So, whereas I was going to go on the bus tour to the Cliffs of Moher today and relax/ get my tattoo tomorrow, I switched the days, so tomorrow on my tour I'll be well rested and sporting a rockin' new tat.
A little red in the photo, but its way cool in real life.
It worked out well, though... My last day in Ireland will be spent exploring castles and natural phenomena for thirteen hours. I will also end my trip with a day full of photos, which I'm excited about. Going out with a bang... yeah, I guess that's how I do it.
I went to see the Kilmainham Gaol today... very creepy place. Seeing the cells that housed prisoners and the places where people were served capital punishment either by hanging or firing squad was pretty sad, not to mention unsettling. Kilmainham was home to over 200,000 prisoners between 1796 and 1924, the youngest of whom was a seven-year-old boy. People were sent to Kilmainham for criminal and political crimes (fighting to secure Ireland's freedom from Britain would make you a rebel and land you a prime suite in Kilmainham), and during the famine, the number of prisoners arrested for food-related crimes (including begging or stealing a loaf of bread... can anyone say Les Miserables?) skyrocketed.
In the old wing, cells built to accommodate one prisoner would sometimes hold up to six or seven at once, with almost no food (they didn't want life to be easier in the jail than it was outside, spurring people to commit crimes just so they could eat); there was no glass in the original jail windows, either, and no electricity, so the winter months when they shut the wooden shutters against the cold were very bleak ones for these prisoners.
In the new wing, they built it with the importance of light in mind, and it is not as oppressive as the old wing, but it's not a place I'd want to spend a night, let alone a few hundred.
In front of the Gaol... No, those are not prisoners filing in, they're Italian tourists.
Inside the new wing
Anybody for solitary confinement?
Three floors of cells
The hanging room. Note the lever and the trap door in the floor.
Inside one of the cells that housed a female political prisoner whose husband was executed at Kilmainham seven years prior.
The front of the Gaol... They used to hang prisoners from the balconies in front of audiences of thousands.
In front of the Dublin Museum of Modern Art
Sunset over the River Liffey
Thought that one deserved a close-up
I love Dublin.
Cross your fingers that I actually make my tour tomorrow!
Cheers, darlings!
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