After a yummy Irish breakfast served to us at our Guesthouse
we venture out to explore some of the sites that we saw yesterday on our bus
tour.
Stop number 1 was to visit Trinity
College; where literary greats such as Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, and Jonathan
Swift once walked along as students.
Here at Trinity College it is also home to the Book of Kells. This is a book of the four Gospels of the New
Testament that was hand written and illustrated by Celtic monks around 800 AD. I can’t even begin to describe the sheer awesomeness
of being in the same room as this book.
There was no photography allowed, but click on this link to
see some of the beautiful illustrations.
The Book of Kells is definitely the main attraction, but the campus itself
is also rich in history and definitely worth a look.
We went into one room called the Long Room, which is an old library and we found books upon books of rare
ancient text, some thousands of years old.
And for the Harry Potter lover in me this room was used as the model for
the Great Dining Hall for the movies, so I was geeking out over that!
The architecture in Dublin City is absolutely beautiful, their
churches and cathedrals are just absolutely gorgeous and we even had the
opportunity to visit a few of them.
St. Audeon’s Church was one place that we went inside. It isn’t one of the biggest churches, like St
Patrick’s Cathedral, but it was still very beautiful.
Bryan's Aunt Judy, has been battling cancer for a very long time and on a table in St. Audeon's Church there was a place to write down the names of those who were ill and a prayer would be said for them during the next Mass. So Judy here are some prayers being sent your way from the other side of the Atlantic, and I know she would appreciate any other prayers from any of you as well.
Our next stop? Why
the Guinness Storeroom of course! I wasn’t
sure how interesting this tour was going to be for me, but it was something
Bryan really wanted to see while we were in Dublin.
And actually, it ended up being really interesting and a lot
of fun. Arthur Guinness was the founder and after taking out a 9000 year old
lease (not a typo!) he started a company that would become international known and found on
tap in every bar and pub in Ireland.
 |
| Hey? How do you get into this place?! |
We learned how the Guinness is processed and made (only 4
ingredients: barley, hops, yeast and water) and we even took a class to learn
how to pour the perfect pint!
You can see the concentration...
Trying not to spill any!
After our tour it started getting late, so we head over to
Temple Bar area, which is a very neat section of Ireland. Here you can find cobblestone streets, lots of
shopping, and bars; which also means lots and lots of tourist and locals.
We walk round a bit and then follow our ears to the live
music and head into Quays Bar to listen to some Irish music.
While we were here I told Bryan that I hope to hear Galway
Girl at least once which is one of my favorite songs sung about Ireland. We’ll I didn’t have to wait long as these two
gentlemen played it about 5 minutes after we stepped in.
Before you watch the video I have realized that Temple Bar
is also the place to be if you are having a hen or stag party which is the UK
version of Bachelorette and Bachelor parties, so you may see some in this
video. I’ll talk about our experience
with hen and stag parties in a later post.
Tomorrow we head out to the west coast towards Galway to
spend the week. This also means our
first experience with driving on the left…
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