Instagram Tour of Dublin

The best way to see Dublin is to take your time walking around the city. Stop for a Guinness in a local pub, pay homage to a temple of literature at Trinity College’s library and try to see how many different colored doors you spot on the city’s Georgian houses.

Check out the Instagram pics from Gadling’s recent trip to Ireland. If these get you thinking about a trip of your own, our friends at AOL Travel have a great Dublin travel guide.


For more travel inspiration, follow Gadling’s Instagram account @GadlingTravel under the hashtag #OnTheRoad.

Drunks In Ireland Poop In Holy Well, Deface Prehistoric Fort

A group of about 40 drunks in County Donegal, Ireland, went on a rampage at a prehistoric fort, harassing tourists, defecating in a holy well, and removing stones, Irish Central reports.

The incident occurred at Grianan Fort, a stone ring fort dating to 1700 B.C.

Only two men from the group were arrested. They were found guilty and sentenced to a month in jail, suspended for one year. They also had to pay damages. The two were caught because they lingered at the fort after the rest of the drunks had left. A police officer arrived to find them pulling stones from the prehistoric walls and lobbing them into the parking lot.Grianan Fort is set atop a high hill. It is the best-preserved fort of its kind and is widely believed to have been the seat of the ancient Kingdom of Aileach. The walls are 15 feet thick and 16 feet high, so while the drunks were able to cause cosmetic damage, they didn’t destabilize the ancient structure.

The holy well at the fort is dedicated to Saint Patrick and is one of many throughout Europe that are receiving renewed attention. The holy well at Binsey, Oxfordshire, for example, was all but abandoned a decade ago but is now attracting pilgrims who pray to the local Saint Frideswide for cures to their illnesses.

Thieves Steal Rhino Horns From National Museum Of Ireland

A gang of masked men broke into the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin on Wednesday night and made off with four rhino heads.

Museum officials said in a press release that the thieves overpowered a security guard and tied him up. They then entered a storeroom and removed the heads. The heads had previously been on display but had been put into storage a year ago for fear of their being stolen.

The security guard was eventually able to free himself and notify police. So far no arrests have been made.

Rhino horns are especially prized in Asia where they are used in traditional medicines. Police estimate the street value of the horns to be about $650,000. Normally rhinos are poached in the wild and their horns are smuggled to their destination. This photo, courtesy the UK Home Office, shows two rhino horns found wrapped in cling film, concealed in a false sculpture. These were from a different crime. The rhino horns from the Dublin museum have not been found.

This raid may herald a new phase in rhino poaching. With poachers facing increased policing, and even firefights, at national parks and rhinos becoming hard to find thanks to their being hunted to the edge of extinction, some may turn to taking horns from natural history collections.

[Photo courtesy the UK Home Office]

Airport Worker Fired Over Facebook Photo: Is This Right?

Irish airport worker Alex Duffy was fired earlier this month after posting a photo of himself and singer Nadine Coyle from the band Girls Aloud.

The airport was alerted to the photo after numerous negative comments about Coyle were posted in the comments.

Duffy is now reaching out to Coyle for help, AOL Travel UK is reporting.

Here’s where the case gets a bit tricky – Duffy was already on probation for another, unrelated Facebook violation the Metro reported. It seems as if the official firing was for violating company policy twice, not simply for posting the Facebook photo in the first place.

That said, it seems as if Duffy had done a rather harmless thing – posting a photo taken with (and approved by) the celebrity to his personal Facebook page.

It seems strange to us that this would have caused his termination. What do you think, readers? Should Duffy have been fired? Should security workers even be allowed to ask celebrities for photos, or is this a violation of personal privacy?

Weigh in in the comments.

[Image Credit: Facebook]