Just a bit more on our Dublin hotel. For a few days we will be living next door to Oscar Wilde, or at least, next door to the house where Oscar grew up, and next door to a wonderful statue paying tribute to him in Merrion Square, one of Dublin’s beautiful Georgian squares. The Wilde home is now an outpost of an American college (shall we find one of these for Agnes Scott?) but looks pretty much as it did in Oscar’s day. The statue, located in a corner of the gorgeous park in the square’s center, is one of Dublin’s best and most unusual. Danny Osborne, an Irish sculptur, chose the casual pose and used colored stone–including several kinds of Jade, thulite, and granite–to capture Wilde’s colorful personality.  I especially love the pillars in the foreground with some of Wilde’s famous sayings etched on them in the handwriting of famous Irish people. If you haven’t read any Wilde, his comic play The Importance of Being Earnest is probably a good place to start. I didn’t “assign” him for our trip because his works are not really about Ireland. But his wit and critical eye definitely have roots in Irish culture. Speaking of wit, all Dublin statues have risqué nicknames–better conveyed in person than written in a serious blog!

Click on the pictures to see them enlarged!