Saturday, July 8th:
Trinity College (Founded 1592):
Very cool and fun day today! I started my day off by walking straight over to the nearby Trinity College of Dublin. Trinity is one of the oldest universities in the world, and it is within its library that the Book of Kells remains. The Book of Kells is a hand illustrated version of the four gospels written by a monk in the 8th century. It is one of the oldest books in the world, and an important work in early Christian history. The Trinity College Library holds thousands of other books, but it is this one that it is known for. Visitors walk through a series of rooms explaining the book of Kells along with other information about early Christian works. At the end of the exhibition is the book, though to preserve its illustrations, only two pages are shown each day, and no pictures are allowed. One of the two pages is a fully illustrated one, and the other shows the normal text pages of the work. My illustrated page-of-the-day happened to be the portrait of Christ, one of the most famous pages in the book—pretty sweet! After I looked at the pages for a few minutes, I made my way upstairs to the other exhibition in the great library of Trinity College. It is up here that they also display the lire, or harp, that became the national symbol of Ireland. It is one of the oldest harps in the world.
St. Patrick's Cathedral:
After walking around Trinity College some more, I left and headed over to St. Stephen’s Green for lunch. The park is Dublin’s biggest park, and I stopped at a café for a Tex-Mex Panini and a tropical fruit smoothie (starting to like these a lot when I skip breakfast…). I walked around the park for a bit before walking across the city to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the biggest in the city, and the namesake for the famous Irish holiday. This church is absolutely huge, and stunning. The inside is filled with towering altars, beautiful stained glass, and many banners of knights of the past. While in here I also pretended to be a part of a guided tour that allowed me to get access to the choir and Lady Chapel, where normal visitors are not allowed! I took a lot of pictures, then left to walk to another church, Christ Church Cathedral, which is the oldest established church in the city. The original church on its land was built when the Vikings lived in Dublin. It is another big and beautiful church filled with tons of stained glass windows. What I liked the best was the baptismal room, filled with windows of saint portraits. It also had a cool crypt with some old Irish church treasures.
Christ Church Cathedral and Synod Hall (Formerly St. Michael's Church):
I continued my tour of the city by walking to the Dublin Castle area. Here I walked by city hall and through the gates into the castle grounds. The state apartments of Dublin Castle were closed for the weekend for state use (lame) but I got to walk around the grounds and into the Chapel Royal with its wooden vaulted ceiling and beautiful artistic decoration. I walked back to my hostel next to move my luggage to the hostel I would be staying at for the next two nights, the Generator Hostel. On my taxi ride over, the cab driver informed me that it was just on the news because it was brand new and got great reviews! That excited me and I was eager to check it out. It is a brand new and awesome place, but unfortunately it was so new that they had yet to install internet, as advertised on the internet booking website. Anyways, after moving my luggage in I went out again to find food. I ended up eating some “New York Pizza” at a place near Temple Bar, the party district. The pizza was decent, but filling, so I moved on to a place called John Mulligan’s Pub, which advertises as having the best Guinness in Dublin—I can attest to its tastiness.
Bedford Tower of Dublin Castle:
After this I tried jumping in and out of bars, including a fun stop at a bar called Fitzpatrick’s where I watched cricket for a while (trying to figure out the rules) and listened to a local band make fun of some American guys who were in the bar in a group. I was about to head home again sort of early when two girls asked me for directions to meet up with their friends at a bar called Sin É (Gaelic!). They told me I should come along, and I ended up hanging out with them and their four or five guy friends until almost 5am. I was happy I found some people to hang with again, and went to bed after a busy day and fun night. Another fun note: the city of Dublin lights their bridges over the River Liffey with bright green lights at night, which looks astoundingly…Irish.
The Record Tower and Chapel Royal of Dublin Castle:
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