Wilde Day

St. Stephen's Green

There was fairly good weather today in Dublin so I decided to head to the city centre for some sightseeing and then meeting up for a "field trip."


Around 1:30 I took the bus into the city centre by myself. I had never taken a bus by myself into the city, even downtown Champaign or Urbana, so there has been some growth during my 2 weeks abroad. Brittany was already downtown so we met up and walked around St. Stephen's Green. It is my mission to find as many memorials, statues, and sculptures as I can while in Europe, so one of my goals for the day was to find the Oscar Wilde statue in Merrion Square Park, which Brittany and I ultimately did.

My mother asked if I had already visited a statue of Wilde, and I have, but he is everywhere here, ironic considering he exiled himself from Ireland and Britain. Wilde was imprisoned in London for homosexuality and after being released lived the rest of his life in France. The Irish do love their writers and it is hard to walk anywhere without seeing the images of Wilde, Joyce, Swift and Shaw.

In my guide book it shows the author next to the statue of Wilde so I thought I need to do this too. The problem:

he's on a boulder. Well, if you know me and my antics at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this was no problem.

It's really a beautiful statue. I don't know if you can tell from the pictures, but the various colors are not caused by paint but different stones.

After about an hour of walking around the parks and streets of Dublin Brittany and I set off for the National Museum, which our Irish History teacher organized a class trip to. The museum was ok, kinda small, but the major exhibition they have there is the bog bodies. These are humans who have been killed, often times for human sacrifice, and their bodies had been left in the bog, a marsh-like area. The bodies are very well preserved and they look almost like leathery mummies who had been flattened. Other exhibits included Viking in Ireland, Medieval Ireland, and Irish Gold. As I said, the museum was rather small and we made it through there in about an hour. We also met up with the students from Boston University, who we have seen a lot of recently.

On the way back to campus Brittany and I picked up supplies to make stir fry for dinner and invited Jen and Stacy over to my place. We have a lot of "family dinners" because it is easier and usually cheaper to cook for many people instead of just trying to cook for one. We also try to have meat and veggies in our dinners because throughout the day or when we eat alone it usually consists of grilled cheese or peanut butter. I cooked up the stir fry and the Stacy and Jen brought over some ice cream for dessert. It was amazing! I haven't had ice cream in what seems like forever and they splurged and bought Haagen Das. Yum.

Tomorrow we're bussing over to Cork and spending the night there. The major attraction near Cork, which is about 4.5 hours away by bus, is the Blarney Stone. I had better bring some breath mints because it's getting a kiss.

My congrats to Delta Sigma Pi Upsilon chapter, who seem to have gotten some great pledges! Great job and I miss you all!