Our first stop Saturday was a guided sightseeing tour of Dublin. We got to see many amazing sights throughout the city including multiple gigantic cathedrals. I love architecture and looking at old buildings, so going around the ancient city and observing buildings from eras past was one of the highlights of the trip for me so far. The tour guide, Raini, was amazing. She was very casual and joked around with us, all the while explaining what we were seeing in a way that we could understand and relate to. She was our best tour guide so far.
We also went to see the Book of Kells and the archaeological museum. They were both very interesting to see, and showed the history of Ireland dating back thousands upon thousands of years. There was a huge library in the college where the book is held, with hundreds of ancient books in a giant hall. It was breathtaking and impressive that a country has so much history and takes care of it so well. In the archaeological museum, one of the highlighted exhibits featured mummies found in Ireland. They were quite unpleasant to look at, especially the ones missing body parts. One person from my group said that a certain mummy looked like lasagna, which was discouraging considering that I was to have lasagna for dinner that night. On the bright side, I found the perfect souvenir deck of cards for my sister. I had been looking for a week for a deck of cards, and I finally found one at the archaeological museum.
The last thing that we did was take a ghost tour around Dublin. It was quite unlike any ghost tour I’ve been on before. Most ghost tours are overly scary and over-the-top about their information, but our tour guide framed this as a bunch of fun facts about the buildings we were seeing. He was rather casual and comedic when talking about these ghostly tales, so it did not feel like the tour was trying too hard. Although my feet hurt very badly from walking around all day and standing in tight shoes for the concert, the ghost tour was a great way to round out the day.
