We woke at around 7 – things typically don’t open on Sunday til around noon, so we don’t have to rush out of the hotel this morning. We ate an Irish breakfast (eggs, links, ham), showered, and got moving.

We took a cab over to the Jewish Museum. Its in an old row house that contained a synagogue on the upper floor that was operational until 1970 – its been restored as part of the museum. The first floor is full of photos, news articles and things dealing with the Jewish population of Dublin – there’s also a kitchen typical of the sort found in a Jewish home at the turn of the century.

The Holy Ark from the former synagogue in the Jewish Museum

The Hupa in the Jewish Museum

The manager of the museum insisted that Aviva and I have a proper hupa experience!

We caught another cab over to Christ Church, but services were in session so we went into Dublinia to kill some time. Dublinia is a museum about the way people lived in medieval Dublin – its better for kids than adults. We got to cross the stone bridge over to the church – its large but not as ornate as the Italian churches we’ve visited.

Christ Church

The baptismal basin in Christ Church

The stained glass windows at one end of Christ Church

A view from the rear of Christ Church towards the alter

The stone bridge between Dublinia and Christ Church

Yet another cab ride, this time over to National Gallery of Ireland. This was really good – we walked the third floor, which is their French, Dutch and Italian renaissance paintings. There was a really nice Cranach painting of the crucifiction and a Botticelli rotundo.

The facade of the National Gallery of Ireland

We walked around and shopped in bookstores for a while. Then we walked through Temple Bar, the youth area, and ate dinner at La Med on 22nd East Essex. The food was good. We had some gellato at Boticelli next door, and then headed back to the hotel to pack, call moms for Mother’s Day, call my son Nathan, and then hit the sack.

I finished Serendipities: Language and Lunacy today and am starting Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments Of The 20th Century. Serendipities: Language and Lunacy is about how mistakes in understanding linguistics and semiotics have been useful in leading to better understanding of language. The papers are based upon Eco’s presentations to various groups over a few years. They all start with the story of Babel and the idea that there was once a common, ideal language – what follows are various searches for a return to that or a creation of a new, ideal language, or the finding of the rules for this ideal.