

The youngest prisoner at Kilmainham was a boy at that age of 5 and a young girl at the age of 8. It's just incredible how life was back in the 1800's in Ireland. Everyone was was treated equally when it came to crime.

Also, because of the Great Potato Famine an enormous amount of people were committing crime purposely in effort to be thrown into prison, just so they could eat a decent meal. So needless to say prisons were over crowded and sometimes there were 5 people sharing one teeny tiny room.

This is outside where the rebels were executed.

This is also where the prisoners came to work during the day.

It was such a great experience visiting this prison, very interesting and a bit emotional, really.

I thought this photograph was precious.
This was taken in July 1921 at the Irish Peace Conference

From Kilmainham we made our way back to the hotel. Grabbed our things and walked to the train station.

We caught a train to Post Marnock on the coast of Ireland. Once we got to the coast, I got choked up in the awe of everything. Seriously, it was amazing. We grabbed our luggage and lugged it down to the beach with us.

Click on the pictures to enlarge.

After spending about a half hour taking pictures and enjoying the view we met up with our great friend Oisin. He took us back to his parents' house, where his mom had prepared a fantastic dinner. I ate the entire plate! They were such great people and we had a fabulous time with them and getting to know them. His mom was such a wonderful host she kept giving us food and drinks. At one point I had a glass of red wine, a cup of coffee, a cup of "Irish" coffee, and a glass of Jameson in front of me........ 4 cups! Several bottles of wine later and 4 glasses of random liquids we headed out to a club called Tamangos. Let's just say we didn't stay for long because poor Jonny's body told him it was time to call it a night!! ;)

What a great way to spend my birthday! We saw, the Dublin Zoo, Kilmainham Jail, took a train to the coast, saw the Ocean, ate and drank like Kings, and slept like babies! Saturday was an incredible day!

Stay tuned, there's more to come tomorrow of our Ireland adventure!