Dublin Ireland
Wednesday we arrived in Dublin. The weather was blustery and quite chilly as we began a 4-hour walking tour of the historic part of the city. In Merrion Square, a park adjacent to the childhood home of Oscar Wilde, We viewed the Oscar Wilde Memorial Sculpture. Wilde was a famous Irish poet and playwright during the last half of the 1800s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray , and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for “gross indecency”, imprisonment, and early death at age 46. Dublin, the capital and largest city of the Irish Republic, has a population of nearly 600,000 people with 3 times that number living in the greater Dublin region. Their economy is robust and many residents live downtown in modest apartments costing €2,300 per month. In the historic district the front doors of the apartment homes are painted bright colors. This tradition dates back to the...