Proud to be Irish

Well, we bid goodbye to the Shamrock shores in fittingly rainy weather, and were greeted by Scotland by more of the same. But that's the UK, and we brought our umbrellas.

We spent our last day in Dublin learning a bit more about the history of the city, and seeing a little bit of its future. We first went to a history exhibit attached to Christ Church Cathedral, which covered Dublin's history from its founding in the 700s by Viking invaders (the native Celts apparently weren't really city dwellers) through the middle ages, and also had a bit about the current archaeological efforts going on in the city. We also toured a replica Tall Ship, the Jeannie Johnston, which was a cargo/passenger ship that took emigrants/refugees across the Atlantic from Ireland during the Great Famine. That was also an interesting tour - it mostly focused on the particularly of that ship (which was a good ship to immigrate on - no one in it's history died on board. There were plenty of "coffin ships" that had a much worse track record that Irish immigrants risked to get to the US or Canada), but it also covered some more general information about Irish emigration. Apparently, although there are only 6 million people living in Ireland, there are more than 70 million people world wide who claim Irish ancestry due to emigration. We're part of a big club.

  We also got to watch the Dublin Pride Parade, which was quite fun. Dublin is very proud to have been the first country to legalize equal marriage rights last year, so this year's Pride was particularly proud.

Christ Church Cathedral - quite beautiful!

Ok, lots of blurry pictures because it was quite dark inside Dublinia, the history exhibit about the city of Dublin. It was designed as if you were walking through the streets of the city, seeing inside homes, stores, and watching people go about their lives in the 700s through the middle ages.

By 1014, Ireland had a longer recorded history than the states!

"Inside" a viking age home in early Dublin. Smokey!

With some dude named Strongbow, a Norman leader who invaded Ireland and helped settle it.

The middle ages was a busy (and dirty) time.

We also got to walk through a bit of Christ Church Cathedral as part of the Dublinia tour - there were lots of pretty stained glass windows.

We also walked around the grounds of Dublin Castle - there was an original Norman tower, that was added to in later eras.

It was an interesting mix of pretty and imposing.

Pride! It was really nice to see and be part of the continued push for civil rights for all.

After the Parade, we took a tour of the Jeanie Johnston, an almost exact replica of the ship that carried many Irish emigrants across the Atlantic during the height of the Great Potato Famine.

The original Jeanie Johnston sank in Hudson Bay (but all crew escaped alive), so this ship was built in the 1990s. It's fully sailable, and has made a few replica voyages to and from Canada... that would be an adventure.

Conditions on the replica voyages were a bit better than the original, although this ship was a coveted passage, because it was actually a humane experience. Still, approximately 200 people were crammed into the (not very large) hold. These bunk beds, basically true to size, would have held 7 (seven!) adults.

We are glad this is not our bed. Michael's feet would be sticking out way more than that one there.

Rough times... tickets were expensive for the poor and starving Irish, so families rarely traveled together. Children frequently made the trips by themselves, and there was no guarantee that they would be able to find their families once they reached America.

As I mentioned, this ship never lost a single passenger or crew member during her entire lifetime, primarily due to the humanity of her owner and ship captain. On many ships, passengers would be confined to the holds for the entire journey, which created breeding grounds for disease and cabin fever, and ships would  not always bring enough food for all passengers. On this ship, however, passengers were actually required to go up on deck to clean bedding and sweep out the hold, and were given generous rations throughout the journey, so many wrote letters of thanks, which is how we know all this.

Still, after maybe only 30 minutes down in the hold, we were happy to be back out in the open. So glad that my ancestors made that journey successfully, and I never have to journey by sailing ship.

We are now settled into our hotel in Edinburgh, and Michael is getting ready for his conference this week. We'll split our time between work and site seeing, so it should be nice and relaxed.

Also, it is 9:45 pm and the sun is still a good three finger widths above the horizon. Thank goodness for black out curtains!