Nous sommes arrivés en fin d’après-midi en prenant bien soin de laisser le soleil à Tarbes. Nous avons pris le bus jusqu’à Bray où nous avons retrouvé nos familles. Les différents élèves étaient logés par groupe de 3 à 5 dans des familles irlandaises, chez lesquelles nous avons mangé le lundi soir.

Mardi matin, direction Dublin. Nous avons débuté la matinée avec une visite de l’ancienne librairie de “Trinity College” lieu où est exposé le “Book of Kells”, un ouvrage majeur du christianisme irlandais, et considéré par de nombreux spécialistes comme l’un des plus remarquables vestiges de l’art religieux médiéval. S’en est suivi une visite guidée en autocar de Dublin, nous avons pu admirer les maisons géorgiennes et leurs portes aux mille couleurs mais aussi les monuments qui rendent hommage aux hommes qui sont chers à Dublin et à l’Irlande tels la statue d’Oscar Wilde à Merrion square.

L’après midi, nous avons visité la “National Gallery of Ireland” où sont exposés de nombreux tableaux de peintres majeurs aussi bien irlandais comme Moynan (1856-1906) qu’Européens comme Rembrandt ou Le Caravage. Après un temps libre dans Dublin nous sommes rentrés à Bray.

Mercredi matin, la visite du musée de l’émigration irlandaise était au programme ; un parcours dans plusieurs salles qui expliquent les différents domaines dans lesquels les émigrants de la diaspora irlandaise ont brillé, cette dernière est très importante en raison de la grande famine (1845-1849), de nombreux irlandais ont dû fuir leur terre natale. Par ailleurs, nous avons pu voir le “mémorial de la famine” rendant hommage à cet événement tragique. Puis après la pause déjeuner nous avons pu assister à un cours de danse irlandaise où nous avons appris trois danses et plusieurs chansons. Cela nous a fait découvrir une partie du folklore irlandais.

Enfin un dernier quartier libre dans le quartier de Temple Bar, l’un des quartiers les plus attractifs de Dublin. Nous avons fait le plein de souvenirs et c’était déjà l’heure de partir. Une dernière soirée dans les familles, un départ aux aurores et à 9h30 nous étions à l’aéroport de Tarbes.

Paul Lafforgue TB

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The trip took place from October 16th to October 19th. The departure flight was due at 2.10 pm at Lourdes airport. Everyone arrived on time. We landed at 4pm but the bus that was supposed to take us to Howth Bay was late and due to traffic congestion, we were not able to go hiking in Howth as planned. So everyone ended up meeting their host families in the evening.

On Tuesday morning, the students got the opportunity to discover Dublin for twenty minutes before the guided tour of the city. We learnt about the Georgian style of the city centre, that was where the richest people lived at that time. Nowadays it is mainly schools, or offices. The different doors represented the wealth of the families who lived there. The more sophisticated the entrance door was, the richer the family was. Each door was painted in a different colour, that was the distinction between the families. There is a folklore joke saying that when the husbands came back home drunk the colour of their doors helped them to find their house. And when the wives weren't happy because of their husbands’ behaviours, they changed the colour of the door without warning them. Five parks were originally reserved to the residents of the neighbourhood; nowadays four out of five are open to the public. Merrion Square park is situated in front of Oscar Wilde’s house and a statue of him is present in the park. Then we did a twenty-minute stop at St Patrick's Cathedral and we parked there to take photos and enjoy a coffee or a hot chocolate. After this stop we headed out of the city centre towards Phoenix park, we saw the president’s house, one thing to know is that Irish people do not call their president “president” they call him “Uachtarán”. Moreover there is a light in one of the windows of the residence which is on all the time to show that help can be given to anyone at any time. This is the only house on several hectares apart from the US embassy. There was another photo-stop of ten minutes at the Papal cross where we saw a nice fall. We then headed back to Dublin where we saw the Ha’Penny bridge which got its name from the price of the crossing back in time. That was the end of the tour. It was then lunch break with free time to continue Dublin’s visit. In the afternoon, we visited The Book of Kells at Trinity College, it is the most ancient library of Dublin. Unfortunately, the bookshelves were empty due to the renovation of the books. The visit was supposed to last one hour and a half but we spent less time there. Then we went to visit the National Gallery Museum but we were early so we got about forty-five minutes of free time. At the National Gallery we had the opportunity to see different kinds of art. Many paintings were based on religion. There were a lot of rooms and paintings but there were not lots of statues. 

On Wednesday morning we visited The Epic museum, this museum IS a must-do in Dublin. It focuses mainly on Irish immigration. We were able to listen to immigrants' stories, discover their traditional sports, dances, their most famous authors, and public personalities. After lunch we saw the Great Famine memorial, which is composed of six statues representing Irish people during the Famine. It was created by Robert Gillepsie in 1997. After that we headed to the dance lessons. A guitarist sang Irish songs and one traditional Irish song. We learnt three dances, the dancers were very talented and synchronised. It was very impressive. Afterwards, the bus took us to Temple Bar area, it's the musicians’ district. At 10 in the morning people play music in the bars. It is now considered the most attractive area in the city. We got unlucky because it started raining during the last two hours of our free time. 

The day of the departure we left the host families at 3am in order to be at the airport at 4am. Our flight was at 6am and we were back in France at around 9am. It was an incredible journey, everyone was happy and glad to have the opportunity to travel to Ireland :)

Gabrielle Masson TB