Monday, July 28, 2008

[If you are reading through these posts, you might want to go back and check some of the older posts for pictures. We are working to keep the text as up-to-date as possible, but it takes a bit longer to go through and pick just a few appropriate pictures for the day and get them uploaded.]

Well, I guess you can tell some about the kinds of things we see based on the number of pictures we take in a day. Today was probably a low day for the three cameras that we had with us, with less than 200 pictures between us. That may sound like a lot, and I guess it is, but it is well below the number that we have usually been taking. We’re most thankful for the invention of digital photography!

Today was a day to visit Dublin. The only formal part of the day was a two-hour coach ride round about Dublin. We saw some of the highlights and got out of the coach once in Phoenix Park at the site of Pope John Paul’s mass for a million Irishmen in 1979. There is a large cross on a small hill in the middle of some open space there. The park is quite large and also contains the homes of the Irish President (sort of a ceremonial position) and the home of the US Consulate.

We were dropped off near Trinity College in the middle of Dublin about 11. Alan and Joyce elected to go see the display of the Book of Kells at the Trinity Library, while Forst and Louise met up with Sue, one of our fellow tourers and took in some shopping near our drop-off point and took the early shuttle back to the hotel.

The Book of Kells is probably the earliest written book in Ireland. It was hand transcribed about 1000 years ago and contains the four Gospels. It is intricate, illustrated, and very elaborate. Two of the four books were on display, as well as extensive background about how it was done. This tour ended in the Long Room of the library, which was a long, tall room with thousands of volumes from the 13th to the 19th century lining the shelves. They are all leather bound; many are religious in nature. Several of them were on display as well. The sight and smells of the room were very impressive.

From there, Alan and Joyce walked quite a ways to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. We walked through one of the streets set aside for pedestrian shoppers, picked up some lunch, and went to St. Patrick’s Park to eat. A woman in a wheel chair who was obviously deaf asked for some help, and we finally sorted out that she wanted a bag from the back of her wheel chair. Alan got it for her and she immediately started throwing scraps to the pigeons that were there. Shortly, we were also surrounded by several sea gulls. She rolled back over to us and said that when the sea gulls come, they eat everything. She was right!

St. Patrick’s was another awesome cathedral. Not as large as some that we’ve been in on this trip, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that this is a place that has been in use as a church for more than 700 years. Jonathan Swift was a Dean of the Cathedral, and is buried there. One of the more interesting components of the building was the tiled floor, which was quite different than the stone slab floors we’ve seen most other places.

From there we walked back toward Trinity by way of the Christ Church Cathedral, the oldest building in Dublin, dating back to the 11th century, but elected to not tour it. Likewise, we walked around Dublin Castle, a mish-matched set of buildings, without touring. We made our way back to the pick-up point via several small shops, making some plans for a major shopping excursion in a few days.

We had a quick lay down before dinner (aren’t we beginning to sound so British?), and then met Forst and Louise in the hotel pub for a nice time of food and conversation (no Guinness yet, even though we did go by the main plant a couple of times today.) Alan and Joyce tried to get to the ocean, but all the closer we could get was a wildlife area a few blocks from the hotel.