Ireland, Portugal and Spain

I rang Mike Whiteley after breakfast to see how Sue was faring. He had sent a text that indicated that she is beyond further medical treatment and is now in palliative care. They are hoping Sam will be able to get home in time from Ireland, and perhaps her brother Phillip.

We set off with good intentions to visit Kilmainham Gaol. This institution, which was closed back in the 1920s, has a long and not so great history. According to the lady in the Visitors Information Centre it was too far to walk, and too complicated to tell us how to take a bus. In addition, the map she gave us was not to scale, so we should take no notice of it!!!!

So ... we headed off after a good breakfast. After walking for quite some time, past Christ Church Cathedral and the Guinness factory, we eventually asked a couple walking the other way where it was. Their answer led us completely astray and way past the correct turn to get to it.

Anyway, we eventually arrived at the Gaol. We could not do a guided tour because they were all sold out for the day, but the Museum was free and what an eye-opener it turned out to be. Built with the best of intentions it nevertheless was a harsh place and was where the insurgents from the Easter Uprising were held and executed.

One of the more interesting exhibits was about a certain Professor Samuel Houghton who developed the formula for ensuring that a prisoner to be hung had his neck broken. This ended the inhumane practice of hanging where death was caused by strangulation!

After the dark and unsettling exhibitions on the ground floor and first floor it was encouraging to see the Nelson Mandela exhibition on the top floor. Many years ago, an Irish worker in a department store refused to handle produce from South Africa, and this eventually became a movement against apartheid. In this way Ireland led the way in the international movement against the South African apartheid regime. Upon his release from prison Mandela ensured that Ireland was one of the first places he visited, hence the exhibition. It, too, was truly moving.

On our way back into town we called in to the Guinness tourist facility. The queue for those who didn’t have an internet booked ticket was soooo long that we thought it would be best to come back tomorrow. On enquiring about the price it didn’t seem like such good value. When we stopped at a pub for a drink I had a Guinness, for the first time. I can’t see what people see in it, so that made it an easy decision not to go back tomorrow.

Christ Church Cathedral wanted 7 euros to visit so we gave that a miss as well. While I had hoped to ring there this evening for practice it didn’t really fit in with our schedule, so we went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant instead and then came back to our hotel and collapsed. Czytaj więcej