After waking up early in London and flying back into Dublin, I booked it to short lecture on Irish politics and made it in time to go to our next visit – the Irish Parliament building. Now, politics aren’t really my thing, so I was a little weary on this one, but I found it to be more interesting than I thought it would be.
The architecture of the building was beautiful. I’m a sucker for aesthetically pleasing building and this one was giving me what I needed. The colors and structures and stonework. It was all amazing. We saw around all of the facilities that the members of the Parliament do business in and our guide gave us some context and history for each location.
It was really interesting learning about the Irish government. It’s really young, similar to our own country and you can see it still trying to find its footing. I found it also interesting how mostly aligned the political parties. I’m so used to American politics that I forgot that opposing parties can agree on topics and want what’s mutually best for the country. Or that they could even – compromise! Crazy stuff.
After our parliament visit, we had a visit from Martina Devlin who talked to us about her work as a journalist and writer. She was very wise and wellspoken. She had a lot to say about her respective industries and it gave some insight to how writers work and are treated in Ireland and how those things are similar and different to in America.
