10 Questions About…

The Science Gallery, one of my favorite places in the world, had been closed since we’ve been here – preparing for the latest exhibit: Elements. It opened on Friday. It was great as we knew it would be.

The Science Gallery does take a few minutes to warm up to. The exhibits are done primarily by students at Trinity and the students are the docents. Some are better with kids than others. (While the summer show is usually very kid-friendly, not all of the shows target or are remotely interesting to kids.) Here are some of the things we got to do:

• Find out what elements we contain. You step on a scale sort of thing and they’ll tell you how much of your body is oxygen or tin. You walk away with a big sales receipt sort of list.
• Aine got to make a rock garden. We didn’t keep it but it was cool and very fast growing.
• I separated copper from iron
• Lily & Aine got electricity from lemons

Last Thursday Patrick’s advisor Tony Roche had a book launch for his latest work – Brian Friel: Theatre and Politics. Tony has always been supportive and Patrick and very kind to us. SO we were invited to the launch. Lots of the Irish Literatti were there. The big highlight was that Brian Friel himself was there. Patrick got to meet him – and we have the picture to prove it.

Patrick grew up in Cabinteely. We have had many arguments over the years over whether it’s a suburb or urban village. But I can tell you it’s a suburb. His mother lives in the house where he grew up and we stay here when we’re in Dublin. We know it pretty well. But last week we got to see something new – the inside of the big Cabinteely House. The Cabinteely House would have been one of the big estates back in the day – and by back in the day I mean mid 1700’s. The house was built for Robert Nugent. He is known for marrying rich windows and his name gives us the terms nugentize – which means to marry rich widows.

More recently the house was owned by the McGraths who ran the Irish Sweepstakes. Apparently his family lived in the house until the mid-1970’s, which is kind of amazing considering that it’s huge and not at all modern. Eventually the house went to the Dun Laoghaire Rathdown Council. They maintain it. I think it’s mostly sustained by being used in various movies. The perk of being a movie location is that the curtains and other props made for the filming in the house stay with the house. So it appears to be very well maintained although a good share of the furniture and decorations are replicas.

The tour of the house included very fun actors, which helps me actually remember some of the details. The tour doesn’t include the surrounding park – but our pictures do. As you can see there are some fun sculptures.

It’s 60 degrees here today and very windy – but it’s not raining. So I know folks at home (where it’s 90+) will be a little jealous – while I’m jealous of the heat. The nice thing about a yucky day is that I’m catching up with work and the blog!

Last week when it was sunny, the girls and I walked to, up and back from Killiney Hill. Here are some quick facts on Killiney for folks (taken from Wikipedia, which never lies!):

• The coastal areas of Killiney are often favorably compared to the Bay of Naples in Italy.
• North-eastern Killiney is one of Dublin’s most exclusive residential areas. Famous residents include U2 members Bono and The Edge, Enya and occasionally former racing driver Eddie Jordan. Killiney is also home to a number of foreign ambassadors to Ireland.
• The Park’s topography is quite dramatic and its highest point, at the obelisk, is 170 metres above sea level.

My good guess is that the hill is about 3 miles away from the house – if you’re walking. It’s a lot closer if you could fly over the hills and houses. So I have to give the girls props, they were great walkers. Our walk included a walk down part of the Vico Road, which is gorgeous! The fun part of course is trying to guess which house in Bono’s. There are a couple of serious contenders and I’m sure at least one house we passed was the nicest and most expensive house I have ever seen. (I think I got a picture of their lower gardens which stretch out to the sea.)

We’ve walked up the Hill many times before but this was our first time walking to the Hill. I hope the pictures do the walk justice. The walk did seem worth it when we came down the hill and got treats at the coffee shop in the park. We may try to visit again – maybe make a stop off at the beach on another day. If the rain ever stops. (It wasn’t raining when I started this – it’s pouring now!)

Last weekend we had a regular downtown Dublin day. We didn’t have any big plans – mostly the girls wanted to do the things they miss when we are home. By that I mean they wanted to eat chocolate crepes at the Farmer’s Market in Meeting House Square. Sadly they are working on the Square! Its’ going to be cool when it’s done; they are building umbrellas to make the Square better in all sorts of weather. But for now it’s just under construction. The girls were heartbroken – until we started walking around and we learned that the usual market booths were just dispersed around the area.

Eventually we found the crepes and all was well with the world. In fact we tried lots of different food while we were there. Then we went to George’s Market, which is a more permanent market – part flea market, part super organic type stuff.
Lily had specifically requested this stop. When we were there we saw that they had fish pedicures.

I had heard about these fish before – essentially you stick your feet into fish tanks and the fish nibble at your feet. The fish are Garra Rufa. Here’s the description from their web site:

The treatment itself even has a name – “ichthyotherapy” – which is defined as “ the use of fish to treat illness, e.g. certain members of the family Cyprinidae such as Garra rufa and Cyprinion macrostomum living in hot springs near Sivas, Turkey nibble at skin lesions and are said to cure psoriasis. Probably exposure to UV light and to selenium in the water is aided by removal of dead skin”.

So we decided to go for it – the girls and I had the treatment for about 15 minutes. It’s very ewkie. It doesn’t hurt. It kind of tickles. I could just about take it for a few minutes and then I’d be overwhelmed by the creepiness of paying to have fish bite your toes.

Bog bodies are always one of my favorite creepy but cool activities. We’ve seen them before – but they never get old. (That’s kind of a pun since one of the things about the bodies is that they are perfectly preserved in the bogs.) We got a great tour of the bog bodies, which was new to us. The tour starts with a glimpse at random things they have found in the bogs – like clothing and butter. We learned that a lot of the bog bodies are almost 2000 years old.

My favorite story – and I’m clearly paraphrasing although will directly quote one line – – is of the bog body that was probably a kingly sacrifice. The idea was that the bog man would have been dressed up and married to a horse – “though it was a symbolic marriage only” and after the wedding the horse would have been eaten and the king killed and chucked into the bog. It’s kind of amazing that they can do so much research on the bodies. It’s kind of amazing to think of the clues that would have left them with that story. And most of all amazing that the guide felt she had to say that the marriage was symbolic only – and that I was the only one who seemed to think that was really funny.

Anyways – no flash allowed in the museum. So I took the pictures I could but they’re not great – although the bog body hand was pretty good. For comparison I had Aine pose her hand with the bog hand.

For her Birthday Aine wanted to go to the beach. Unfortunately they had been predicting that the rain would start exactly on her big day. And sure enough we woke up to cold and rain. But while we were working on Plan B – the sun came out – and you know the story, dried up all the rain. So we packed up a picnic lunch and headed to the beach.

Beach may be a bit misleading – you have this think Lake Superior, not Miami. We headed to Sea Point, near Monkstown – near where we lived a couple of summers ago. Our timing was perfect – the tide was really starting to come in. So as the kids splashed around the water just got deeper and deeper – fairly gradually. We could see the water on the fifth step, water on the fourth step…

While we were sort of waiting for the rain to come back – it never did. So we had a perfectly sunny and warm day at the beach. It was just what Aine wanted. Then she got to choose the restaurant that night – Thai. And of course the day wrapped up with presents. A perfect day all around.

No fireworks, no bbq, no Stars and Stripes – but we had good weather! The girls and I took a long trek on the 4th of July. We were on a sort of boondoggle to see a local dolmen. The problem is that the dolmen is in someone’s backyard  – and it’s not the kind of backyard to can peek into easily. We tried. We also tried a back way to the back way and that didn’t work either – but we did get a good 90 minute walk in.

The girls only went on the walk because I had agreed earlier that they could have friends over for the 4th. The big draw? American malts.

Pretty much upon landing in Dublin, the girls’ friends scooped them all up for the day. (And we love them for it.) So Patrick and I walked to Dalkey. Dalkey is a great town on the sea. It’s not far from Cabinteely – but it’s up hill, both ways. You can walk miles out of the way or really climb over Killiney Hill to get there. SO we climbed – but it only took about 40 minutes.

We went and looked out at Dalkey Island. (Our sad news is that they aren’t running a boat out there this year due to licensing issues.) We looked at the super fancy houses. And we stopped for a pint. Actually I stopped for a Diet Coke; Patrick stopped for a couple of pints and a plate of potatoes.