Taxidermy and Hippopotamuses!

Location: Southbound in the Atlantic Ocean, just off the westernmost coast of Spain

Yes, we have officially left the shallow seas and entered the Atlantic Ocean! According to one of our marine biologists the approximately 300-foot deep waters of the continental shelf that we were traveling along gave way yesterday to waters that are now over two and a half miles deep. People have been seeing dolphins and whales all day (I missed them though) and everyone is really stoked for our arrival sometime tomorrow in Lisbon, Portugal (though we won't actually get to disembark until Friday.)

Anyhow, who wants to hear about Ireland?

Ireland, Day 1 (9/20/13):

I awoke on Friday morning with the sole plan of spending the day exploring our port of call: Dublin, Ireland. Known for its rainy weather, multitude of pubs, famous writers who once frequented those pubs, and Trinity College, home of the magnificent Book of Kells, I think that the city of Dublin is one of the more interesting ports at which we have stopped. It is also the first port in which a small fleet of shuttle buses were requisitioned on our behalf, so that instead of having to walk for about 40 minutes from the docks to the city center we only had to walk about 5 minutes there from where the shuttle dropped us off along George's Quay. It wasn't until the last day that I fully appreciated this service, but that is a story for a later post.

I actually do not have that much to say about my first day in Dublin. This may be due to a lack of interesting occurrences (impossible!) or simply that it has been too long and none of them are coming to mind at the moment. In any case, I disembarked the shuttle and set out on my own (armed with a map of Dublin that I picked up from the field program desk on the ship), though my group of one quickly became a group of two which then later picked up a third member. We spent the day walking all around Dublin; we went to Dublinia, Christ Church Cathedral, the Temple Bar area, Trinity College, and Dublin Castle.

We also walked through the Museum of Natural and Cultural History. From the name, one might expect to find an ordinary museum filled with informational displays about, say, the natural and cultural history of Ireland. Well, not exactly. The museum actually consisted of two rooms, one on the ground floor and another upstairs, which were packed full of... taxidermied animals! (Spell-check is telling me that "taxidermied" isn't actually a word––you get what I'm saying though, right?) Apparently there were over two million animals, all arranged in little exhibits showcasing their behavior in their natural habitats. In the first room there were cases of birds, mammals, marine animals, and insects all native to Ireland, including huge skeletal Irish Elk to waiting to greet you as you enter. Then upstairs there were animals from all over the world: kangaroos, giraffes, lions, elephants–––did you know that hippopotamuses are really huge? The one on display was almost twice as big as the Buffalo!

Anyhow, that was an odd but interesting experience. The museum was actually open later than usual because the 20th happened to be culture day in Dublin, which is characterized by all sorts of neat things that I didn't end up taking advantage of because due to the lack of internet I didn't get the schedule until halfway through the day and didn't have time to adequately plan anything. Oh well.

After leaving the museum the three of us spent almost an hour bumbling around trying to find some good, inexpensive Irish food (don't laugh, it was actually really hard!) None of us wanted to go to one of the Temple Bar pubs and spend upwards of $20 on a meal that didn't even include a beverage, and our only other options seemed to be foreign food (eating Spanish food in Ireland just felt wrong) or a convenience store. We did eventually get dinner though, and we made it back to George's Quay well before the shuttles stopped running (around 23:30 every night) so everything was good.

...and speaking of everything being good, I'm actually procrastinating on finishing an essay for my Cross-Cultural Psychology class right now by writing this blog post. So I should really go do that now.

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