Ireland Finale-- Stuffed and Peeling Animals, Great Bands, and Awkward Bodies

Our last day consisted of site seeing around Dublin! This time all the museums were actually open. Laura and Derek set off to see Trinity College, which I had already seen. I made the trek to the National Museum of Archaeology and the National Museum of Natural History. The archaeology museum was underwhelming, but had cool Viking objects.. like these:

The natural history museum was a whole other can of worms. When most people decide to go to a natural history museum most people expect dinosaurs and saber tooth tigers and mammoths. This is what I was expecting. This is not what I got. It was a museum of death. The ONLY cool thing was the gigantic deer skeleton that was literally 16 feet tall that stood in the doorway to the rest of the museum. It would make a moose look small. 

The rest of the animals were displayed in cases that obstructed their view. The animals in those cases were stuffed and had various goofy expressions on their faces. I'm pretty sure I made people uncomfortable by being surprised by a goofy looking beaver or platypus and bursting out laughing. 

Oh hellooooo there!

I threw in a cool hippo skeleton for good measure

Now you might be thinking hey this is not bad at all. Emma is exaggerating.  I now give you the icing on the cake... A LOT of the creatures in there were made of plastic in varying degrees of decay, melting, and peeling. Take this poor shark for example:

After this museum, which I have renamed The National Museum of Plastic and Stuffed Melting and Peeling Museum, all of us reunited once again! Laura and I went to what may be the coolest and most terrifying, but fascinating museum I have ever been to. 

This was the Human Body Exhibit. For those of you who have no idea what this is it is a museum dedicated to showing the human body, it's organs, muscles, veins, arteries, and everything else inside of us. The catch? They use REAL human bodies that were donated to science. It can't really be described by words so here are some pictures. 

Yes this is freaky, weird, but fascinating. I cannot believe how imaginative a museum could be. They had every single bodily system on display in ways you wouldn't think of. The even had the entire body sliced into thin pieces so you could see a cross section. The section with the lungs was horrendous. They showed a healthy lung versus a cancerous lung and a smoker's lung. The last two were disgustingly similar. 

You never think about veins being cool, but holy crap! They had an arm on display that had no skin, bones, tendons, ligaments, just veins and arteries. I had no idea it would retain the shape of the arm. I can now see why people become doctors. The human body is absolutely fascinating and slightly horrifying at the same time. If you ever get the chance go to see this exhibit!

Ye Olde Trip to Lincoln

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."--Mark Twain

Ellie, Tam and I decided to take a spontaneous trip to Lincoln! It is a small town about an hour away that is famous for its cathedral and castle. What the don't tell the tourists about it the extremely steep hill they have to climb to get up to it. Me being the exercisaholic that I am thought the hike wasn't too bad. Meanwhile, Ellie is holding onto the railing for dear life and practically dragging herself up and all I hear are complaints about "this &*^%$#%$^& hill". I bet we were quite entertaining for the locals.

 We went to the castle first and walked along the outer wall. It showed the whole castle and a great view of the city. A lot of the castle was under reconstruction for tourist season so we went around saying "Ye olde tractor, ye olde scaffolding, ye olde electric lighting" etc. 

We then viewed parts of the Magna Carta. I had absolutely no idea that one of the most important documents in the world was in such a small, random, out of the way town. Kudos to Lincoln. We couldn't take pictures in the show room, but there was another piece of it in the cathedral. Don't worry I didn't use flash. 

Next we saw the cathedral. While I appreciate cathedrals and enjoyed how pretty it was, cathedrals are not my thing. I was more excited when I saw a mug in the gift shop that sported the phrase "Rather spiffing old chap". That is just more British in my opinion. If it hadn't been so expensive I would then post a picture of me in some ridiculously stereotypical attire drinking from that mug. Maybe one day I will get the mug of my dreams. Instead you get a picture of the cathedral.

Speaking of ridiculous attire... THIS is what we saw after leaving the cathedral: 

Keeping it classy...

On our way back to the train station I saw a picture of a dinosaur in a window of a small shop. Tam is as obsessed with dinosaurs as I am with sharks, so obviously we had to stop in. I immediately found a basket FULL of fossil sharks' teeth. I freaked out while Ellie and Tam explored the shop more. Each tooth was 3.50 pounds. The owner was shocked that I got that excited over the teeth that he let me dump the whole thing on his counter and go through them. I talked his head off about sharks and the teeth. I also noticed he had about 8 teeth max, but back to the shark teeth. I literally got so excited I teared up when the guy who owned the shop told me I could have 5 for 5 pounds.

My babies!

 I looked him dead in the eye and told that 8 toothed man I loved him. This led him to the glorious moment when he unlocked the cabinet in the other room that had perfectly preserved 7 inch long megalodon teeth... and he actually let me alone with them. My day was made :)

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened." --Dr. Seuss