Right. Where was I?
March 25, ctd...
I woke up at 4:30 a.m. after not falling asleep until 2. Joy. Couldn't get back to sleep and I'm fairly miserable right now.
Since beginning tis entry I've caught the shuttle to the airport, checked in for my flight, had breakfast, gone through security and am now sitting in the departures lounge waiting for my flight's gate tobe announced. At which point I will basically need to run to the said gate in order to get a good seat on the flight as Ryanair doesn't board by row or anything. Your flight just gets called and you borad in the order you checked in, more or less. But, hey, it's cheap!
March 26, 2006.
Right... So... The flight was late, making any chance I had of catching the shuttle to the hotel null and void. It was delayed about an hour, although I don't know why. But I met a really fun, really social couple to while the hour away with. They were flying to Dublin for the night to meet some friends.
The flight itself was short an uneventful. Got to the airport, got my bags, went to check in at the tour operator's desk, and... nothing. Not a damn thing. They spent, like, 20 minutes trying to figure out what to do with me before shoving me in a cab with another couple. Got to the hotel and my room wasn't ready, so I spent 45 minutes sitting in the lobby reading "Portrait of a Lady" and developing a sleep-deprevation and caffeine-deprivation-induced headache. I was going to leave my bags and go buy some Anadin when it was finally ready.
Met the rest of the tour group downstairs at 3. Guide's name is Keith. Definitely Irish. Accent so thick you could cut it with a knife. Hard to understand on occasion. We took a quick drive out to the Guinness Storehouse, which is basically a museum dedicated to Arthur Guinness and his be... sorry - stout. You don't really get to see where the stuff is made or anything. [For the historians amongst my readers, my favourite bit was the section titled "The history of transporting Guinness is the history of transportation itself." What a load of crap is that?]. Nonetheless, there was a free pint of Guinness involved, so that's always great! Back to the hotel afterwards for a brief respite, followed by drinks in the bar there and then off to a tourist trap called Taylors Three Rock (Keith pronounced it "Tree rock" so it took me a while to get the name right). It's more or less an Irish cabaret type of thing where there's dinner, a live band (The Merry Ploughboys - decent but not exceptional) and Irish dancers (also decent but not exceptional). They were entertaining and knew how to work the crowd.
I slept like a bloody log last night, and then it was up again at 7:15. Breakfast was a 8 and we were off again at 9. A tour of the city [Dublin] was first on the agenda. We had a tour guide get on the bus with us and point out all the cool thing - the President's house, Christchurch Cathedral, the government buildings, Dublin's most-photographed Georgian door, etc.
March 27, 2006
8:20 a.m.
Our first stop yesterday was at St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was lovely, but I seem to have been a bit spoiled for cathedrals after living in England for 6 months. It had some great early Christian 'celtic' stonework, though. And it was also fairly plain after the gothic spires of the Minster and the massiveness of Canterbury Cathedral.
The bus tour continued and after a while we ended up at Trinity College (founded 1592). Trinity College houses the Book of Kells, a gorgeous medieval manuscript with lots of 'celtic' decoration.* We got to go see it (it was included in the tour, otherwise I doubt I'd have paid the €8 or whatever it was to go and see it) and I was amazed. It's a lot smaller than I thought - most of what I've seen of it has been details, blown up for public consumption. The art was absolutely gorgeous and the most fine thing I've ever seen. It's so hard to believe it was done with a quill! I hadn't realized that quill pen nibs could get that delicate. The interwoven patterns were extremely intricate. I have an amazing new apprciation for the book. The most fantastic part of Trinity College, though, was the Long Room. Basically a 17th century library, the Long Room is everything a library should be. Old leatherbound tomes, ladders, dark wood... Gorgeous. I mean, these books date back to the 16th century.
Whilst ogling the book I made arrangements with some of the other people on the tour to go and have lunch and hang out for the afternoon - three sisters from the States and one woman from the states travelling alone. The sisters are about my mom's age, and T is about 30, I'd say. We went for lunch at a pub called O'Neils, which has been on the site for about 300 years (although it's only been O'Neil's for 86). It's really neat - it's got about 5 or 6 bars scattered throughout a little maze of a place, with doorways everywhere, staircases that go up here and down there, and more taps than I've ever seen at any one bar.
Once we'd eaten we went to the National Museum. The cool thing about the museums in Dublin is that many of them are free. The National Museum was no exception. Its collection dates from the stone age to the present, and it's basically an archaeological museum. The coolest bits were probably the 9th and 10th century metal work - the decorative gold and silver work. There were some chalices and patens on display with intricate filigree 'celtic' patterns. The Tara Brooch is also on display there and the filigree work in gold is absolutely amazing. It's tiny and extremely intricate. There was also a bog body and several items preserved in bogs. It's amazing how well the bog actually managed to preserve all these things.
We returned to the hotel around 4:15 and I emailed some folks and posted the last blog entry. Then the bunch of us left again to find someplace for dinner before we embarked on a Literary Pub Crawl. Dinner was in a place called the Badass cafe, and you could tell everyone was having fun with the name.
The crawl itself was really interesting. I hadn't realized just how much literature came from Ireland, although I probably should have. Joyce, Shaw, Wilde, Stoker, and more.
This morning it was up at 6:30 - had to be at breakfast at 7:15 and on the bus by 8:15. It's about 9:30 now and we've left Dublin and moved on to the south. There hasn't been much of note to see... yet. I think I'm going to miss Dublin. It was oddly familiar and homey. I don't think I met a single unfriendly individual there, unless you count the non-Irish wait staff at some of the bars and restaurants. The city centre was small enough that it was really easy to get around. The map, best of all, was accurate, which is always great. I rather wish I'd had some more time there, but I can always go back, right?
11:40 a.m.
We've just made a quick stop at Cashel, where there are the ruins of a castle, probably built around the 12th century. The site, though, dates back to the 6th century or so. The tour guide is starting to annoy me, though. He's certainly pandering to the lowest common denominator in termps of intelligence. He cannot stop asking if we're familiar with X or if we've heard of Y - when X is whiskey and Y is socks. I'm trying to suck it up and realize that not everyone is as historically conscious or intelligent as the people I normally spend time with, but, honestly. I'm feeling a bit patronized by the whole thing.
4:05 p.m.
We're leaving Blarney now. The people who told me that Ireland is extremely green didn't lie. The field division system is similar to England's, so that was nothing new. But stuff in England is not nearly this green. I mean, even the trees are green because of the moss and ivy growing on them.
Blarney castle is set in a nicely landscaped park. It's entirely ruined, but you can wander around inside, up and down the spiral staircases to the top. I think I pulled my shoulder doing it, but I did kiss the Blarney stone - more to say I'd done it than any other reason.
Internet time up... gotta run...
I keep putting 'celtic' in quotation mark because there's really no such thing. 'Celtic' is a combination of Anglo-Saxon, Germanic and other elements.
March 25, ctd...
I woke up at 4:30 a.m. after not falling asleep until 2. Joy. Couldn't get back to sleep and I'm fairly miserable right now.
Since beginning tis entry I've caught the shuttle to the airport, checked in for my flight, had breakfast, gone through security and am now sitting in the departures lounge waiting for my flight's gate tobe announced. At which point I will basically need to run to the said gate in order to get a good seat on the flight as Ryanair doesn't board by row or anything. Your flight just gets called and you borad in the order you checked in, more or less. But, hey, it's cheap!
March 26, 2006.
Right... So... The flight was late, making any chance I had of catching the shuttle to the hotel null and void. It was delayed about an hour, although I don't know why. But I met a really fun, really social couple to while the hour away with. They were flying to Dublin for the night to meet some friends.
The flight itself was short an uneventful. Got to the airport, got my bags, went to check in at the tour operator's desk, and... nothing. Not a damn thing. They spent, like, 20 minutes trying to figure out what to do with me before shoving me in a cab with another couple. Got to the hotel and my room wasn't ready, so I spent 45 minutes sitting in the lobby reading "Portrait of a Lady" and developing a sleep-deprevation and caffeine-deprivation-induced headache. I was going to leave my bags and go buy some Anadin when it was finally ready.
Met the rest of the tour group downstairs at 3. Guide's name is Keith. Definitely Irish. Accent so thick you could cut it with a knife. Hard to understand on occasion. We took a quick drive out to the Guinness Storehouse, which is basically a museum dedicated to Arthur Guinness and his be... sorry - stout. You don't really get to see where the stuff is made or anything. [For the historians amongst my readers, my favourite bit was the section titled "The history of transporting Guinness is the history of transportation itself." What a load of crap is that?]. Nonetheless, there was a free pint of Guinness involved, so that's always great! Back to the hotel afterwards for a brief respite, followed by drinks in the bar there and then off to a tourist trap called Taylors Three Rock (Keith pronounced it "Tree rock" so it took me a while to get the name right). It's more or less an Irish cabaret type of thing where there's dinner, a live band (The Merry Ploughboys - decent but not exceptional) and Irish dancers (also decent but not exceptional). They were entertaining and knew how to work the crowd.
I slept like a bloody log last night, and then it was up again at 7:15. Breakfast was a 8 and we were off again at 9. A tour of the city [Dublin] was first on the agenda. We had a tour guide get on the bus with us and point out all the cool thing - the President's house, Christchurch Cathedral, the government buildings, Dublin's most-photographed Georgian door, etc.
March 27, 2006
8:20 a.m.
Our first stop yesterday was at St. Patrick's Cathedral. It was lovely, but I seem to have been a bit spoiled for cathedrals after living in England for 6 months. It had some great early Christian 'celtic' stonework, though. And it was also fairly plain after the gothic spires of the Minster and the massiveness of Canterbury Cathedral.
The bus tour continued and after a while we ended up at Trinity College (founded 1592). Trinity College houses the Book of Kells, a gorgeous medieval manuscript with lots of 'celtic' decoration.* We got to go see it (it was included in the tour, otherwise I doubt I'd have paid the €8 or whatever it was to go and see it) and I was amazed. It's a lot smaller than I thought - most of what I've seen of it has been details, blown up for public consumption. The art was absolutely gorgeous and the most fine thing I've ever seen. It's so hard to believe it was done with a quill! I hadn't realized that quill pen nibs could get that delicate. The interwoven patterns were extremely intricate. I have an amazing new apprciation for the book. The most fantastic part of Trinity College, though, was the Long Room. Basically a 17th century library, the Long Room is everything a library should be. Old leatherbound tomes, ladders, dark wood... Gorgeous. I mean, these books date back to the 16th century.
Whilst ogling the book I made arrangements with some of the other people on the tour to go and have lunch and hang out for the afternoon - three sisters from the States and one woman from the states travelling alone. The sisters are about my mom's age, and T is about 30, I'd say. We went for lunch at a pub called O'Neils, which has been on the site for about 300 years (although it's only been O'Neil's for 86). It's really neat - it's got about 5 or 6 bars scattered throughout a little maze of a place, with doorways everywhere, staircases that go up here and down there, and more taps than I've ever seen at any one bar.
Once we'd eaten we went to the National Museum. The cool thing about the museums in Dublin is that many of them are free. The National Museum was no exception. Its collection dates from the stone age to the present, and it's basically an archaeological museum. The coolest bits were probably the 9th and 10th century metal work - the decorative gold and silver work. There were some chalices and patens on display with intricate filigree 'celtic' patterns. The Tara Brooch is also on display there and the filigree work in gold is absolutely amazing. It's tiny and extremely intricate. There was also a bog body and several items preserved in bogs. It's amazing how well the bog actually managed to preserve all these things.
We returned to the hotel around 4:15 and I emailed some folks and posted the last blog entry. Then the bunch of us left again to find someplace for dinner before we embarked on a Literary Pub Crawl. Dinner was in a place called the Badass cafe, and you could tell everyone was having fun with the name.
The crawl itself was really interesting. I hadn't realized just how much literature came from Ireland, although I probably should have. Joyce, Shaw, Wilde, Stoker, and more.
This morning it was up at 6:30 - had to be at breakfast at 7:15 and on the bus by 8:15. It's about 9:30 now and we've left Dublin and moved on to the south. There hasn't been much of note to see... yet. I think I'm going to miss Dublin. It was oddly familiar and homey. I don't think I met a single unfriendly individual there, unless you count the non-Irish wait staff at some of the bars and restaurants. The city centre was small enough that it was really easy to get around. The map, best of all, was accurate, which is always great. I rather wish I'd had some more time there, but I can always go back, right?
11:40 a.m.
We've just made a quick stop at Cashel, where there are the ruins of a castle, probably built around the 12th century. The site, though, dates back to the 6th century or so. The tour guide is starting to annoy me, though. He's certainly pandering to the lowest common denominator in termps of intelligence. He cannot stop asking if we're familiar with X or if we've heard of Y - when X is whiskey and Y is socks. I'm trying to suck it up and realize that not everyone is as historically conscious or intelligent as the people I normally spend time with, but, honestly. I'm feeling a bit patronized by the whole thing.
4:05 p.m.
We're leaving Blarney now. The people who told me that Ireland is extremely green didn't lie. The field division system is similar to England's, so that was nothing new. But stuff in England is not nearly this green. I mean, even the trees are green because of the moss and ivy growing on them.
Blarney castle is set in a nicely landscaped park. It's entirely ruined, but you can wander around inside, up and down the spiral staircases to the top. I think I pulled my shoulder doing it, but I did kiss the Blarney stone - more to say I'd done it than any other reason.
Internet time up... gotta run...
I keep putting 'celtic' in quotation mark because there's really no such thing. 'Celtic' is a combination of Anglo-Saxon, Germanic and other elements.
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Your trip sounds great. So now I was thinking, if your tour guide sucks that bad....what must we have been like to the Collette's. Oh God?? Mind you, from the comments we got from them about the "cowboys and Indians", I have a hard time believing that we were as oblivious as your tour guide. Just enjoy the accent....and Irish accent is by far one of the more sexy ones. Have a great time for all of us Kate!!