Musical Dublin

This is a clip from the Dublin Musical Pub Crawl. (I apologize for the poor visual quality, but it's mostly for the audio so that my Dad can hear it.) It was, unquestionably, the best experience I have had in Dublin yet. Two musicians lead us around Dublin to a few pubs and played music at each one. In between songs, they told the story of Celtic music and explained the instruments, rhythms, and history. The banjo player was spectacular. He is a Bela Fleck disciple, and his skill was totally amazing. It helped that he was also young and handsome. After the pub crawl, the banjo player suggested a pub to go to with a good traditional music session. We went there, and it was awesome. The whole place was jam packed with people, and I think most of the musicians were related to the banjo player. They were great though! I looked up his band and they play in Temple Bar on Saturdays and Sundays, so I will definitely be going out there to hear more, and hopefully buy some music.

Although the pub crawl certainly trumped everything else we have done for the past few days, I'll be sure to tell you all about that too. On Thursday, we went to the Dublin Writers Museum.
Also, this Georgian ceiling in the museum was designed by the famous Irish architect Michael Stapleton:

It was interesting and useful because a lot of the information helps me understand the background of the plays I'm reading for my Irish Contemporary Drama class, but overall the museum was a bit dull. I mean, what can you put in a writer's museum? Old books in a case? A pen that they used once? The exhibits were by no means exhilarating. However, it is interesting to note that so many famous writers came out of Ireland: G. Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, W.B. Yeats, J.M. Synge, Samuel Beckett, and the list goes on and on. How do so many talented people come from an island smaller than the state of Indiana? It's something in the air. Probably the cigarette smoke. (Just kidding. But the smell of cigarette smoke in this city is permeating all of my clothes and driving me mad.)

On Friday morning Peter and I took the train to Malahide to tour Malahide Castle.
It was nice, but not what we expected. I think Peter was hoping for ancient ruins of a majestic castle, while I was hoping for dungeons and high towers with princesses draping their hair out the window and dragons roaring in the courtyard. Well...not quite. The castle was a small castle, and it had been lived in until the 1970s, so it was modernized. Still impressive, but not really what my imagination had been cooking up on the train ride there. The best part of the visit was playing in the woods around the castle.
During our woodland frolic we noticed a sign stating that the woods had recently been treated for a rat infestation and were poisonous. So, we probably shouldn't have crawled around in there. But I feel fine today so hopefully I won't die of poisoning.

Today we are going to probably stroll around the city a bit, and then go to two shows. The first is a matinée of Bistouri at The Ark. It is a children's show that I am seeing as part of my Irish Youth Theatre independent study. Then, tonight, Peter and I got last minute tickets to see The Reduced Shakespeare Company in Dun Laoghaire. We're really excited! We're both huge fans of Reduced Shakespeare and their brand of highly physical, goofy, satirical comedy.