I've spent the past couple of days relishing a more violent history than I've been looking at for the past couple of months. Sure, the Romans were great. But then you get to Celtic history - grar!!! There's a very creepy museum here that goes through all the Viking and Medieval history of the area. I call it creepy because somebody, somewhere made the executive decision that creating wax recreations of life would be a good idea, so you wander through this ill-lit museum of Vikings marauding and women sacrificing animals and men in prison. It's weird.
But today I went to a museum that deserves a shout-out. I suggest you go to the Prado, if your thing is art, and I suggest you visit Chenonceau if your thing is cool buildings, but no matter WHAT you like, I suggest you visit the National Leprechaun Museum in Dublin. Definitely one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. Let out your inner child for a day and know that, for once, it will not at all be insulted. The museum is really to teach the art of storytelling, so there's very little of the history of the Leprechaun and a lot about the fairy stories of Ireland. AND IT IS AWESOME.
And I'm going to admit something to you here - the Giant's Room is awesome. I say this as a 21 year old woman. It's a room where everything is scaled so that you're leprechaun sized (1/3 of human height, says the poster as you enter), and you just get to climb on shit. And I would have felt stupid, if there weren't four other early-twenty year old girls doing exactly the same thing. When I say climb on things, I don't mean "climb on the areas of the exhibit where it's obviously stated you should climb," you could just climb (and I mean CLIMB, there's a picture on some stranger's camera of my legs flailing helplessly off the side of a giant table) on everything! Tables and chairs, the fireplace, the cabinets. I'm not joking that this is like... My six-year-old self's dream come true.
But, after fooling around, what inner-child day would be complete without a story? And here is where the museum really really really shines. Because there are storytellers. Good ones. So after climbing around in the Giant's Room, climbing under the Giant's Causeway, you come to the end of the rainbow (obviously!) and enter the story room. Again, this is not a museum entirely for children (although it's very child friendly), and the stories certainly don't insult your inner child either. They're scary, they're thrilling, there are ghosts... Stories so good you don't want them to end. This was really what won my heart - our story teller was so good he left you with that unsatisfied feeling you get after a good book or a play when you're almost upset that it's over and nothing else is going to satisfy the craving you have to get back to that world - that world, not another similar world, that one.
I guess the closest comparison I have is that, yes, in a way, this museum is for children. But unlike most things for children, it's not insulting. Much like The Hobbit, it respects the darker side of things, and because of that, it's really just a joy to everybody who walks through the museum.
I can't stress this enough. Go. I wish I had the time to go again. And the girls I went through with today? Were there for their second time as well. Seriously, gooooo. This museum is a good book. I have the exact same feeling I get when I finish a life-changingly awesome book - one of the ones you start reading again immediately or get upset that the author didn't make the book longer.
http://www.leprechaunmuseum.ie/
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