Greetings from Dublin! Our 11:05 p.m. flight left Toronto about 20 minutes late on Monday September 30 and we had to circle the Dublin airport for an extra 40 minutes on Tuesday morning. We landed at around 11:30 a.m. in pouring rain with a temperature of about 11C. The Dublin airport is a real throwback with peeling paint and tired wood panelling. Definitely in need of an update.
We took the Airlink bus (7 euros each) to a stop near our Airbnb. We are staying near the Docklands area, north of the River Liffey. We were too early to check in, so we left our luggage at an internet café and headed down the street to visit
EPIC: The Irish Emigration Museum, which had been highly recommended by some friends from Montreal who had visited just a few weeks ago. EPIC stands for
Every Person is Connected.
EPIC opened in 2016 and is a privately funded museum, owned by founder Neville Isdell, a former chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, who was born in County Down, Northern Ireland. The museum is located in a 1820 former customs warehouse on the Custom House Quay It was voted as "Europe's Leading Tourist Attraction" at the World Travel Awards in 2019.
 |
| Outside EPIC |
EPIC is a high-tech, interactive exploration of emigration and its effect on Ireland. Over 10 million people have emigrated from Ireland. Approximately 70 million people spread around the world claim Irish ancestry. The museum consists of 20 galleries, with different themes. One is given a passport upon entry to the Museum and one is encouraged to get it stamped after visiting each section. The galleries dealt with the causes of emigration including the Great Hunger of the late 1840s, British colonialism, the Troubles, economic woes, etc. Some galleries dealt with the countries where emigrants settled-- Argentina as well as Canada and the United States had very large numbers of Irish emigrants. There were also galleries celebrating Irish emigrants in various fields, including literature, sports and theatre.
 |
| Entrance |
 |
| CNR Poster advertising opportunities for farming in Canada |
 |
| Sculpture of boats, planes and different modes of transportation for emigrants |
Some of the galleries dealt with the horrific conditions of travel for the emigrants-- there were "coffin" ships, where many died on the long voyages. There were galleries dealing with conditions in places such as Australia, where convicts were exiled.
 |
| Convict clothes-- from Hobart, Australia |
One gallery dealt with women's rights (or lack thereof).
 |
Long rolling list of lack of women's rights in Ireland and when those rights were granted
There were a number of galleries featuring prominent Irish emigrants.
|
 |
| Mother Jones---from Cork- 1837-1930 |
 |
| Ailín with his convict photo |
 |
| Oscar Wilde |
 |
| Last room at EPIC -Every Person is Connected |
We would highly recommend the Museum. Last fall we went to the Red Star Line Museum in Antwerp which dealt with emigration from that city. A much different story as Antwerp was a port of departure for emigrants from all over Europe and the Red Star Line shipping company operated for only a short period of time. EPIC only addresses the Irish emigrant story which takes place over a number of centuries.
On the way back to our apartment, we saw a memorial to victims of a bombing in 1974. The Troubles are still very much in people's psyche.
 |
| Memorial to victims of 1974 bombing |
 |
Outside of our building- our apartment is on the first floor (second floor in Canada).
We rested a bit and then went looking for a restaurant-- it turned out that our pick (Irish food) had an earlier closing time than listed in Google. They were just shutting down and recommended a Japanese restaurant across the road where we had some noodles with seafood.
We ran into James Joyce on the way back. We were exhausted having not slept for over 24 hours. However, we were very glad we had spent a rainy afternoon at EPIC getting a good start on Irish history.
|
 |
| James Joyce- statute erected in 1990 |
Comments
Post a Comment