The tour is winding down and in a way feels like it’s already fading. Four of our group of 23 were not with us today – two with Covid and their spouses (who’d had it earlier) joining them in quarantine. [Our Madison friends’ return home will not be delayed as I wrote in an earlier version of this post. The new CDC rules allow them to travel.] We had dinner with them last night and knew she wasn’t feeling well. (I’ve had a fairly miserable cold since Friday but am improving and have tested negative twice for Covid.)
On a more positive note, the 80° heat wave of the last few days has broken and today’s high is 65°. Most of our hotels have not been air-conditioned.
Our reduced and sobered group put on masks (few used them until today) and traveled by bus to the General Post Office north of the Liffey for a museum tour retelling the Easter Uprising there in 1916, the first major battle of the Irish War of Independence. Back outside we could still see the pockmarks left by bullets.
From the GPO we walked to 14 Henrietta Street, one of the many Georgian townhouses of the wealthy Anglo-Irish ruling class in late 18th-century. Most were carved up into miserable, crowded tenements for the Irish poor after the Acts of Union in 1800 moved the Irish seat of government to London. The tenements were finally eradicated around WW II and now have other uses; this one is a museum of wealth and poverty, as this basement room, which housed a single large family without running water, sanitation, or electricity, accurately depicts.
We were all on our own for the rest of the day. Karen and I left the group as we passed an arts center called the Chocolate Factory and enjoyed a surprisingly good lunch from the tiny menu at their cafe.
We then caught a Luas (Dublin city) tram to Trinity College Dublin where I hoped to see the huge old library before it closes for renovation, but alas, the only way to visit is to buy a ticket to view its greatest treasure, the Book of Kells, and they were sold out for the entire day.
So on the advice of a random undergraduate sharing our park bench we went to the university’s geology museum instead to admire its Moorish-style architecture and striking varieties of stone.
Tonight we will again meet Eoghan (see my Aug. 4 post) for dinner with our two remaining Covid-free Madison friends.
Bill travels 