It was cold, but there were still musicians performing in the streets, and crowds of both locals and tourists Christmas shopping and enjoying Dublin's nightlife.
By day, I saw some of Dublin's famous landmarks like Trinity College and Christchurch Cathedral, both of which are over 500 years old! I even visited an elementary school in Dublin and I was surprised to find that, depite being a public school, it was all boys. In Ireland, there are public schools that are both single and mixed gender. I was surprised because there are very few single gender public schools in the U.S. The fourth graders I met were interested in animals and soccer.
Eventually, I made my way to Sir Ernest Shackleton's hometown, Athy, taking a train through lush, green, sheep-dotted fields. Athy is a small town in County Kildare, which is close to Dublin. During his early childhood, Sir Ernest Shackleton lived in this countryside, where his father worked as a farmer. When I arrived in Athy, I was met by a man named Kevin from the Athy Heritage Centre - Shackleton Museum. Kevin told me the extroardinary story of how he became interested in Shackleton: He bought a used copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's book "Treasure Island" that had hidden in its pages a thank-you letter from Sir Ernest Shackleton himself to a company called Jacobs, which supplied biscuits for the Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition! What a discovery!
I learned so much about Ireland and Shackleton from my visit to the Athy Heritage Centre - Shackleton Museum and my conversations with Kevin.
