Ireland has only had its independence from the British for about a hundred years. And the North of Ireland is still part of the United Kingdom, a fact that leaves the Irish with a special understanding for a land undergoing occupation, a people being oppressed, or a refugee needing a home.

My academic interest is post-colonial Francophone Africa, especially in how the French treated the North African Muslims differently than the other African colonial populations. I never finished my master’s in world history, but now I wonder if I did finish if it might be pertinent to look at the British and the Irish, the Protestants versus the Catholics, as the most powerful cultural conflicts often have roots in religion. Many Irish are pro-Palestine and pro-Ukrainian people. It’s not hard to see why.

For breakfast, we hopped on a double decker public bus, green and yellow TFI (transportation for Ireland), We rode the 13 and the 27. We headed over to Ernesto’s Café, and we arrived just in time as it got very busy by the time we left.

The café decor has a certain revolutionary Spanish theme while creating artisanal breakfasts. I had the berry scone with chantilly cream, berry compote and of course Irish butter.

From one of the posters on the wall:

I’d rather trust a dealer on a badly lit street corner than a criminal in a three piece suit

Upon return to our hotel, M managed to grab tickets for Kilmainham Goal, the old county jail turned famous Dublin prison that housed the leaders of the Easter Uprising. The narrow halls are from its early county jail days where prisoners were housed one per cell. The larger Victorian-era addition looks much more like our modern prisons today. The jail housed men, women and children. And the amount of people passing through its doors went up 10-fold during the Potato Famine, as (1) begging became a crime and (2) people committed crimes to go to jail to have food and shelter.

It’s hard to see against the stone, but in the one photo there’s a small cross. That’s where most of the leaders of the Easter Uprising were shot by British firing squad. One man was shot on the opposite side because he never recovered from wounds sustained in the uprising and he was shot while propped up in a chair.

In the evening, we went to Darkey Kelly’s to listen to Irish music and I had Guinness Stew.

I’m mentioning it here because most of the traditional Irish music talks about fighting the British– which they’ve done for 800 years.

Nothing we did today featured an interactive tourist experience.

Thank God.