First "Official" Day

Today was the first "official" day of class, so I'll start trying to make this a little less whiney and a bit more... scholarly observational? Anyway, after breakfast we went to the Garden of Remembrance and read poetry from our little blue Dublin books and talked about the story of the Children of Lir and the statue representing them in the garden. The garden itself was to commemorate the anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising and those who gave their lives for Irish independance. This is exactly how I'd picture a travel course, sitting in gorgeous gardens, reading poetry about the city. It couldn't be more perfect. Dublin is said to be a city of poets and the poems we read really seem to capture the spirit of the city. The "Description of Dublin," although it refers to the city in the 18th century, with its "streets unpleasant in all weather" and "beggars of all ranks, age and condition," could still be fairly acurate today. The streets are really old, like they haven't been kept very well, and there are a decent amount of homeless people sitting on the ground. The city is definitely busy. We walked all around the city today with our tour guide. It was exhausting. I remember walking a lot in London a few years ago, and of course the cities have been compared, but Dublin is smaller. There is no need for anything like "the tube" as far as size is concerned. There is definitely plenty of traffic, both pedestrian and vehicular, but most of the vehicular traffic is tour buses, and buses and taxis from the airport to hotels. It appears that modern Dublin capitalizes on its disturbed past through tourism with exhibitions on everything from the vikings to the twentieth century revolution. There's probably more that could be said about today, but I'm getting tired.