Friday!

We love Fridays around here.

Either Thursday night or Friday morning the kids get to go to Clarks to pick out their treat for Friday during school. Johnny was exhausted on Thursday night and so he didn't make it, so we had to build it into the Friday routine. I say "build it in" because it is no small decision.

There is a lot of deliberation that goes on in making this decision and the gal at the counter is now used to us and sometimes offers her advice.

We noticed this little bar and wanted to shout out to the Caffrey's at home. Looks like you've made the "Big Time!"

 Once kids were in school, Sheila and I headed into Dublin!

We have a lot of excursions into Dublin to make to cover all of the things we want to see. We have just about time enough to head in, do one thing, have lunch and head out to grab the kids from school. Today was particularly short since Maggie was done early after her exams and we wanted to spend a bit of time with her before I had to head to UCD. We decided to check out the National Gallery.

It is free so that makes you feel like you don't have to take it in all at once. Our only goal was to see one of the exhibits by Irish artists and to see the current exhibit on Yeat's Sketchbooks, with a coffee in the middle for sustenance!

John "Jack" Butler Yeats (29 August 1871 – 28 March 1957) was an Irish artist and Olympic medalist. He was the brother of poet William Butler Yeats who won the Nobel Prize.

The sketchbook exhibit was really great and interesting. I love to draw so I really enjoyed looking at the detail of his drawings, but I also enjoyed his renditions of Dublin life in the 20th century. He was sympathetic to the republican cause in Ireland (i.e. that all of Ireland should be an independent republic) but was not politically active. Instead, his beliefs come out in his drawings.

At the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, Yeats' painting The Liffey Swim won a silver medal in the arts and culture segment of the Games. In the competition records the painting is simply entitled Swimming. We loved this painting and actually picked up the print to take home.

Turns out that the Liffey Swim is actually a real event--a race in August or September!

I also loved this painting at the gallery--"The Opening of the Sixth Seal" by Danby. It was striking as you round a corner to see it.

The Seven Seals is a phrase in the Book of Revelation that refers to seven symbolic seals that secure the book or scroll, that St. John  saw in his Revelation of Jesus Christ. The opening of the seals of the Apocalyptic  document occurs in Revelation Chapters 5-8. Here is Revelation 6:12-17 (the scene Danby is depicting above):

And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;
And the stars of the heavens fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
And the heavens departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;
And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:
For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand? 


Wow, huh?

After the gallery we took the advice of Yvette van Boven in Imen's interview (on her blog Farmette) and went to Fallon & Byrne
(we plan to tackle all of her suggestions in time).
There I also picked up a few things for Pancake Tuesday!
 

The restaurant was gorgeous. The Irish don't eat lunch until 1, so we were very early as a) we were hungry and b) we had to get back.

Here's the window view from our seat looking on to Exchequer Street.

My sweet potato soup!

We got a call from one of Maggie's teachers at lunch... I will let Sheila tell the whole story!

Afterwards we headed home and I promptly headed out to UCD for my little talk, stopping on the way to take a picture of the house where James Joyce lived and a typical Irish tree with Ivy growing all over it.

The talk went great and it was really nice to meet a few new people. One guy who, with his sister, have done a bunch of work in my field is actually at UCD. I seriously had no idea he was here, so that is just a fantastic coincidence and I'm looking forward to lots of conversations and collaborations.

My friend Liz predicted we'd go to the sticky box for pints after but what she was not privy to while here was this lovely faculty club. All universities should have a faculty club like this stocked with a bar and a bartender. I wish I had taken a picture of this for you. There were tons of people there at five p.m. on a Friday just mingling, drinking and talking. What a great way to share ideas. Of course, I'm not in the middle of all of the university politics so I might just be romanticizing. The pint was great anyhow.

A few of us left at the end headed into Dublin for dinner (Sheila met us!) and we had more pints afterwards at the Stag's Head (supposedly best Guinness in Dublin).

All-in-all, a pretty great day!