Culture Night!

SUCH a fun evening!  But, before I begin my description about culture night, I have to illustrate the type of people that are in our dorm.  As I walked back from the train station to the dorm from a fabulous evening of free events for Dublin's culture night, I walked past our dormitory eating area.  From the outside, I could hear students counting down in what I can only guess was a drinking game.  To summarize: free entry to museums, theatres, and concerts and the students I live with would rather drink on campus.

So, to begin with, I went to the Georgian House, also known as Number 29, Museum.  I thought from what was written online that there was some tie to authors, but it turns out that there wasn't.  I got there early, but was put into the 7:30 tour group.  Fortunately, I made nice with one of the workers when I bought a copy of Ulysses (I'm nearly done with A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man after my long day at immigration) at the gift shop, and he came over and got me squeezed into the 7:00 group.  We were shown a horrible video in which Mrs. Beatty, the first resident of the house, "narrated" her story and told us how happy she was with the reconstruction of the home.  We then were taken on a guided tour of the house, which was really pretty interesting.  They had furniture pieces from 1690 to the 1800s and it was really pretty. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures there, or anywhere we went for that matter (though I snuck a few in at the Dublin Writers Museum).  After the tour I bought a print of a grammar lesson that was hanging in the nursery of the house.  It has the alphabet ("I" is for Indian, "N" is for Nag) and the parts of speech are explained in a rhyme.

Dublin Writer's Museum

During the tour, I made friends with a Polish student named Joanna (pronounced Yoanna) who goes to Trinity. It was her second year here, so she knew her way around pretty well.  We then tried to go to the Leprechaun Museum (I know!), but it was fully booked so there wasn't any more room.  Then we tried to go to a theater on the list, but it had only been open for an hour of the culture night and was closed when we got there.  Finally we made it to the Dublin Writer's Museum.  I thought it would be really neat, but it was just okay.  There didn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to the displays and we weren't allowed to take pictures of the old books, even with our flash off.  I of course took a few anyway, but we won't tell anyone.

By the time we left the Dublin Writer's Museum, it felt like it was time to call it a night and I took the train back home.  All in all, it was a fun night and I got to see a lot that I wouldn't have otherwise gone to.  Now, as fun as it all was, the best part of today might just have to be the tiny top hat fascinator that I found at Penney's for just 3 euro- it's amazing and was the very last one. :)  Cheers!