Here’s a travel tip for all my more mature friends: Walk with a cane! As you age and acquire some mobility issues, you suddenly become a privileged character in airports and on planes, trains, and buses. Paul sometime uses a cane, and he decided to bring it with him on this trip. At Logan Airport, the TSA agents looked at us and immediately waved us over to the old folks line where you don’t have to remove shoes, or take anything out of your carry-on bags, or go through the full-body scan. We got early boarding on our plane with no questions asked. At customs in the Dublin Airport we were told to skip the lines and go directly to the customs officer in the “accessibility” booth. On a crowded bus, a woman saw the cane and immediately gave up her seat to us. There are some advantages to old age.
I can never sleep on planes and so, as I write this, I have been awake for more than 36 hours, When we arrived in Dublin, it was too early to check into our hotel, so we stored our luggage and set out to see the city. We began at the fascinating National Museum of Ireland at Kildare Street which houses the museum’s archeological collection. These artifacts tell the story of the Irish people from prehistoric times through the rise of Christianity. The most fascinating may be the bog bodies, well-preserved remains of of Irish people from the Iron Age, between 400 BC and 200 BC.
We wished we could spend more time at the museum, but our energy was waning and the sun was shining, so we decided to take a stroll through St. Stephen’s Green, a lovely park in the center of Dublin. Hundreds of other folks had the same idea, so we had plenty of company.
By the time we left the park we were definitely suffering from jet lag, so we decided to go and check into our hotel. On our way to catch a bus, we encountered two protests, one pro-Palestine and the other pro-immigrant. They seemed very intense but peaceful.
By the time we checked into our hotel, we were exhausted, so we rested a bit, found a pub for an early dinner, and called it a day. Tomorrow we will visit the Irish Rock ‘n’ Roll Museum, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and Trinity College before dinner and an evening of theater,
By the way, I used to think the nicest people in the world were the Canadians, but after one day in Dublin, I believe it’s the Irish.
