Natural History Museum

Today was my first day off since I started working for Paddywagon Tours, and Colin and I spent the afternoon at the Natural History Museum - also known as the “dead zoo”. The museum was only reopened a month ago; it had been closed since July 2007 after one of the building’s staircases collapsed.

We spent a few hours browsing the museum’s two floors of preserved animals and fossils. The first floor featured wildlife native to Ireland, and the second floor contained animals from around the world. 

My favorite artifacts were the giant extinct Irish deer skeletons and all the unusual marine life that has been discovered in Irish coastal waters. The museum houses a few of the biggest sea creatures ever caught in Ireland, including an enormous crab, a cast of a basking shark (the second largest living shark) and lots of eerily large fish.

The best part about the museum was the free admission. In fact, all of the Irish National Museums - Natural History, Archaeology, Decorative Arts & History and Country Life - are free to enter.

Click here to read an Irish Times article about the museum’s reopening.